General News Thread

[st albans fox]

3 hours ago, Free Falling Foxes said:

Negotiating with itself?

 

Is this proof positive Trump really is a w4nker?

So we believe the Iranian regime ???

both sides are likely telling untruths. 

[st albans fox]

Listening to Starmer saying that he can’t change policy on North Sea drilling because it’s the responsibility of the energy secretary is confusing me.  surely the policy of the govt is a decision of the cabinet rather than just the minister ??

on that basis the defence secretary could take us into war ???

 

[MPH]

48 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

So we believe the Iranian regime ???

both sides are likely telling untruths. 

 

it’s actually very possible that the American/ Israeli assault has been so intense that the Iranian regime is so fractured that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is saying/doing.. or at least two rival entities are emerging and Trump is negotiating with the one he wants to succeed 

[CornwallFox]

4 hours ago, st albans fox said:

Listening to Starmer saying that he can’t change policy on North Sea drilling because it’s the responsibility of the energy secretary is confusing me.  surely the policy of the govt is a decision of the cabinet rather than just the minister ??

on that basis the defence secretary could take us into war ???

 

He shouldn't change policy. 

We don't have a nationalised gas or oil industry. 

The only way they come out of the ground is by us selling licenses to international companies. They sell the oil on the international markets. If we try to limit that they simply won't buy licences. 

All the easy wins from the north sea are gone also, What's left is harder and more expensive to extract.

Renewables are up to 9x cheaper to produce. 

What they should be doing is ensuring that renewable energy is sold at an appropriate price, rather than being tied to much higher gas prices. The problem is a privatised industry guaranteed charging based on gas price. 

 

Edited 25 March by CornwallFox

[Zear0]

53 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Listening to Starmer saying that he can’t change policy on North Sea drilling because it’s the responsibility of the energy secretary is confusing me.  surely the policy of the govt is a decision of the cabinet rather than just the minister ??

on that basis the defence secretary could take us into war ???

 

Mixing your drinks here a bit.

 

Energy Secretary is legally responsible for issuing of licenses as it's a legal matter.

Taking the country to war is a matter for parliament.

[CornwallFox]

Prepare yourself for Easter

 

 

[Free Falling Foxes]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

So we believe the Iranian regime ???

both sides are likely telling untruths. 

The first casualty of war.....

[st albans fox]

4 minutes ago, Zear0 said:

Mixing your drinks here a bit.

 

Energy Secretary is legally responsible for issuing of licenses as it's a legal matter.

Taking the country to war is a matter for parliament.

Yes I know this but looked for an easy proposition 

the point is that the energy secretary carries out the will of the government- he’s not acting in his own interests. 
starmer’s answers just stunk of hiding behind legal speak. 
 

PMQ is a waste of time now

the questions are generally poor and there are almost no answers provided 

 

 

[Bellend Sebastian]

7 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

Prepare yourself for Easter

 

 

Very good, but they need to update it with being made to buy an electric vehicle, banning log burners and those ruddy bloody flags if my Facebook feed is anything to go by

[Zear0]

9 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Yes I know this but looked for an easy proposition 

the point is that the energy secretary carries out the will of the government- he’s not acting in his own interests. 
starmer’s answers just stunk of hiding behind legal speak. 
 

PMQ is a waste of time now

the questions are generally poor and there are almost no answers provided 

 

 

Not sure applying the law is "hiding behind legal speak". 

[Clogger_]

4 minutes ago, Zear0 said:

Not sure applying the law is "hiding behind legal speak". 

Don't care anyway, we should be running a million miles away from using fossil fuels

[Clogger_]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

So we believe the Iranian regime ???

both sides are likely telling untruths. 

Nobody trusts the Iranian regime I'm sure, but it'd be nice to at least have a slither of confidence in our supposed allies

 

My bet: US *are* talking to Iranians who they'd *love* to believe are speaking for the regime, as if the "regime" was a homogeneous thing...

Edited 25 March by Clogger_

[davieG]

On 24/03/2026 at 10:43, davieG said:

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

 

PMQ is a waste of time now

the questions are generally poor and there are almost no answers provided 

 

 

Like most things - the social internet has ruined its original purpose. You see MPs sitting there on their phones after they said something scrolling twitter to see if they’re trending.
 

It’s all about getting the social media 15 second “zinger” out of context clip nowadays and nothing else.

