Sampson

It’s the most unstable I remember the western world being. I miss the heady optimistic days of the third way in the 00s and 90s. Feels like “the long peace” and “the end of history” long since gone. Genuinely think WW3 is a possibility in my lifetime now which I would’ve laughed at 10 years ago. Also 15 years ago I was optimistic about how the internet would bring the world closer together, but it’s got to the point where I think the internet is bad for humanity overall. Too much information out there for human society to deal with what’s true and what isn’t

Thought this was AI, but CNN suggests it is real.

They’re the same copper I believe

https://news.sky.com/story/police-officer-who-kicked-and-stamped-on-suspect-at-manchester-airport-filmed-pepper-spraying-man-13184832 Another video come out now of the same policeman at Manchester airport on the same night pepper spraying a guy just standing still from about 30cms away in the link from Sky above. Even less defensible now.

I think he’s lucky the guy wasn’t killed and he’d be charged with manslaughter tbh. That’s a pretty hefty stamp on the head against the concrete floor. Can’t see much chance he’ll work as a policeman again. Think he’ll be lucky to escape jail time but I’m no legal expert.

Regardless of what the crime is, personally find it difficult to see how kicking someone in the head when they’re being tasered on the floor complying is ever justified by the police. That level of violence might be justified to apprehend someone (and I’m not convinced kicking someone in their head once they’re down is tbh) but hard to see how it is once they’re already complying. But we’ll see what comes out of it regarding context etc.

I’d rather a guilty person got a less years in jail than this kind of stigmatisation of mental health issues as being “a cop out” pervaded society tbh. Theres always people who abuse any system, it doesn’t mean we should create a society where we instantly judge mental health issues as cop outs against the advice of judges and juries. Just creates this society where people think they’ll be judged as faking it for having mental health issues.

The overseas point is an interesting one actually, because the internet is a global phenomenon and really requires globalist cooperation if you actually want to do things about the societal issues it causes. I’m not sure smaller nations could really have taken on mega corporation like Apple and Facebook in terms of tax and privacy laws in the way the EU has as a collective, as the companies would just threaten to pull out of those states altogether without probably taking too much of a financial dent into their empire, whereas pulling out of the EU as a whole would be massively damaging. However we’re at a time now where the electorate in much of the western world is rejecting globalism and turning any supra-national organisation into a bogeyman (look at the bogeyman WHO became during the pandemic or Farage’s recent rant against the World Economic Forum) so it becomes harder and harder politically to actually create the organisations and bodies we need to cooperate on the massive amount of new issues humans need to deal with on a global level with the invention of the internet. Most of these international bodies were created after WW2 when people were profoundly aware of the need of international cooperation and the need for nation states to succeed certain laws to global agreements and organisations, but that is long forgotten and doesn’t seem to be in vogue with voters anymore at a time I’d argue they’re the most needed.

I agree he clearly doesn’t believe in the economic style of the USSR, but I’m sure he’d be happy to see the landmass and geopolitical influence of the USSR back.

As LiberalFox says, how can you legally define what an influencer is so it only affects those giving out potentially dangerous advice or opinions? That feels very legally iffy and can almost certainly be exploited if certain types of parties got into power. I think this thread just shows that humans of any country or society would happily embrace authoritarianism if it’s framed against people they don’t like. You can’t shut down or monitor a person’s livelihood because of a few bad apples or you don’t consider them a traditional way to work tbh. There’s countless great educational influencers and content creators out there. I watch some YouTubers who just play video games or board games I like, I’m happy to see them earn a living off it so they can do it full time. Same with others who are educational channels who discuss a wide range of scientific topics I probably would’ve had little chance to learn about 25 years ago. Like a lot of things on the internet, humans just don’t know how to deal with and frame the overload of information. I don’t know what the answer is, none of us do, because we seem to have lost control on critical thinking and framing information and political debate to the point where everyone’s opinion is considered equal when it shouldn’t be, but I can’t really see how banning influencers is it.

You don’t think we should be giving money to Ukraine? I think the 2 child benefit cap is backwards but this is just Labour voting against an amendment because it would mean voting against the king’s speech. Not saying that Labour won’t table the same motion in the future. Regardless, I think letting Putin power through Ukraine and emboldening him will cost the UK a hell of a lot more in the future if/when he starts deciding Moldova, Finland, the Baltics, Poland are all easy targets and that the west won’t bother financially backing the defence of democratic European states. Putin has publicly said (likely multiple times) the collapse of the USSR and Eastern block was the worst thing that happened for Russia. What do you seriously think will happen if we just let him roll over Ukraine? That he’d just decide that’s him done and not continue if there’s no defence of these other countries?

