Rayvin

If there's no one to vote for who represents what you want, why vote? Chicken and egg I suppose. Additionally, insufficient work is done to prepare young people for the realities of adult life, so they only start taking politics seriously once they've realised how fucked they are. Either way though, I remember Brexit enough to blame older people for a lot of the shit we're in, my own grandparents included. I think there'd be more sympathy with the nuance if the same was applied the other way around - instead we have had to endure decades of being called feckless and worthless. It sucks, but I honestly have more anger for the boomers than I do for any other grouping of society. That's not personal btw, and I would never apply it indiscriminately, but as a group - the numbers over time justify the view. A generation who don't know how good they had it compared to those that came after, and then preached to the rest of us about how hopeless we all were that we couldn't achieve the same things they did. Again, I know that's not you.

It sounds as if he doesn't intend to spearhead it and that it's the brainchild of several other MPs as much as him. The left wing Reform, I suppose.

And in news which I guarantee is going to annoy absolutely everyone... Corbyn is exploring setting up a new left wing party. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/03/jeremy-corbyn-hints-at-launch-of-new-party-as-leftwing-alternative-to-labour

Young people don't vote because they're disillusioned with democracy and don't believe any of the options will do anything to improve their lives. This is because the options cater to older people rather than the young. Vicious circle. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/11/younger-people-more-relaxed-alternatives-democracy-survey

That was Thatcher - carried out in tandem with Reagan. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

When I'm 75 I'll just be asking a younger person who they would want me to vote for and go with that.

One thing I've been reflecting on lately with respect of this argument over immigration, especially if it's coming up with family members - you don't need to 'win' that one because Labour have gone all in on it anyway. They've already halved incoming numbers and they're planning to get it down to about 200k, which would be a staggering achievement on that metric. Under the Tories we were at 900k net a year, it's now 400k. It's not going to improve anything, but it's one less thing we can blame - eventually maybe we'll be able to actually address a lot of this. I saw a good article the other day from 3 years ago, basically saying that sorting the housing crisis would alleviate so much of the pain atm: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/17/the-big-idea-could-fixing-housing-fix-everything-else-too?CMP=share_btn_url

I understand TPs point but I have some of those vox pops from Brexit etched into my brain. "What if its harder for your children in their future?" "Dont care, sovereignty!" "What if your son loses his job" "Dont care, sovereignty!!!!" It makes it intensely difficult to view it as just something the government and corporations did. The government and corporations didn't want Brexit.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/money/pensions-and-retirement/scrap-triple-lock-pension-avoid-retirement-age-3782377?srsltid=AfmBOorlAA9z_DajefmuN3ocDjT-wcxP30L8_30fCrIphguGuf_RN2An IFS has come out and said we need to scrap the triple lock or raise retirement to 74. This is due to the lock costing an extra £40bn by 2050, due to an ageing population. They won't get rid of it now though because #boomerlivesmatter As I said before, Gen Z and Alpha will literally be tearing the country apart when they realise the degree to which they've been fucked over. Tbh I might be too at that point. As it's happening, I will ponder whimsically on how the markets might be reacting.

Gen Z is anyone from late 90s to around 2010, from memory - so we're just about to start seeing the Alphas hit adulthood in the coming few years. Z followed Millennials. And I have no idea man, I suspect the media just throw shit around until something sticks and we all run with it.

Generation Alpha is the latest one to be defined after Z I feel bad for the ones who grow up as Gen Beta.

It does have to be a gradual, incremental move. They could start by talking about it - might bring a few more people on board with these cuts, at least from the left. See the thing is, I look at this and think "well, if the situation in the country was really that dire, they'd be telling the truth about it. They'd be acknowledging why we are where we are, and how urgently we need to rectify that". They're not doing that though, so I assume none of them are serious people and this is all just posturing to show they're tough on the economy.

