Rayvin

I reckon he'll see out the term. There's no threat coming from anywhere else no matter how good an occasional speech might be. We're midway through the Tory era, they're safe as houses IMO.

Given how perpetual everyone is on here, I could see it.

You'd think we'd be past this shit by now, mind.

In a geopolitical sense maybe you're right. Also it seems more and more certain to me that they're going to take back Taiwan, so the more the international community is opposed to them, the harder that will become. Either way though, I suspect a lot of innocent Chinese people will suffer a lot of abuse.

Which is something they or any other major country would do irrespective of whether or not they had something to hide. Would the US let international inspectors in to verify whether or not it had done something like this? It's just as likely that they wouldn't want someone to come in and expose the fact that their safety regulations/responses to the issue were entirely inadequate. We just don't have the evidence to speculate. I'm also not entirely sure what good comes of assuming or even knowing that they created it in a lab. We can't sue them, we won't go to war over it and we're not going to stop trading with them. We would see a global anti-Chinese backlash that would affect the lives of many innocent Chinese people quite negatively. You could argue that the truth is all that matters but the last thing we need IMO is to give the sort of people who voted for Trump something they can cling onto that might legitimise everything he said. "Trump was right about the China virus, maybe he was right about drinking bleach too!" While that particular example would solve many of the world's problems, I can't countenance it in good faith - sadly.

I mean I remember being given a lecture with my class by a party official when I lived there that went along the lines of "Prostitution does not exist in China. But if it did, you would be arrested for getting involved with it". If the question here is whether or not the CCP is capable of lying about this issue, the answer is 100% yes. See also the US government. No government in the world is beyond that, frankly - except maybe the European ones. I don't think that was ever the contention. It was that there was no evidence.

The Guardian is going in hard on the line that the government have bungled this self isolation operation given that COVID is now so widespread again after opening up that we're seeing food shortages as too many people are having to self isolate. Is this genuinely happening? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/23/england-facing-weeks-of-pingdemic-disruption-to-services-and-food-supply

Patel has been subjected to a vote of no confidence from the police. Does this mean anything or is it an empty gesture? I'm guessing the latter.

You maybe, but not everyone is as respectable and pure as you, ewerk..!

Pretty sure I remember reading that some 500,000 people have had their disability benefits cut under Johnson. And that he proposed that they go and get jobs. I can see articles about it online but they're admittedly only in local papers and not the major ones, so I'm hesitant to assume it's truth. But I think at the least it's probably safe to say that he hasn't done anything to make the situation better, while carrying our a number of actions which mean that their cost of living will go up.

I strongly suspect that alongside "macho, conservative values" this will be influenced by "knowing who their viewers are". The world might change and get to the stage where people don't want to watch volleyball for the scantily clad ladies, but I suspect that when/if that does happen, the real change will be that people just won't watch volleyball

I would take anyone with a degree of responsibility. Even an austere one. Johnson is an irresponsible child, squandering resources and wealth on things he doesn't understand, for outcomes he isn't informed about. Give me Osborne over this dopey fuck any day of the week. And then let me vote him out next time. Anything would be better at this point than this incompetent cunt of a man.

What the fuck was that rap battle man The takeover could be declared dead tomorrow by all involved parties and it still wouldn't mean he was right about anything as everything he has ever said has been evidence free speculative nonsense. But aye, let's double down on our "victory" with a rap battle in public. It's like something out of The Office.

I'm not intending to change anything I've been doing because I have absolutely no trust in the government on any level and have seen no convincing data to make me think this is anything other than a political stunt that will cost lives. But let's hope, for the sake of people's lives, that Johnson has got this right.

Are those numbers for real or did you make them up? EDIT - just saw the date, nvm. I'm so used to bad news on that front that I actually found that fringe believable.

I don't even pay for it now. Haven't had a TV license for about 10 years, don't need one, don't watch it.

I reckon he's running out of steam but I have nothing to base that on.

This. Totally this. I mean I would say this is true of society in general. Put all the cheap and easy left wing social stuff on TV while railroading the most right wing policies past people in the background, and claim that this is somehow 'balanced'. It's fucking genius if it's intentional, and I strongly suspect it is.

I mean, there are youtube stations that cover the same shit which do fine - their mistake is in thinking that their audience is watching or interested in traditional news. The problem I suspect is the traditional news in some form, even GB News, does have to report on things based on some manner of factual reality come what may. On the internet, people can say any old shite without any accountability, meaning that biases can be catered to and bubbles preserved more purely. Sargon has given up on YouTube now and seems to run his own news/blogging site with a team of young Tories - and I'd wager he gets more hits and views than GB News does. But then, he's one of the least impartial people I've seen so nothing he says is going to threaten the views of those who come to watch his stuff. The right don't want free speech or honest and open debate as is abundantly clear from this BLM issue. They just want a safe space to rage against "Marxism", a word they can't define, and "wokeness", a word that they perceive as a threat to them but which isn't. And you know, there are plenty on the left who operate in the same way - but they're the lunatic fringe of the left. And what we're seeing is the increasingly lunatic mainstream of the right, not a fringe.

I like the wildlife documentaries, and some of the historical ones, they do good stuff there. Beyond that though, politically it's useless and entirely beholden to the sitting government. And the right hate everything man. If the BBC wants our support and wants people to stand up for it as it goes, it needs to stand up for itself and others first.

Agreed, he was. My view is that it spawned out of an Internet based culture war that went mainstream but I know that others feel this was just natural progression of overwhelmingly right wing media talking points in general. Trump definitely not the cause.

Christ, now the fuckheads think GB News has a "secretly Marxist agenda". None of them even know a damn thing about Marxism ffs. In fact, recently I've heard these sorts of people actually talk about things that I would consider to be Marxism, as if they're right wing issues. The "working class man" needs to stand up to elite power structures and wrestle the money away from the "woke, marxist" super rich. Utter morons.

I mean, I know. Oddly enough I consider them to be as misinformed in this as I do in other areas. And also oddly enough, that comes down to their lack of evidence. They tend to get worked up about the BBC overrepresenting minorities (15% of employed individuals are BAME and yet only 14.9% of the country is BAME, which is of course a scandal) whereas I tend to get worked up about different things, such as the accuracy or their reporting and general lack of balance. The main reason I say any of this though is that you'd be hard pushed to find many people on here who thought the BBC was a stellar institution. Except Gloom.

Have to say that this broadly fits my worldview that the BBC are running scared of the Tories and that therefore they're a waste of an institution who don't properly and robustly challenge the constant shite that we're subjected to. Why can't we hate both the BBC and the Tories?

Right there with you on that. Utterly shameful what this country has allowed itself to become.