General News Thread

[Super_horns]

Trump going to war on the BBC apparently.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/11/07/donald-trump-attacks-bbc-bias-jan-6-speech/

[South Shire Fox]

 

[Trav Le Bleu]

What's the point of having a budget day when everyone knows what's going to be announced anyway?

 

They mentioned this on HIGNFY tonight and they're right, it's just so dumb. 

 

Weird in a society that's become so uptight about spoilers.

[Trav Le Bleu]

57 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Trump going to war on the BBC apparently.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/11/07/donald-trump-attacks-bbc-bias-jan-6-speech/

Fortunately, he's really good at ending wars, so it'll be ok.

[Jon the Hat]

4 hours ago, South Shire Fox said:

 

That’s a very low limit.  Hitting the middle earners again.

[CornwallFox]

5 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

What's the point of having a budget day when everyone knows what's going to be announced anyway?

 

They mentioned this on HIGNFY tonight and they're right, it's just so dumb. 

 

Weird in a society that's become so uptight about spoilers.

Pretty much non of the ideas in the media before the last one made it into the real budget so I take it all with a pinch of salt until the day arrives. 

[leicsmac]

6 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Trump going to war on the BBC apparently.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/11/07/donald-trump-attacks-bbc-bias-jan-6-speech/

"Fascist enabler in being mad at someone showing who he really is" shocker.

 

Additionally, there's something about the nudge-nudge-wink-wink, "oh, we don't like him that much but he has some good ideas..." subtle endorsement of Trump by the Telegraph that really is annoying. 

 

Just say, plainly, that you like what he's doing and you want to see it happen, consequences and all, guys. Can't stand the sneaky disingenuous support of horrible stuff like that. See a fair bit of it in other places, too. 

[Md9]

7 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Trump going to war on the BBC apparently.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/11/07/donald-trump-attacks-bbc-bias-jan-6-speech/

It’s always fake news with him unless it’s something he likes then it’s the best news in the world . Everything other than Fox News is fake news to him 

[Super_horns]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

"Fascist enabler in being mad at someone showing who he really is" shocker.

 

Additionally, there's something about the nudge-nudge-wink-wink, "oh, we don't like him that much but he has some good ideas..." subtle endorsement of Trump by the Telegraph that really is annoying. 

 

Just say, plainly, that you like what he's doing and you want to see it happen, consequences and all, guys. Can't stand the sneaky disingenuous support of horrible stuff like that. See a fair bit of it in other places, too. 

The Telegraph hate the BBC too so will do anything to put it down .

[leicsmac]

25 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

The Telegraph hate the BBC too so will do anything to put it down .

That's true. 

 

This isn't the first time they've done this sneaky positive framing with Trump, though. 

[leicsmac]

Looking at the recent Tesla activity, Elon Musk becomes more like Ted Faro every day.

 

Just a good job tech hasn't advanced to the degree in our universe that it had in the Horizon universe before Faro got hold of it.

[davieG]

Are you watching USA? (hopefully this is not fake)

 

Mr Commonsense ·

Follow

 

In 1901, Dr. Allan Warner of Leicester Isolation Hospital took a photograph that would change how the world saw disease.

It showed two 13-year-old boys — both infected with smallpox on the very same day.

At first glance, they looked alike: young, pale, frightened.

But the course of their illness told two entirely different stories.

One boy had been vaccinated as an infant.

The other had not.

The difference is brutal and unmistakable.

The unvaccinated child’s body is covered in swollen, pus-filled lesions.

The vaccinated child shows only a few faint spots — mild, quickly healed, almost serene by comparison.

Dr. Warner published the image in The Atlas of Clinical Medicine, Surgery, and Pathology and used it to teach doctors and the public what science had already proven:

Vaccination didn’t just lessen illness — it spared lives.

That single photograph became one of medicine’s earliest visual arguments for prevention over fear.

It captured, in two faces, the cost of doubt and the power of protection.

And more than a century later, its message hasn’t aged a day:

Vaccines don’t just change statistics — they change fates.

[leicsmac]

18 minutes ago, davieG said:

Are you watching USA? (hopefully this is not fake)

 

Mr Commonsense ·

Follow

 

In 1901, Dr. Allan Warner of Leicester Isolation Hospital took a photograph that would change how the world saw disease.

It showed two 13-year-old boys — both infected with smallpox on the very same day.

At first glance, they looked alike: young, pale, frightened.

But the course of their illness told two entirely different stories.

One boy had been vaccinated as an infant.

The other had not.

The difference is brutal and unmistakable.

The unvaccinated child’s body is covered in swollen, pus-filled lesions.

The vaccinated child shows only a few faint spots — mild, quickly healed, almost serene by comparison.