I mean this in the nicest possible way - I don't give a flying fuck about the markets. If they can survive chaos like Trump, they can survive pretty much anything. Beyond that, whether the others have a plan or not, they're under no obligation to give any pointers to the government. Labour took the same stance when the Tories were in charge, they said absolutely fuck all about what they would do. But I do have something for you anyway, as it goes - rejoin the EU. That's what I'd be yelling for. £36bn a year out of the public purse... That wealth tax is coming by the way, Gen Z and Alpha are going to eat people alive at this rate. Unsure how the markets would react to several generations worth of desperate, frustrated rage - but we'll see.

It very much sounds like she might done. Politically, I won't miss her - but saying that I assume everything she's done has been with his full blessing, so I'm not sure what the issue would be here.

I am the literal opposite of you. I have to set alarms to remind me to take in water because if I don't I'll go through the entire day on one or two cups of tea.

Apologies if people aren't ready to move on with this yet but I find this too interesting not to raise it and I'll forget if I wait a day. https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52431-how-would-britain-vote-a-year-since-the-2024-election This poll is really interesting to me - Labour is down 7% to Reform, but down 18% to LD and Greens combined. So again, why are we pandering to that 7%... Reform are clearly eating the Tories, not Labour.

Can absolutely see why it scarred Israeli people. Can absolutely see how it stoked hatred. It's a perpetual cycle of violence in which both sides have hurt each other enough now that they feel that anything they do in reply is justified.

I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to trace it all. They've got an AI doing it apparently - but yeah maybe you're right. Not sure it's worth the risk though. I keep thinking that some of my clients are US based and if I end up in a position where im banned from going out to them its a really awkward conversation to have.

I still think we should be careful talking about this at all atm. The US is genuinely banning people from entry for the smallest things now and a lot of those things involve criticising Israel. Who knows when that might affect you over the next 4 years. And thats before we get into the nonsense of the UK government trumping up terrorism charges for acts of sabotage. Supporting that group will soon be condoning terrorism, which will also be illegal. I dont think we are free to talk about this to the degree we should be.

Agreed about Starmer tbf but we could stop supplying arms. Instead we're branding the people trying to prevent planes going over there as terrorists. I don't think any sort of genuine de-escalation is even possible anymore tbh, the hatred will span generations. Maybe if Netanyahu answered for war crimes but I don't think he values the peace and safety of his own people enough for that.

It will be whatever the government decides it is in the end. I'm wondering if they might be about to use this to make a show of going after left leaning people and putting them in prison same as they did for the hotel burning fiasco.

I get that for sure. I would throw into the mix as well though that the UK supports Israel whereas it doesn't support Russia - so there's a domestic angle to it there. There's not much more anyone can do than what we're doing with the Ukraine, the government supports them and is assisting them - Russia doesn't give a shit if we protest them but Israel does actually on some level respond to international pressure. So arguably people's energy is actually better spent on Gaza than it is on Ukraine. I think if people's feeds were full of dead and dying Ukrainian children it'd be different though, tbh.

I think a lot of what people struggle with is that they're seeing images of children being shot dead coming from Israel's situation. I've not seen anything like that from Ukraine for a long time. I know a girl living out in Ukraine atm and life sounds horrendous but at the same time they're just about hanging on. I send her some money each month to try to help, my own personal attempt to alleviate just a little of the agony. I don't do that with anyone in Gaza as I don't know anyone personally, so I would contend that I'm more invested in that conflict than this one. For what it's worth, I see Russia as a greater issue than Israel. But Gloom, for real man, idk if you see the videos that do the rounds coming out of Gaza... they're all over reddit, and they are beyond harrowing, sometimes involving IDF servicemen calling for all Palestinians to be murdered like animals etc. Maybe the Palestinians are just better at social media, maybe the videos are faked, dunno. But that's the context for a lot of this.

Why on earth did a Japanese flag cause offence...

Yep that does seem to be a part of it. But still though, it's an Islamic theocracy that supports trans existence on some level It's just wild to me. Maybe we really should regime change them tbh, their government is an anachronism relative to their people.