Sampson

This is another huge issue with population ageing too and why it’s not just a test on public finances and the economy but also democracy. When the average voting age rises and rises and people understandably don’t want to be told your pension you’ve worked hard for all your life and they live in and are told all your life you have the right too is costing the country too much and needs taxing or reducing it’s understandable that people would feel miffed and will not vote for that party. Which leaves politicians in a catch-22 with regards to population ageing. We saw the riots that happened in France just because of raising the retirement age by 2 years. You can say “older people should work longer” as well but in reality it’s harder and harder for people over 70 to either be physically capable of so much labour or of being actually able to find a job as many companies just won’t hire older people.

Still think the biggest problem facing both uk and most of the west is population ageing. We spend as much on the NHS as ever but it’s broken because our population is way older and so requires way more use of the NHS . We have way more 80+ year olds and way fewer 18-30 year olds than we did 30 years ago. And people aged 80+ cost the state tenfold more than those under 30 to support each in terms of both pensions and healthcare. The pension system was designed when people would live to 70 for a nice end to the live for 5 years or so, but now it’s quite common for people to collect their pension for 25-30 years while also needing more care and operations etc. I know it’s a very uncomfortable truth, which is why no politician will touch it with a barge pole and instead it’s way easier to blame immigrants, but the older population are unfortunately a much bigger problem to the state finances than immigrants and in fact the reason we need so many foreign workers in the health and care sectors are to deal with the continuously out of whack ratio of people of retirement age to people of tax paying age.

It’s funny how terrified the Tories are

First round of voting in the French election today. Frighteningly good chance that a western country could fall to the far right.

Fixed that for you

Still wonder if Fuchsntf ever got to see his 70th birthday

Hate this argument tbh. Plenty of people tried to reason, listen to and give grounded arguments on the benefits of EU membership during the referendum but were met with just “project fear” and “you don’t believe in Britain” over and over again. I remember a Jacob Rees-Mogg speech where he got people cheering by just saying (paraphrasing) “all these experts claiming Brexit will be bad for the UK have no faith. This is the UK of Trafalgar, D-day and Agincourt who always battle against the odds”. It was just blind calls for patriotism. I think the idea that it’s people criticising Reform voters who are the ones at fault for people voting Reform and that we don’t listen to them is a nonsense tbh. Plenty of people listen to them and try to give grounded arguments against voting for Reform but none of it sinks in above 3 word sloganeering and blind calls for patriotism.

Beaten to it -

The world is on fire

Oh they can. Campaign advertising now has people simulating literally being in the firing line if you vote Labour. This is the cultivating a culture of nastiness and negativity I keep talking about. How are these things healthy for society? It’s what the Tories do, just sew and create a culture of hatred and division. Regardless of economic and social political beliefs, the general attitude and environment of the country was just so much nicer 1997-2010 than it was 1979-1997 or 2010-2024.

When Starmer first came in I was hopeful as he seemed like a centre left politician more in line with Milliband than Blair, but seems to have become the most right wing Labour leader ever. I do hope it’s just to get elected and he can make the country a friendlier place and less driven by constant rhetoric of division against immigrants, people on welfare and younger people.

I’m half in the same boat, half in the mindset that it isn’t so much Labour’s fault that everyone’s hope has been beaten out of them as the Tories scapegoating and nasty rhetoric for 14 years. I don’t care whether Starmer is charismatic or not but the manifesto and campaign just screams 5 more years of austerity and neoliberalism and not really the social democratic ideals the party should have. That is what depresses me over the leader, I hope it’s just a campaign tactic and things change when they’re in power but I’m cynical

People forget about election campaign promises shorty afterwards tbh. Remember all those hospitals Boris Johnson said he’d build as one of the biggest selling points in the last election?

Nigel is just a”spiv” and a “grifter who is nostalgic the 80s” and definitely not a fascist apparently despite the fact these are the MPs his party put forward

“Polished”?! It was one of the most violently negative debate performances I’ve ever seen. Everything was nasty and trying to divide. All the **** he did was lie, scream over the opponent, try and whip up people against migrants, trans people and people who claim welfare and repeat slogans over and over. Everything he did came from a place of nastiness and division. There was nothing positive about the future, it was relentless pessimism about “surrendering to the opposition”.

And the constant blaming of immigrants and people who claim welfare for all the 14 years of suffering his party put the country though.

Christ, Sunak is a nasty man

How is this legal?

Christ, that poor person with the crutches who had to sell his cutlery to by medicine in Britain in the 2020s. Heartbreaking.

£1.4bn literally destroyed. This is “the party of fiscal responsibility” ladies and gentlemen. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cll476qzm85o

I think you’re assuming all facsism = Naziism here. It’s not some kind of Aryan fantasy, but it’s certainly whipping people up into the belief in one very specific form of “Britishness” is better than other people and other people are over a lower standing and he’s happy to divide the nation into smaller and smaller groups and promise the world with impossible and made up economic promises and relying on conspiracy theories about “global elites” on climate change or Covid until he achieves that. And he’s using the broken economy as a vacuum to build up from this. Just look at the kinds of candidates Reform UK have and how many of them have actual links to British nationalist and British fascist parties.

And then he’ll be able to whip people up by saying “the establishment are out to get him” as he has successfully done for about 15 years.

He did it as an MEP for years. I think he’ll love be an opposition MP in a small party where he can turn up to PMQs every week and make a loud noise but has zero actual governing responsibility tbh. You think other populists like Nadine Dorris, Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg actually care about their local communities and don’t already just delegate all the day to day MP stuff? It’s easy if you’re a politics junkie to feel like it’s so obvious he’s just peddling a bunch of easy answers, but the truth I think you’d be surprised about just how high a proportion of the electorate don’t understand what an MP actually does, they don’t understand basic economics or even what things like inflation is or what taxes actually pay for or the difference between the public and private sector or what interest rates do, nor understand what organisations like the EU, NATO, the Bank of England, the IFS, the UN etc. actually are or do. Things like “it’s the foreigners fault the NHS is on its knees” cut through because they’re extremely simple concepts to understand than “the IFS have said we’re going to have to pay more tax to fix the NHS”. I think people who say “he’s just a niche grifter” severely underestimate the power over a large proportion of the electorate he has and the huge difference he’s already made from the sidelines. And also severely overestimate how much the general public is actually interested in/understands politics.

I will hazard a guess that the number of people who liked Boris solely because of green policies is close to zero though.

Haha, wtf? Sorry that’s enough internet for today.