Sampson

I think that’s why Starmer has been avoiding the EU issue in this election although I expect he’ll make long term EU residents of the UK eligible to vote in future elections and referendums. In 12 months after things don’t improve, Starmer will start angling towards rejoining the EU in the 2029 election as that’s now the overwhelmingly popular opinion in polls. It’s also a concrete thing to pin future improvements on now everyone knows Brexit has been a failure

Yeah but it’s obvious from your posts you’re a die hard Tory or if not, even think they aren’t right wing enough, so of course you are pashing the “don’t vote” “they’re all the same” “everyone is too apathetic to vote” narrative.

Anyone who doesn’t vote Labour in England votes Tory by default though, you’re voting Tory by not voting Labour unless you’re in a constituency where someone else has a chance. Rightly or wrongly there is only one choice to force them out

Time to get rid of the nasty party for a generation.

Side point just for clarification, but my very uneducated understanding is our best but still well incomplete understanding of the universe in a that it is just random dice rolls of different probability at the quantum level and therefore the universe would be neither deterministic nor would we have libertarian free will (happy to be put right here as I’m no expert). As you say, my belief is that we are all just bags of meat and our brains just fire off neurons based on random rolls of dice of different probability based our dna (which itself came to be through an absurd number of dice rolls over billions of years) and our outside environment (which itself also came to be through an absurd number of dice rolls over billions of years). If you could turn back time 5 seconds to before you made a decision whether or not that decision could be made differently is one question but whether the human brain could somehow override its biology to *cause* that decision to be different and it’s not just a weighted dice of probability being rolled on how the quarks which make up your brain matter spin (and ultimately how the neurons in our brain fire) and therefore just being a different random occurrence is another.

Of course I understand that viewpoint from an emotional point of view but it implies humans have libertarian free will which I don’t believe they do. There are genuine cases where previously everyday people have committed heinous crimes that seemed to come from nowhere; then after they died they were found to have had brain tumours which pressed against their full frontal cortex and inhibited the chemical links to the emotional control part of their brain. I’m not sure how you can really account for that as I’m not convinced letting people like this rot in prison is a sign of a healthy modern society but maybe it’s collateral damage you just have to accept even if it’s an uncomfortable reality. Of course we should protect people in society from those who commit heinous crimes and prison seems to work better than other systems we e tried but it’s still far from perfect and how and what happens to them should be guided by our growing understanding of how the human brain works but it’s one of those things its impossible for politicians to actually discuss because it’s such an emotionally charged topic. I’m not advocating for change and certainly not advocating for Pitchfork’s release, but I am interested in general scientific-led discussions in this area because it’s been decades since they’ve been genuinely had in the public sphere and our understanding of the human brain has grown so much since then.

I’m conflicted. I’m still not convinced prison sentences in general aren’t barbaric and locking someone in a small area for the rest of their life just feels morally wrong regardless of what they’ve done and feels like a 19th century solution which feels archaic in the 21st century. I’m not sure if there are genuine alternatives though that aren’t even worse (like lobotomies and other immoral stuff they tried as alternatives to prison in the past). Feel like we haven’t really had any genuine public debate on the prison system since like the 1970s, so I’m genuinely interested in what alternatives people can offer in the 2020s, not advocating for anything, just genuinely interested at where the debate is.

Can we just give the chimpanzees a go at running Earth instead? Humans have clearly ****ed it.

Here’s an idea - the world’s biggest trading block is right on our doorstep and countries historically get a huge boost of up to 20% to their economy for the first few years. How about we try and join it?

Only feels like yesterday people were still talking about “the long peace” and “the end of history”. Feels like all that is the fantasy world of the 90s and 00s now.

I would like to agree with you, but it’s been working for about 10 years now. I don’t have faith that a large proportion of the population won’t still fall for it. I did laugh at his “the next 5 years will more dangerous than the last 30” though. Yeah, who do you think has been in government for the past 14 years sowing division anywhere they can to cause that?

Theresa May is not a centrist. She oversaw the deportation of people from green rush, she revoked the citizenship of people who’d lived in uk their whole life. Was a part of the home office that started the immigrant-scapegoating the Tories do now. She led the path towards hard Brexit when its been awful for the country and it still wasn’t enough for some Tories. We shouldn’t forget all that. I’m not a Corbynite but I’d be very disappointed if someone like May was allowed in the Labour Party

It’s not that. It was a Ukrainian girl and there were AI videos of her on channels of 300,000 subscribers making out her to say pro-Russia and China stuff she doesn’t believe in a language she doesn’t speak. It’s frightening stuff. here’s the article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c25rre8ww57o.amp

Just seen that article myself. What a scary ****ing world we live in when people can make up fake stuff you said

Rumours of a big defection from Tories to Labour today or tomorrow. Some even suggesting it’s an ex-PM though that seems a bit far fetched.

Yeah who scored just rates players each match based on its statistical rating system and then there’s the best average rating over the season. It is of course subjective what is important to a performance though and so inherently favours certain attributes (dribbling stats are notoriously given a lot of weight for example).

We’re still physically in Europe even if we’re not in the EU, we didn’t lift the anchor off our country and row it to Asia.

Yeah exactly. The jury vote saved Eurovision’s skin. Can you imagine how many countries would boycott next year had Israel won?

Posts like this can get in the bin tbf. Allowing Isreal to perform is no less political than not allowing them to perform. Voting to piss protesters off is no less political than those protesting. Not claiming anyone should do one thing or the other, that’s individual opinion, but you should have the self awareness to know you’re being just as “all political” by wanting the status quo or “business as usual” in your post as those you’re decrying.

Sounds like they’re out all together to me and they’ll be no recording

It just looks like clouds unless you’re in the arctic north but shows up on your phone camera in a way it doesnt to the naked eye. I’m sure it’s genuinely impressive if you see the real thing but the couple of times I’ve seen it I can barely make it out until I point my phone camera at it

I don’t think it’s happening anytime soon but I could easily see it in reality in 15-20 years time. The nation state as a concept is on pretty limited legs imo and dunno if it’ll see out this century. Easy to see sport being completely supranational by the 2nd half of the century

Cameron sold the country out for a minor in-party dispute because he’d got cocky after the Scotland and AV referendums. Watch the Cameron Years documentary on BBC - Clegg and Osborne both tried to talk him out of it but Cameron stubbornly went along with it anyway. It was his choice and he caused the country’s biggest self-inflicted geo-political shitshow since at least the Suez Crisis if not before. No way he should be considered one of the “better” PMs of this generation of Tory rule. He absolutely belongs alongside Liz Truss, Anthony Eden and Neville Chamberlain as history’s worst ever PMs.

Sincerely hope you’re wrong

Well in many ways it doesn’t make sense to release their policy plans in advance so the Tories can attack them before the election is called so I get the fence sitting to an extent. Starmer was a strong remainer and campaigned for a 2nd referendum so he’s definitely pro-EU, although he seems too scared to admit it now he’ll almost certainly try and steer the uk back to the eu. Even if it’s just to allow long term residents who are EU citizens the vote in general elections and referendums the same way commonwealth citizens who are long-term residents have, that’s one thing I think most people expect to be on the Labour manifesto. Most non-British citizens who have the vote overwhelmingly vote Labour so it also could help keep them in power for a generation if they suddenly have potentially millions of extra voters who overwhelmingly vote Labour. I expect it makes a future referendum on rejoining the eu/single market in 2029 election a long term strategy I also don’t find him an inspiring pick but this is the most right wing government probably any of us have even had in our lifetimes even over Thatcher and it’s clearly got the point where most of the country want to kick it to the curb.