Rayvin

That was a fun watch tbh, the Leeds crowd seem alright to me

As bad as we've been, if we had not thrown points away against Norwich, Palace, Watford and maybe even Brentford, we'd have 23 points and be 15th. The ability to get out of this is there if we can just get some solidity.

On the contrary, I appreciate the effort. Thanks!

Just what we needed, thank fuck.

Thanks for this, will give it a look. Rough time for the market atm so I hope he planned for that. It's cool though, fair play to him.

I quite miss HF but I doubt we'll ever see him again on here now. Hope he's safe and well.

Apologies for ignorance, what does that mean in layman terms? Sorry, to clarify further - I assume we're talking about taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, but how? And what about the project is a trial? Cost or effectiveness?

Aye, if it's any consolation to idk, anyone on the 'right wing' side of the argument who lurks in here - I got shot down plenty for being on the left of the same group and am now universally recognised as the forum communist despite being fairly pro-capitalist Have had some good debates on here though which is why I enjoy it. Plenty of times I've learned something here and had the opportunity to adjust my view.

I don't understand this from the Tories at all. They must know by now that Johnson is a total liability, surely this is the perfect moment to bin him. The fact that the aren't doing that can only possibly mean that they're entirely devoid of any wider ideas, strategy, or vision. What is it about him that inspires so much loyalty?

Truthfully I read the Guardian mostly because it has the least offensive website of all the non-paywalled media sites. The independent is just ghastly to open up. I do have an FT subscription though so I suppose I could read more of that.

In fairness, the same site has the Telegraph as mixed too, so maybe they just have very high standards? If the Telegraph is on the same level then I think I can support the idea. It is definitely selective at times, and the notion here seems to be that not covering things counts in their assessment too.

Hard disagree on the Guardian being as bad as the Mail. The Guardian's nonsense all comes through their editorials and they are poor there, I agree, but the day to day factual reporting looks solid to me. Dorries literally said what the Guardian reported. Your article is 10 hours old so clearly there's been a change in the narrative since the one I posted. I note the FT also posted that she suggested abolishing it a few days earlier, so really the distinction here is that the Guardian has taken her words as agreed cabinet policy (which I also did on reading it) and No. 10 has then dialled it back. Can't believe I've just defended the Guardian but to compare it to the Mail is just not reasonable. It's more akin to the Telegraph. The Left wing equivalent to the Mail would be Buzzfeed or some student union newspapers. As for the political point about sticking to parties - I mean I agree, I fully intended to vote Green in this election due to their EU stance. But in the end, if we get into a situation where Labour is going to protect the BBC and the Tories are going to kill it, that's another manifesto issue that I have strong feelings on, and is likely sufficient for me to back Labour. That said, the decision for me is more around editorial control. I don't watch terrestrial TV, I only use subscription services like Netflix and Prime, so I haven't paid for a license in years. Thus, maybe it's not my place to even get involved in this one..! I don't care so much about the license fee as I do about the BBC becoming a vehicle for Murdoch style "reporting".

Fair enough but the Guardian seems to think they've said they'll abolish it? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jan/16/bbc-licence-fee-to-be-abolished-in-2027-and-funding-frozen

Ugh. Well that's done it then, I was still on the fence for Labour due to all the Brexit shit but the BBC (for all it's fucking uselessness in general) is too important to let the Tories kill it. So I'll be voting Labour, not because of Starmer, not because of any Labour policies, but because of a Tory one.

I've only just noticed that the BBC is going to be without public money from 2027. How is that not causing more of a stir? Or did it cause one and I just missed it? That is surely the battleground the Tories are going to fight the next GE on. "Vote for us and finally defeat the dreaded BBC and all of its experts, deal a killer blow to woke liberal elites, etc" Full culture war shit.

It's an interesting idea, and I can see some of the benefits. I don't have a better one in this particular area (rents and so on). You mentioned believing in the NHS also. I suspect in the US you'd be considered a socialist. I think we could probably agree that, where people have no options or choices for moving forward, they should be helped. The problem is understanding when that is true, and when people are just not taking the decisions needed to move forward as an individual. And I think again, most people here would agree that if someone is capable of moving forward on their own, it is actually better for them to do this than for society to try and enable them not doing so. So the issue in which we disagree I suppose is where the line is. And I don't pretend I know the answer to that tbh, but I do genuinely believe that austerity took us a long way in the opposite direction, and that people died as a consequence. I would rather err on the side of caution. That said, I don't want to enable people to 'fail' to live productive lives either. It's a difficult one to call, but surely we can do better than this. Giving people a sense of progress, a sense of their ability to move forward, is key. But social mobility is incredibly low at the moment, and I would very much like to see that change.