Both ended up going down the same alt right rabbit holes too. Barton was talking about gay people being needed to be included in football and Brand was on QT fiercely in opposition to Farage. Brand especially seemed to do a complete 180 since Covid from being a huge Corbyn supporter to a huge Trump supporter.

it’s an interesting discussion but it is ultimately chicken or egg stuff. I’m not convinced people just latch on to people like Farage because they don’t feel like they listened to and they don’t care that he lies, sells them easy answers and pulls economic numbers from thin air. And that it isn’t Farage whipping people up into them thinking that there’s a problem. How much of those are “legitimate concerns” about immigration for example and how much are just chancers like Farage telling them they have legitimate concerns in very clever dog whistling ways that make it sound ok to centrists I’m not sure. For example, I think a lot of issues with the difficulty funding the public sector in western economies are undoubtedly caused by population ageing, but it’s an extremely uncomfortable truth that older people and pensioners who worked hard all their lives are the problem, especially in a democracy where older people become the major core of voters. I mean population ageing is a massive problem in democracies because you’ll get to the point where the people who have the most and influential votes are the ones draining the public purse - so it becomes a much more convenient truth to say it’s assylum seekers in hotels or benefit scroungers who are the problems to the public purse. People believe it because they don’t actually know these people and will never become one of those people, whereas they know they’ll become old and they have parents or grandparents who are old and need the state to help support them. In that case I think it’s the narrative being fed by bad actors like Farage and not the other way around. I think Macron has tried to do what Finnegan said and try to openly talk about discussing the concerns of the populist anti-establishment parties on both left and right and all it’s done has legitimise previously fringe views into the mainstream by making them seem like they’re being listened to about them and then made them feel comfortable being even more extreme. As for educating people in critical thinking, absolutely. I have no idea why critical thinking isn’t a mandatory subject in school between the ages of 13-16 and instead is a choice-based subject for 17 or 18 year olds which very few take. But I still don’t think it would have enough desired effect tbh. Tbh I’m just not sure human brains can cope with the barrage of information presented by social media and the internet and society doesn’t know what to do - especially given the 2 biggest challenges of the modern age are climate change and population ageing - the former of which requires global cooperation in a way humanity has never achieved before and the latter is a big test on democracy as it kind of inherently involves parties going after their own voters and a huge deal of voters being told they’re the problem and people inherently voting against their own self interest. Feels a bit like all the unrest that came out of the birth of the printing press which caused the overthrow of the Catholic status quo and caused mass war and conflict all over Europe. *cue the Metal Gear Solid 2 clip from about 25 years ago predicting the internet will lead to humans existentially struggling with the mass information overload and the lack of filter of genuine and fake information*

For someone who goes on about intolerant the other side are and how they don’t listen to others “opinion”, going into defensive mode instead of just admitting you got caught out by a parody advert is more than a little hypocritical.

It shouldn’t have mattered though. The fact she ever got up to being put forward as an mp candidate in the first place, then won, then got nominated as leader of the party with enough MPs seconding her even before that is baffling enough.

Just the way she speaks is so weird and unnatural. Generally baffled she even made as an MP, let alone was the prime minister.

Really good news for both the Tories and country if so. Her influence is so toxic on the party and country

Yeah I have absolutely no idea why people are getting riled up at Vine here. He had right of way and the bus was stationary and just pulled out with no signal or checking their mirror. Cyclists get killed every day that kind of complacency from the bus driver. Think what you like about Vine or cyclists in general, but that’s dangerous driving from the bus driver. You can’t just pull out like that without checking your mirrors or indicating.

What did they actually do? What exactly were they found guilty of? Frightening sentence in a democracy if it’s for organising protests tbh.

It was a genuinely interesting discussion until people started getting abusive tbh.

Yes and in that quote I am not saying people from Stoke have more in common than the people of rural Italy at all, I’m saying the opposite. You can believe what you like but please don’t misframe what I wrote. I don’t want to engage you in debate because you’re being abusive but you are still more than welcome to respond to what I put, but please don’t misframe what I wrote

What? Why are you answering me saying you mistreated me by quoting something that has absolutely nothing to do with saying people from Stoke should get on with people from rural Italy? I never said anything about your neighbour and what job he does. We were taking whether a nation which is often a huge landmass and some contain over a billion people where you will never meet or interact with 99.99% within is a natural progression of the hunter-gatherer tribes which consisted of less than 200 people and where everyone interacted. It was not about whether people in the immediate vicinity of each other get on, it was about whether people in cities and rural on opposite ends of a country who never interact have more in common than those of similar class styles in different countries: Stop deliberately misframing me and setting up straw men. You can believe what you like but please stop saying I’ve said things I haven’t.

Disagree. Especially when you consider the lifestyle in a huge international city like London where people interact daily with people from every corner of globe and never venture out of the city except to go on holiday abroad. That’s a radically different life to people who live in the most rural areas in the UK. Like whenever I catch a programme like Countryfile and the things people focus on and talk about, I find that kind of life completely alien to me, I’m almost certain I’m much more likely to get on with and share much more in common with a similarly metropolitan (for want of a better term) person from Germany or somewhere than the kind of people on countryfile.

Eh. You don’t need to deliberately try and misframe my point. I very specifically said the exact opposite of that, I said people in similar sized industrial towns with similar upbringings from different countries likely have more in common than those in very rural and urban areas within the same country. It’s hardly far fetched and completely outlandish to think you have more in common with people from different countries but otherwise a similar background than different backgrounds within the same country is it? It’s 2024, most of us who live in cities likely have work collegues, friends or family from other countries, even if not most then certainly a lot more than it being a “completely outlandish” scenario. Most of us probably find them a lot easier to get on with and are friends with them because we have a lot in common with them, more so than we would a lot of British people living very rural lives. And it probably works vice versa for rural people. That’s hardly a “completely outlandish” observation.

Huh? Are you seriously trying to posit multiculturalism to imperialism? What does anything we are talking about have to do with building castles?