Rayvin

I'm not entirely sure there is a right direction here tbh. Natanyahu might be one of the causes of the recent mess but he's not the overall cause of the whole situation.

This was my original argument for Trump winning power - that shock and awe from the right may well be the only way to the left. But having said that, it's not an accurate depiction of what has happened here IMO. Biden has never looked as left wing as he is currently being - either the Democrats as a party have finally woken up to the need to achieve genuine change, and also the need to determinedly keep the young, left wing members of their party enthused (something Labour have completely failed at), or Biden has been a closet leftie his whole life who has just been playing the very, very, very long game. He was nowhere near as left wing as this in the run up, I'd imagine the eyebrows are raising from the centrists. That said, more fucking power to him. Especially since the UK and EU both benefit significantly from his global minimum corp. tax.

Based on that profile there'd be an inevitable injury for me in the first 5 mins of game one, followed by missing the rest of the tournament

Social anxiety is a real fucking pain and I understand her position. Given that I have similar issues I could see myself hypothetically attempting to handle it the same way, but ultimately I have had to accept in life that sometimes you have to suck it up a bit or you can't move forward. If the world changed to be more accommodating of people who have social anxiety/depression then that would be fantastic, but we're not there yet. Hopefully the whole thing will help to expand the conversation in this space anyway. She seems to have done what she needs to do, so good for her.

Is it? Could just legitimise the far right. Not sure really, a 'watch this space' moment IMO.

If it is proven, you will still have baselessly made the claims you did though The fact remains that even now we don't know. What we can say is that there now appears to be enough evidence to investigate it further - something we didn't know at all until this report was produced. Will be interesting to see the critical feedback of the research from the academic community.

Honestly, same. It's just not possible to continue to be emotionally invested in this - but that said, I do continue to feel bad for people who are vulnerable, who can see this exactly for what it is, and who will be negatively affected by it. Ultimately though, I'm just not sure what any of us can do anymore. I would be interested to learn how these polls translate into actual population driven numbers though - my understanding is that all of the responses they get are fed through constituency modelling. If this is representative of where we are across the population on the whole then we genuinely are in trouble. Silver lining to all of this could be an actual electoral pact (not a fake one, not a "we could work with Labour if they would only..." pact). Labour clearly can't challenge the Tories from where they are - the sooner this is recognised, the sooner they can start doing something about it.

Indicates yet more Labour losses to the left/remainder side. This doesn't feel like it's working. Maybe Starmer believes all of those people will hold their nose in the end and pull back into Labour at the right time, but I am doubtful of this personally.

How far back do you have to go for £12m to be a genuinely useful transfer budget 15 years? 20?

Yes, that would be preferable. I note that she was a conservative spin doctor though which I wasn't aware of, and which now means that the whole picture makes more sense. I'd imagine she's an almost entirely talentless individual but that alone might well put her head and shoulders above Johnson who isn't so much limited as actively useless.

Yes, I don't at all understand why she is even remotely involved in any of the politics considering she's just his wife and not any manner of politician, but I guess that comes with the territory when your PM is basically a rich version of Frank from Shameless.

And now we know that the policy that allowed for large numbers of people coming into the country during a lockdown came straight from Boris Johnson himself. The total negligence on display there has to be worth at least another couple of points in the polls, surely? The worse he does, the more popular he gets after all.

The only people who suspected any of this though, are the remainer lefties. You think Cummings is trying to appeal to us? As I mentioned earlier, the Daily Mail comment section is tearing him a new one (other than on Hancock, whom even they seem to despise) He's got nothing to lose, isn't planning to go back to government, and has a score to settle. So he's thrown in a hand grenade to amuse himself more than anything else, IMO. Either way I don't see what we stand to gain by stacking up against him. We should let him and Johnson kill each other, frankly.

Unelectable. The entire party that is, not just Starmer. That's what I'm taking from this.

TBF mate I said the same thing when Russia poisoned people and the whole country decided to dispense with due process and named them guilty with no investigation I'm a firm believer in evidence based policy and decision making, no matter how 'likely' something is.

Not entirely sure they'd start with work towards a super infectious strain that lacked potency instead of the other way around in that case, but if you say so. I find it very hard to believe. It's just an entirely futile endeavour. But yes, accidental release of something that was being tested in a lab is possible. If it was all routine testing and it just escaped though, I'm not sure what difference any enquiry makes other than to pointlessly ramp up anti-China sentiment. And I say 'pointlessly' here because if it was an accidental release then it's not at the behest of the Chinese government and is likely the incompetence of a single individual.

It's not exactly set up for that though, is it? China is heavily reliant upon international trade and the impact of releasing a virus as infectious as this is more or less what we have seen. The whole world shuts down because no one can contain or control it., leading to active harm to China itself. So we can take from that, that the virus was not developed to be targeted. If this is a manmade virus, it is one that was developed with a view to infecting the entire world, not just a single enemy. Moreover, it's kill rate isn't actually that high. If it's manmade they get a 3.5 out of 10 from me. Poor targeting, zero control over the effects, not potent. Must do better.

I think the crucial point here is whether you, Trump, or anyone else had any evidence upon which to base the claim. Certainly Trump didn't or else it would have been shared. I recall you mentioned a doctor who made some kind of claim to this point but I also recall that I read the claim and found insufficient evidence to trust it. Having lived in China I am fully, fully prepared to believe that the CCP are capable of creating a killer virus (not that I would entirely see an obvious reason as to why they might have done it), in the same way that I am fully prepared to believe they've actively committing genocide in Xinjiang, that they have a really low concern level around human rights and indeed life in general, and that they're pretty much capable of anything. I mean, I also believe this last point about our government but that's an aside. The ultimate fundamental in all of this though, is that we need actual proof. And at the moment, neither you or Biden himself have any actual proof of this. I don't think accusing the Chinese government of these things is racist btw - it just could be baseless.

Sunak was basically handpicked for the Chancellorship by Cummings himself iirc. And Gove idk, he's not exactly been altogether visible throughout this anyway. I couldn't even tell you what his position in the government is at the moment.

Ah ok, yes - I can see that. I thought you meant some kind of grand plot to get back into power. Yes, presumably at least part of this is coming from the desire to stick it to those who shafted him, absolutely. Still though, this is some length to go to.

The only point I struggle with a bit on that, is what it is that he wants. I really don't think he's a politician in any sense. I'm not at all clear on what he stands to gain from this, it certainly doesn't make him look good even by his own admission.

For the good of the country though. Cummings finally doing the right thing, albeit I'm dubious on whether or not its for the right reasons.

Johnson wanted chaos because it meant he was in control. Johnson actively opposed closing borders because he prioritised the economy over people's lives. All of this is stuff we knew but to hear it thrown back like this as undeniable truth is somehow even more painful. You think in the back of your mind sometimes that maybe you're a conspiracy theorist and the Tories aren't that bad, that they must have their reasons, but this is 100% the picture that many of us had for the past year, writ large by one of its chief architects. This is appalling.

Hancock is, apparently, one of those guys who will say anything to hold onto power and not get shown up. He strikes me as perpetually deathly afraid of making decisions or getting anything wrong, to the extent that he was prepared to fabricate reality to ensure he wasn't "found out". If what Cummings says is true, he should be publicly annihilated for this.

Hmm I guess so - even as a scapegoat it's too late to pull the trigger on him I guess.