Dr. Warner published the image in The Atlas of Clinical Medicine, Surgery, and Pathology and used it to teach doctors and the public what science had already proven:

Vaccination didn’t just lessen illness — it spared lives.

That single photograph became one of medicine’s earliest visual arguments for prevention over fear.

It captured, in two faces, the cost of doubt and the power of protection.

And more than a century later, its message hasn’t aged a day:

Vaccines don’t just change statistics — they change fates.

It doesn't matter if this one story is fake or not IMO - what smallpox did to a lot of people is a matter of record. 

 

It is one of the greatest achievements of humanity that smallpox became the first disease we were able to actually and fully eliminate from the biosphere.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzek4rl8lo

 

Donald Trump has said the US will not attend the G20 summit in South Africa over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in the country.

The US president said it was a "total disgrace" that South Africa is hosting the meeting, where leaders from the world's largest economies will gather in Johannesburg later this month.

South Africa's foreign ministry described the decision by the White House as "regrettable".

 

Two observations; firstly it's darkly remarkable just how bare-faced the lies can be without seemingly much challenge at all, and secondly it is the height of hypocrisy for this US administration to lecture anyone on ethical human rights records.

 

So...lying hypocrites, pretty much par for the course then.

[nnfox]

13 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

Pretty much non of the ideas in the media before the last one made it into the real budget so I take it all with a pinch of salt until the day arrives. 

They always leak ideas to see the reaction.

 

Remember, the number one priority for government is to stay in power.  Popularity is more important than doing the right thing.

[CornwallFox]

1 hour ago, nnfox said:

They always leak ideas to see the reaction.

 

Remember, the number one priority for government is to stay in power.  Popularity is more important than doing the right thing.

I'm not sure you need to leak to know an income tax rise is going to be unpopular. They have all sorts of focus groups, surveys etc. I think it's just papers selling papers tbh but you might be right.

[Trav Le Bleu]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Two observations; firstly it's darkly remarkable just how bare-faced the lies can be without seemingly much challenge at all, and secondly it is the height of hypocrisy for this US administration to lecture anyone on ethical human rights records

 

[leicsmac]

5 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

 

Bad taste pun certainly not intended there, mon ami. 

 

It does however seem that on this particular aspect of foreign policy, the current US President takes the name of his official residence very seriously indeed. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

I think those rumoured tax rises would kill Labour off as an electable party indefinitely. It reminds me of that head of steam that the Lib Dems built up but then chucked it away when they bent the knee in the Coalition and raised tuition fees.

[Super_horns]

57 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

I think those rumoured tax rises would kill Labour off as an electable party indefinitely. It reminds me of that head of steam that the Lib Dems built up but then chucked it away when they bent the knee in the Coalition and raised tuition fees.

Know some who are accountants and said they should have raised taxes at the start instead of targeting vulnerable and elderly people but too late now I guess ?

[ClaphamFox]

1 hour ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

I think those rumoured tax rises would kill Labour off as an electable party indefinitely. It reminds me of that head of steam that the Lib Dems built up but then chucked it away when they bent the knee in the Coalition and raised tuition fees.

The next general election doesn’t have to be held until August 2029. Provided it is willing to take a hammering in the local elections, Labour might calculate that it can afford to take some unpopular measures now and still have enough time to claw back support over the next three-and-half years or so. 

[leicsmac]

15 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

The next general election doesn’t have to be held until August 2029. Provided it is willing to take a hammering in the local elections, Labour might calculate that it can afford to take some unpopular measures now and still have enough time to claw back support over the next three-and-half years or so. 

And as recent events have shown, three and a half years (or a little more) can be a rather long time in world events. 

 

People want tomorrow to be just like today (either for the reason of specific change or no change at all), and so they assume it will be. You'd think folks would have learned from 2020.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

17 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

The next general election doesn’t have to be held until August 2029. Provided it is willing to take a hammering in the local elections, Labour might calculate that it can afford to take some unpopular measures now and still have enough time to claw back support over the next three-and-half years or so. 

Tanking your support and then trying to get it back is an interesting strategy to say the least.

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Tanking your support and then trying to get it back is an interesting strategy to say the least.

Not a great one, that's true. 

 

Possibly why we've seen the ascendancy of populist governments who talk a good game but actually end up causing a greater deal of harm in the end in recent times. People don't like bitter news, even when it's real. 

 

Fact is, any government in charge of the UK now is going to have a difficult time. Likely, any government over the next few decades is going to have it even harder. 

[ClaphamFox]

6 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Tanking your support and then trying to get it back is an interesting strategy to say the least.

And one commonly deployed by governments early in the electoral cycle.