I do in many ways agree. For instance, I have a friend of mine who, as a consequence of certain unfortunate circumstances in his life, is in need of therapy. He doesn't see it, or doesnt' want to get it, but it would help him enormously, I believe. I have suggested it, and he has refused. My role in that process ends there - I can't push him, I can't take him any further forward on dealing with his pain, he has to do that himself. He has an individual responsibility to take ownership for his situation and to start working through it (whether the solution is therapy or not). So yes, things are indeed ultimately down to the individual as far as their personal life circumstances go. However, that way of thinking can be extended too far. If an individual has no prospect or possibility of success, because no one is giving them a path to do so, then that person, whether they are individually driven to or not, cannot move forward. They are a prisoner of circumstance. Or maybe they've temporarily lost their way and are in freefall. They need a safety net to catch them and to compassionately support them in standing up again. Why would we not want those things. That's all, I believe, any of us are advocating for.

See, the way you're talking there makes it sound like you think I'm a child that doesn't understand what life is about. I am fully fucking aware what the deal with life is. The only possible meaning I have been able to discern for 'life' is that the journey/suffering is the entire point of it. I don't believe it's 'to love', I don't believe it's 'to be happy' - it's the fucking grind or it's nothing at all. I'm not looking for the government to take pity on me. I don't need it to. I'm trying to express my compassion and empathy for others, so that I can be part of a society that 'takes pity' on those who are struggling, which supports and helps them. I am trying to be part of a system that is less brutal and depressing than the one we live in. We don't need to make life worse than it already is by electing useless fucking governments that actively make things more difficult.

Not sure anyone would disagree with this, but we need to enable people to give their best. At the moment, our 'best' tends to come from very well off circles who get in by default, and some particularly exceptional/lucky middle class ranked people. And a very, very few exceptional AND lucky lower-middle/working class groups. That's not the best we have to offer, it's just a combination of the ones who get all the opportunities by virtue of social status, and a few really exceptional people. I'd rather we were filtering out the trash from the upper echelons who aren't there for any merit and replacing them with far more capable, harder working people from further down the chain. Then we might be closer to 'giving our best'. Do you think Boris Johnson remotely represents 'our best'? Or Cameron. Or the Queen and her offspring? Why are these people dominating our society? It's not meritocracy, that's for fucking sure.

Yes but then large, widespread changes get made to the country that fuck over your plans and family, and at that point your realise that "just be happy and focus on yourself" is all well and good when the shit that's being done isn't touching you, but it's a rather different story when you are one of the people being fucked over. Now, that wasn't news to me tbh which is why I've had the views I've had over the course of my life - but Brexit did rather reinforce the point of what you get if you let complete fucking idiots built careers on packs of lies without calling it out. If we just look the other way, we get fucked. We have a patriotic duty to look dead at them, as often as we can. We need to have institutions which scrutinise them, and we need to hold up those institutions and support them. It is a civic duty to remain informed.

From where I'm standing, it looks very much like you're saying that the truth is doomed. I'll say again, not all opinions are equal. Not all ways of thinking are equal. There is a choice between getting as close as you can to the most honest interpretation of the truth, and there's deliberately avoiding inconvenient facts in order to preserve a worldview that you feel is now part of your identity. The latter can never, should never, be treated equally to the former. He's all doom and gloom because he's looking at the fucking truth. It's not even a Brexit rant this one, it's a statement about the utter ridiculousness of the Johnson/Cummings circus. None of which is wrong. It is shameful, beyond shameful in fact, that the UK has been reduced to these weasels.

There is not a single word of that which any honest person could disagree with. Not a single damn word.

Fair enough, I'll back out of this one.

I just can't bring myself to get excited about him leaving. He's a cretin of the highest order but ffs, what replaces him is going to be it's own shade of shit too. I bet he can't wait to get out of there anyway. Crocodile tears.

So the red wall masterstroke here will really pay off. They've gotten Brexit through in the hardest iteration possible, something no Labour government would have ever given them - and then spurned the party that delivered it as soon as it was done, to go back to Labour once more. It's impressive, they've outplayed us all, whether wittingly or not.