Rayvin

Can't speak to that first point I guess, I just don't know. If you ask Gloom, there isn't much love for the MSM on here - especially from me But that tends to be because I think they make speculative, evidence free judgements about situations. I still completely trust experts and specialists though.

Yes but that acceptance comes from evidence from specialists, not just people making uninformed, speculative guesses. If a kid does some maths equation and gets the right answer through the wrong process, they're still wrong. The process matters, evidence matters.

Not sure about that... Epstein was convicted in 2008. Pizzagate kicked off in 2016. Pizzagate believed in a hidden code in emails released by wikileaks or something. Granted, what went on with Epstein could have formed the basis for why they thought this was possible, but that doesn't mean they uncovered anything that hadn't already been known for almost a decade by that point. Unless I'm mistaken anyway.

Honestly I just saw the headline come up on my phone or something, I don't even know what it was about. If it was a pro-Palestine message then that suggests she has gone off down the hard left rabbit hole though. I mean you don't have to be hard left to support Palestine, but still.

Well that's good to hear anyway. Was a bit surprised at that one.

True - did you see Emma Watson got in trouble for being anti-semitic the other day? I didn't really look into it truth be told but it feels like it's going to be a never ending debate in many ways.

Mate, the Jews are human beings too. Some of the stuff that gets posted on here sometimes, seriously...

There is no good reason not to trust the science. That's really all it comes down to. It could be that we're wrong, but not based on any particularly strong data or information that is presently available. It's like when Quiff came out and said that the Chinese government had 100% made this in a lab - maybe it did, but he was making that claim on the basis of no evidence or factual information whatsoever. I don't know why it's so difficult to trust that people who have built their entire careers around this sort of work actually know what they're doing, but there we are.

They're just people to me, whether they're Muslims or not is irrelevant in my judgement of the situation. Having said that, I'm opposed to identity politics myself. Fair enough though, I understand your point.

I agree with that, but I still don't think he should be honoured, especially given the resentment towards him from the left and right. But I basically agree with NJS anyway. Abolish the monarchy. What I will say in defence of Thatcher, is that she was far, far, far more competent than Boris Johnson. But in terms of her view of society, I always come back to that Neoliberalism article by Monbiot. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Blair is a centrist. The left absolutely despises the guy. You can see this very readily if you spend a bit of time looking at the division in the current Labour Party.

What does them being Muslim have to do with anything? I mean I know the answer but I find it annoying. You think it's some kinda gotcha for left wingers to invoke someone who attacked Muslims in particular, because Islam is a sacred cow of the left. He wasn't a cunt for attacking them because they were Muslim, he was a cunt for attacking them because they were human beings. The left is concerned with human beings. Blair did a lot of good in this country domestically, but ruined his legacy with the war. I do think it was a war crime. I don't think he should be knighted. I do think we should abolish the monarchy. Thatcher was a weapons grade cunt. That's my view.

What I will say for Asprilla is that his views do appear to be consistent across issues. For Brexit, philosophical motives win out - i.e. we should be free to do what we please irrespective of economic (and other) factors in which we will suffer. For Covid we should be free to do what we please irrespective of the number of people who die and the extent to which the health services are overwhelmed. Freedom > everything. I can't accept any economic argument on covid though since the economy was thrown under the bus by Brexit - that position isn't consistent unless we're saying that the order of priority is freedom > economy > people's lives. If that's your position then you don't need to argue the data points specifically - you can acknowledge the scale of the deaths, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the other issues as being true, and still say that despite all of that, you prefer to have your freedom. I prize my freedom too, and am quite liberal in a number of areas as a consequence. And I'm not totally happy with the idea of vaccine passports either for what its worth - but I couldn't put my desire to be free on this single issue up against someone's very life, and look myself in the mirror in the morning. And since you're arguing the facts, I guess you can't either. So - do you need your interpretation of the facts to be right in order to continue to have your freedom as paramount, and is that what is motivating you to find arguments that suit your preferred outcome? Or would freedom win out either way, and the rest is something of a PR exercise because you know how that would look? For whatever it's worth, I'd respect the latter more than the former. I wouldn't agree, at all, but I think reaching a really honest place with our views is very important for society these days. I may be alone in this though.