 

Still think it’s utterly absurd that smart phones are even allowed in parliament, let alone that mps are allowed to sit there looking at them.

 

 

Edited 25 March by Sampson

[Trav Le Bleu]

52 minutes ago, davieG said:

So they're Tory FC?

 

 

(Never include names, or you risk this kind of thing, i.e. morons making daft jibes.)

[Trav Le Bleu]

33 minutes ago, Sampson said:

Like most things - the social internet has ruined its original purpose. You see MPs sitting there on their phones after they said something scrolling twitter to see if they’re trending.
 

It’s all about getting the social media 15 second “zinger” out of context clip nowadays and nothing else.

 

Still think it’s utterly absurd that smart phones are even allowed in parliament, let alone that mps are allowed to sit there looking at them.

 

 

If you can't trust school children, then MPs definitely shouldn't be allowed.

[Lionator]

Bizarre that the mainstream response to the weaponisation of non renewable energy seem to be to double down on non renewable energy rather than the rather obvious alternative? 

[Md9]

5 hours ago, Sampson said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg547ljepvzo
 

You can see all the bets come in just before he makes his announcements - which you’d assume only very high ups in the government would have knowledge of his pending announcements. This war, the announcements, the chaos, the scapegoating, it’s all just a rigged gambling game where they know the outcome beforehand and it’s all just designed to make him and his mates richer while everyone else suffers the consequences. It’s what Putin does too, it’s all out in the open too, they don’t exen try and hide it.

It’s the same thing every time before he makes an announcement someone close to him always seems to get richer . He doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than himself sure the only reason he became president was to make a shit load  of money and stay out of prison which so far he has been successful not so good for the rest of us that he is going out and causing as much chaos as he can to the rest of the world 

[foxes1988]

13 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Bizarre that the mainstream response to the weaponisation of non renewable energy seem to be to double down on non renewable energy rather than the rather obvious alternative? 

If people want to advocate for more gas and oil drilling contracts to generate tax revenue and create jobs fair enough.

 

Anyone claiming drilling more north sea will bring down electricity bills I just can't take seriously. Especially if you say add stuff like 'building solar farms in an overcast country like Britain is stupid' / 'what happens when it's not windy'

Edited 25 March by foxes1988

[st albans fox]

3 hours ago, Zear0 said:

Not sure applying the law is "hiding behind legal speak". 

 

3 hours ago, Clogger_ said:

Don't care anyway, we should be running a million miles away from using fossil fuels

Which is what he was saying when answering some of her questions 

but then on others (essentially the same question), instead of owning the policy, he was saying that only the energy secretary can issue licences. (Which is the legality but it’s not the minster deciding policy on his own). it just seemed weird not to say that its  govt policy not to issue any more North Sea licences. it made it seem that Milliband was making the decisions which then allowed badenoch to ask who was running the show. 

[Parafox]

4 hours ago, Sampson said:

Like most things - the social internet has ruined its original purpose. You see MPs sitting there on their phones after they said something scrolling twitter to see if they’re trending.
 

It’s all about getting the social media 15 second “zinger” out of context clip nowadays and nothing else.

 

Still think it’s utterly absurd that smart phones are even allowed in parliament, let alone that mps are allowed to sit there looking at them.

 

 

Porn. 

[Parafox]

On 24/03/2026 at 07:50, ramboacdc said:

Abbey Street was always my go to when I worked in town 8am-10pm. £3.50 a day from memory. Lee Circle was always too expensive. If I couldnt afford Abbey Street, I parked on Tudor Road. 

 

Both however had their down sides. Someone on Tudor Road scratched their name in inch high letters on my bonnet and Abbey Street someone threw a drain cover through the back window and then kicked their way of the passenger window, stealing nothing. I remember me shouting at the ticket gate, freezing my tits off with a 16 mile drive ahead of me when NCP wouldnt let me out as I was an hour over my exit time. I apologise to that employee for the response he got....

 

 

 

Are you sending this from your car?

[leicsmac]

4 hours ago, Sampson said:

Like most things - the social internet has ruined its original purpose. You see MPs sitting there on their phones after they said something scrolling twitter to see if they’re trending.
 

It’s all about getting the social media 15 second “zinger” out of context clip nowadays and nothing else.

 

Still think it’s utterly absurd that smart phones are even allowed in parliament, let alone that mps are allowed to sit there looking at them.

