Rayvin

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.

What annoys me about all these Tory party machinations is that it always looks like they think they're playing some kind of game. People's lives hang in the balance of your decisions you ignorant fucks. If you want to try an actual revolution instead of replacing one waste of space with another equally morally bankrupt waste of space, then maybe you can start crowing in the way you always, always do. Have some shame and replace the man who would be out of his depth running a nursery, and get fucking serious about running the country.

So far it feels to me like they're trying to take players who will go down with us in order to maximise the value of the buys. I'm fine with this approach really; if we go down then we'll be more than kitted out well enough to handle the championship. I'd imagine that's the stumbling block for everyone else though. That said, I recall someone saying that Botman would run on until the end of the window for one reason or another, so maybe there are still movements waiting to happen.

I like Howe, I'm not saying we should get rid or anything, he's done well to get any sort of reaction from the players and I think he could take us forward. However. I really like Rafa as a human being and someone who really gets the club. I'd have him back in any capacity, frankly.

Fair enough.

Is anyone else playing Wordle, and if so, is there enough interest to have a thread on here? https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

At the very least, the new owners are trying to get us out of it. That's something we should all appreciate.

It's the cup final reference that makes me suspicious Come on man, only mackems bang on about being everyone's cup final. If we go down, most of the championship will hardly give a fuck since they're all Premier League also rans who have played us enough times over the years not to get overexcited at the prospect. We're buying players who would probably come down with us, so we should be pretty much certain to go back up. The championship will barely notice or care that we're even there.

That's superb. It genuinely doesn't occur to him that he's throwing shit on Johnson until right at the end Up until that point, oddly enough, I think he was fully in the clutches of the truth.

As Gemmill says, you could find evidence for the same acts from Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, George Soros, Stalin, whoever, and none of us would stand up to try and defend them.

You were the one going on about how there might be something to all that pizzagate stuff the other day, that's all I'm saying. I mean, would you be so forgiving of him in this respect if it were Bill Clinton? I am a whiny, Guardian reading EUrophile. The jibes mean nothing to me, I'll happily embrace that. I doubt you're an incel but you're clearly a middle aged man who is worried that the whole world is out to get him and that if he isn't vigilant about that, he's going to be left with nothing. I don't get it, since that's clearly not going to happen, but you do you. Why you've gone out of your way to speak in defence of Prince Andrew, I don't know. He's a rich buffoon with hardly two brain cells to rub together, who has done nothing in life to earn the lifestyle and status he has. His is not a hill to die on.

Asprilla man...Surely elite, world ruling rich wankers who are also paedos is exactly - fucking exactly - what right wing conspiracy theorists should be getting out of bed to shout and scream about..? He's even managed to incorporate pizza. It literally is pizzagate ffs. What more could you want?? He doesn't even sweat ffs. You know what else doesn't sweat? Lizards. He's a Lizard person. QAnon was right all along!! How is the right not beside itself right now, he's the walking embodiment of everything they think runs the world. Other than the fact he's not left wing.

Does the US have a cat in hell's chance of extraditing him though?

So this looks like it'll be two new first team signings and we're a third of the way through the month. I think the new owners are doing alright on this front tbh