Yeah fair, I didn't so much mean to suggest he caused it so much as he was a quite high profile case of someone saying it quite bluntly. You're right though, climate science denial was an early example of this sort of rhetoric.

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular but I feel moved to say it. I think it's difficult to have civil discourse these days because the frames of reference for factual information aren't aligned anymore. These days your average guy in the street thinks that his opinion carries as much weight as someone who has researched and specialised in a particular area for many years of their life - we've talked about this before, it comes from the Michael Gove style trashing of experts that was key to getting things like Brexit/Trump over the line. If people don't like facts based on evidence, give them "alternative facts". This notion we've somehow arrived at that all that's in the mix are a series of equally valid opinions is just a nonsense. It's not true. My personal opinion on covid, our response to it, the measures we should take, etc cannot ever stand up on equal footing with someone who works in the field, or has a PhD in a related area, or lives and breathes this stuff day in and day out through their entire lives. My opinion is so far below theirs that it's not even worth mentioning it. And yet that's what so many anti-vaxxers think, they fundamentally believe that their views are equal. It's actually offensive to the entire idea of a knowledge based society. We can't all have equal opinions in everything because we can't all specialise in everything. A big part of the issue, in truth, is that many of these people don't understand how rigorous the academic process is. We're worlds away from "journalistic research" with this stuff, it's unbelievably complex, pored over by peers in the field, repeated ad nauseum and so on, until we get to a stage where we're confident that it's as right as we can say. And then, other people take that data and research and go off and try to replicate it, try to build on it, all the while it's being critiqued over and over by people who have spent literal decades specialising in this. Their opinion is just always, always going to be worth more than mine. That doesn't mean I'm not as smart as them, or that I'm surrendering my own personal agency, it just means I'm recognising reality.

£15m plus £100k a week Some of the numbers journos were flinging around about this man. £35m plus £200, 300k a week. Sounds very reasonable, great bit of business by the looks of it.

Not sure that analogy could have been any more unpleasant

Dotbum is Adios. I know him online elsewhere now and aye, he's a good fella.

Christ... I really am sorry everyone, it looked shorter in the text box.

---I tried to avoid writing an essay, I really did. Sorry.--- It is a fair point though. You must be able to see how by living in France, you are personally 'safe' from the consequences of this (which are very real btw, weekly foodshops alone have gone up considerably in price, and down considerably in options) and yet you're saying you'd vote to inflict these problems on the rest of us all over again if you could. That's before we get to people's livelihoods, relationships and ambitions being ruined. I know that if none of these things have touched you, it'll be hard to think that we're anything other than a group of people who are politically motivated in our bitching - an extension of the Labour/Tory, Left/Right culture war shit. But honestly as far as Brexit goes, we've watched and suffered through all of this together and idk man.. it's real. The consequences of this are very real. They are being felt. Some people may deny that this is the case, but those people are frankly liars or too rich to notice. Or possibly, to be at my most charitable, actively trying to avoid paying attention. So if you'd vote to do it again for some high concept political notion about sovereignty without being part of any rebuild, suffering or pain that the nation goes through, it is sort of difficult to read. I mean it almost seems like you just don't give a fuck about the rest of us and what we have to suffer as long as your political views win out. Are those views really so important to have been worth this? Does any of this improve your life at all? What it looks like to me, and what it has always looked like - and I say this as compassionately as possible because I do understand your reasons, and I even understand where the more racist tones of this at least come from (not from you, from elsewhere) - is that this whole thing has really kind of blown up in the faces of the people who voted for it, but because it became such a toxic argument, because so much of everyone's "pride" was on the line, no one was prepared to back down - and that has continued to this day, although leavers seemed to think that once it was done, they'd won; except now I think they're beginning to realise that there was no victory, there is just perpetual war. Brexit split the country in two, and while the negative consequences of it continue to be felt (and they will), it just isn't going to go away. People are being fucked by Brexit. Every day. How could it possibly go away as a political issue? I even left the Labour party over their new and improved stance on it, which I consider to be an infantilising refusal to state the truth. That truth being, that it was a harmful decision carried out in an even more harmful way. Maybe that's on remainers too, maybe if we'd gone at it less furiously, it would have allowed space for reconciliation - but there was never any indication from your side of the argument that this was going to be anything other than a smash and grab of the hardest Brexit possible - May announced as much almost on day fucking 1, and we resisted as intensely as we did because this is exactly where we knew we'd end up. A country run by a corrupt, incompetent party that does nothing other than enrich itself and its friends, whilst pulling the drawbridge up for the rest of us. They're cutting planned investments on infrastructure into the north, levelling up isn't happening, they don't give a fuck about the people who voted for this. Not a solitary fuck. And they are the ones we've just handed all of this power to, to cut new deals, to regenerate the economy, to paint a new vision for where this country goes. A vision with zero fucks given for ordinary people. And you can say "oh but we can vote them out again" except that 1 - the same lies that they spun to get Brexit to happen continue to work, and I'm quite certain that some people in this country could literally starve to death in the ballot station and their friends would step over their dead bodies and still vote Tory and 2 - it's still a 5 year prison sentence in people's lives, and our lives are not that fucking long. The EU was a fairly benign mess of an organisation which invested a lot in communities up and down the country, and which ensured prosperity for all those within it, to a reasonable degree. I do not on any level understand why anyone, ANYWHERE, can possibly think that Boris fucking Johnson or anyone presently within the front bench ranks of the Tory party is going to lead us to a more prosperous place than we already were. 10-15 years just to recover the damage, and then what, another 10-15 at best to see some sort of improvement? Almost an entire working lifetime. And Rees Mogg said it would be more like 50 years. All for some nebulous, high concept political idea about sovereignty that won't matter a single iota in 10 years time, let alone 30 or 50. The world will be completely different by then anyway. So it 100% feels like pointless suffering to some of us. I'm sorry mate, honestly, I don't at all think you're a bad guy but howay... is this really going to be worth all this misery?