 

 

Read an interesting Internet find tangential to this today:

 

Louis Theroux has made a documentary about the "manosphere" (a word I cannot even bring myself to say, it’s so ghastly) and the liberal Internet is doing that thing where it pretends to be appalled by something it's been staring at through the window for six years. "Have you *seen* what's happening to young men?" Yes. We've all seen. You can stop clutching the curtains now.

 

Almost every response to this stuff follows the same pattern, though: describe the pipeline, express horror, suggest better role models, move on, as though the problem is a staffing issue. As though Andrew Tate is simply what you get when there's a vacancy for Atticus Finch and nobody applies. Nobody seems especially curious, however, about *why the vacancy exists in the first place.*

 

So let's talk about status, which is what this is actually about (underneath several layers of protein powder and performative sunglasses.)

 

Human beings are, at a biological level, status-detecting instruments. We can't help it. You could raise a child in a perfectly egalitarian commune and by age four they'd have a ranking system for who gets the best stick. The brain runs on hierarchy the way a boiler runs on gas, not because it's noble, but because for a very long time it was the difference between eating and being eaten. We are apes with anxiety disorders, and the firmware hasn't been updated since the Pleistocene.

Now, the modern world has done something genuinely remarkable. Over about a century, we've taken a serious hammer to the more grotesque hierarchies.. rigid class, fixed roles, and the assumption that your postcode determines your ceiling. This is actual progress, the kind you'd defend with your life.

 

But in doing so, we've also removed something else: legible signals. Clear answers to the question "where do I stand?" And the brain, confronted with ambiguity, does not think "how thrilling, a pluralistic society full of nuance and possibility." The brain thinks *THREAT.* The brain would like a ranking, please, immediately, even a bad one, because a bad ranking is at least a *known position,* and a known position is a thing you can defend.

 

Enter the modern attention economy, which (in the manner of a casino handing you a free drink) is only too happy to help.

 

It doesn't invent the need but instead *industrialises* it. It takes every instinct we have about status and competence and belonging and runs them through a machine that converts them into metrics: follower counts, like-ratios, subscriber numbers. Suddenly you're not just alive.. you're being scored, silently and perpetually, by an algorithm that doesn't care whether you're thriving or drowning, only whether you're engaging.

 

And when the score is low, when you feel small inside a system that quantifies everything and values nothing, a very ancient subroutine kicks in. Not "how do I become secure?" That's slow and effortful and requires the kind of patient, unglamorous inner work that doesn't have a merch line. No, the subroutine says: "If I can't feel safe, I can at least feel *above.*"

 

There's a beautifully horrible experiment that demonstrates this, that I talked about last week. People were offered a choice. Option A: they receive £5, and a stranger also receives £5. Option B: they receive £3, and the stranger gets £1 (and presumably some billionaire somewhere pockets £6.) With B, they are *volunteering to be poorer.* It is, by any rational measure, stupid. And yet a significant number of people pick £3 every time. Not because it's more, but because it's *higher.*

 

Sit with that for a second. People will *pay real money* for relative position.

That is what the manosphere is selling. Not fitness tips and self-improvement. Not even misogyny, really  (though misogyny is certainly the medium.) What it's selling is the £3 option, the warm, electric certainty that you are *above* someone else. That there is a natural order, and you are nearer the top of it, and the reason you feel bad isn't that the world is broken, it's that you haven't yet claimed your rightful position.

 

"You're not lost. You're a king who forgot his crown." That sort of thing. Delivered by a man in a rented Lamborghini with the conviction of Moses on the mountain.

[Md9]

I’m sure the young people that voted for him are thrilled right now 

she is a horrible human as well 

[DJW1]

On 23/03/2026 at 22:50, MPH said:

 
 

there’s a lot of very intelligent people over here who are big fans of Trump - Drs and surgeons I work with in particular, I know people would love to believe his MAGA base are a bunch of  unintelligent knuckle draggers as it would make it so much easier to understand but it simply isn’t true. It sure ads to the bewilderment for me..I’m guessing the whole ‘ American first’ thing is an ideology… feels like the beginnings of  Nazi-ism or even the Boer rule and subsequent apartheid.

I always had the impression that Americans would support their President even if they hadn´t voted for him, since he was the figurehead of their country. Is that correct and, if so, has it changed in the last few years?