It's an emotive issue for many of us in the end because it's actively fucking up our lives, no one can tell us why it was worth doing, and all we can see is the harm it's doing. I do genuinely believe we will be on our knees begging to rejoin in 5-10 years time, especially if the Tories remain at the helm throughout that period given how utterly shocking they are on economics. What gets me about all of this, even with the flag waving triumphalism of the moment itself, is that it's a national humiliation that the world and half of this country can see, but which those who voted for it cannot. I was proud of the UK, especially following the 2012 olympics. A great display of patriotism that really entrenched in me how much I loved the UK for all its faults. An international leader that punched above its weight and was respected around the world. Now it's just.. every time I see Johnson go up there in front of world leaders its a new humiliation. You asked before about facebook profile pictures - I'm not on facebook, but I'm more European in spirit than I am now British. Brexit literally stripped away the part of Britishness that I identified with. The outward looking, internationalist, rational and respectable country that it could be, replaced with a dark, introspective, hateful and corrupt nonsense of a state. Honestly, it's absolutely devastating what the Tories have allowed to happen to the UK with this. They're traitors to the country, all of them. All of them.

Honestly I've been trying to be more assertive lately anyway so you've just flat out triggered me with the suggestion that I'm being reasonable It's mostly for my benefit, the civil discourse. I get wound up really easily. Just ask ewerk, he's barely even trying anymore because there's no sport in it

I mean that response was aimed at Gemmill, not me I could have moved, but work made it difficult. Would have been a big risk, wasn't ready for it at the stage in life I was at. Would have taken a few more years of prep. Other than that, I don't think I've come off as any more reasonable than anyone else. My main frustration with Brexit has been the 2019 vote. The one before it was forgivable because we had no fucking clue what we were even talking about. I could write a couple of ranting essays if you want but you've all read them before - I pulled back from it mostly to avoid winding people up..!

I have fwiw. Might be surprising to hear, was a few years back, but it happened

For what it's worth mate, I spent several years reading a series of alt right, pro Brexit, anti cultural Marxism views. I've been called a nazi on here unironically before. I'm not in an echo chamber. I feel the way I do because of how I've processed how it affects me, and from what I've seen of the logic of the other side. It might be convenient to think that we're all coming at this from positions of just reading news that agrees with us, but at least for me, I'm not. I fully immersed myself in the other side of this. I still think it's mental though. But yes, everyone has a right to hold their views - including me.