Politics Thread!

[Harlequin]

Whereas, I'm suggesting making the pie bigger. Then everyone can continue eating pie - and even go back for seconds - as there's just much more pie to go around.

That's the "everyone wins" solution here. More pie. Bigger pie. Pie for everyone.

You are Liz Truss and I claim my leaf of cabbage.

[KlaxonCow]

In fairness, she wasn't wrong to say we needed to make the pie bigger. It was just that nothing she was actually doing had anything remotely to do with making that happen.

I mean, any dumb blond / blonde in a swimsuit can say "I want world peace and an end to hunger" in the "personality" round of a beauty contest - it's not like anyone's fundamentally against the concept - but it's a question of how the hell do you actually make it happen, in actual reality?

Equally, I'm annoyed that David Cameron did that whole "Big Society" thing he did.

Because, actually, there's some genuine merit in the concept of things like community-owned not-for-profit utilities and services - where, say, a village can own and run its own wind turbine / solar farm or broadband network for their mutual benefit and do so at cost, and even potentially usefully employ people in the village to run it all.

But, like, he didn't do sod all towards that goal. It was just an electioneering slogan for him. A way for a Tory, who actually wanted "small government" to mask his real agenda.

As I say, anyone can say "I'd like world peace" or "I'd like people to have more money in their pockets" and other such "Barnum" blatantly-obvious truisms that no-one reasonable would ever disagree with.

So even the most loathsome and idiotic politicians have said the right things from time to time. But they never back it up with any actual pragmatic plan, much less action.

[(o)(o)]

Sneaky cunts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65484552

https://action.crueltyfreeinternational ... cale=en-GB

[Whiteball]

Sneaky cunts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65484552

https://action.crueltyfreeinternational ... cale=en-GB

So if retailers and consumers are against it, why don't they just stop selling/buying cosmetics?

Most people slap so much crap on these days they look the worse for it anyway. Just stop using it.

[(o)(o)]

Sneaky cunts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65484552

https://action.crueltyfreeinternational ... cale=en-GB

So if retailers and consumers are against it, why don't they just stop selling/buying cosmetics?

Do you believe that's the best way of dealing with corporate greed and animal (and human) exploitation - rather than dealing with it at source - even if we had a functioning democracy in the UK which clearly we don't?

Most people slap so much crap on these days they look the worse for it anyway. Just stop using it.

Yes..

'Stop that!'

What initiatives would you recommend to encourage this cultural shift?

[tufty]

What initiatives would you recommend to encourage this cultural shift?

Have you seen "How to get ahead in advertising"

[zip accident]

Some day it's going to come down to do we feed the last non-human animal or do we feed a human, and it's going to be the human that gets fed.

That may be as long as a thousand years from now, of it could be a couple of hundred years, but it will happen (if the AI, or an ice age or whatever don't get us first).

[gilesgoat]

Some day it's going to come down to do we feed the last non-human animal or do we feed a human, and it's going to be the human that gets fed.

That may be as long as a thousand years from now, of it could be a couple of hundred years, but it will happen (if the AI, or an ice age or whatever don't get us first).

Maybe but if that day comes it means that BOTH the human and the non-human are totally fucked. Once the last non-human is gone, what remains in the world ? Human, pills and machines ?

What the fuck of life is that and then really at that point what the fuck humans are for ? We are almost uselss and dangerous, machines can do lot better, they'll get rid of us as soon as they can.

What initiatives would you recommend to encourage this cultural shift?

The answers already exist ( since millenia ) but almost nobody is listening to them.

There should be more emphasis on "living a balanced life" and "having a graceful way to get older", putting in your face shit to attempt to fake time that causes the suffering of many ( and not just animals, there are humans involved too ) it's definitely not a good thing.

"How big is the price for you to look like a fake thing anyway ?"

It's all semi-wastless talk anyway, whoever is into "some mindset" will never change it .. they are "beyond salvation" .. you can try to talk, but would they listen ?

[venusian]

There are religionists who will tell you they're all about living a good life, and not hiding from mortality.

[gilesgoat]

There are religionists who will tell you they're all about living a good life, and not hiding from mortality.

You don't need to be into religion to try to live a good life, "good" as in "good for you and the others".

It's really just greed what spoils it all, greed and insecurity and weakness .. "if you feel secure and such" you don't really need much or "more" to be happy.

But there are some "really spoiled people" that found ways to make a lot of other feel unsecure and unhappy and make them weak so they can "gain" even more .. but "they don't gain" because in reality they are MORE insecure and unhappy than those they spoil.

But they do damage, and they spoil lot more people "for basically nothing good".

It's a timeless story that keeps repeating.

[merman]

Lots of people saying, “Why spend £100 million on the Coronation, let’s fund food banks instead.”

Which is a total disconnect between what the monarchy represents and the wholly POLITICAL decisions that have got this country into the state it is in.

And if you want to use that as a measure...

The Government spent half a Coronation last year just on storing unwanted PPE in China.

Where’s the 3.5 Coronations each week we supposedly sent the EU? The Brexit bus said it would be spent on the NHS instead.

Rishi Sunak won’t let the National Crime Agency investigate the 45 Coronations worth of furlough fraud.

By not refinancing debt in 2021, Rishi cost the country 120 Coronations.

And worst of all, since 2010 the Tories have added 14000 Coronations (1.4 trillion) to the national debt.

[KlaxonCow]

Criticising the TV licence fee, Jacob Rees Mogg called it a "poll tax".

Umm, he does remember that that grossly unpopular tax was brought in by the Tories under their right-wing goddess Maggie, right?

Bizarre.

Reminds me of how I've seen religious people making the criticism that "atheism / evolution is a religion".

Of course, it isn't. Evolution is demonstrable science, while atheism is no more than not believing in any gods (and that's all it means - while many atheists are also believers in science and that's why they're not convinced by any of the proposed gods, there's no doctrine to atheism. You can not believe in gods... but totally believe in supernaturalism, with healing crystals and ghosts and leylines or whatever else. Indeed, Buddhists are arguably atheists, as their religion does not feature any gods).

But, regardless, it's the weirdest kind of criticism. To say "you're terrible and wrong and evil... because you're doing the very thing I'm advocating for" is just plain daft.

So, you know, if atheism or evolution were religions, then seeing as it's a religious person, arguing for religion, saying this... shouldn't that be a good thing in their eyes?

Okay, maybe it isn't, because it's the "wrong" religion in their eyes. But then shouldn't the criticism not be "atheism / evolution is a religion", shouldn't it actually be "atheism / evolution is the WRONG religion"?

But, yeah, anyway, the TV licence fee is bad and wrong... because it's exactly like a tax that the goddess of right-wing Tories, Maggie, brought in that was so unfair, everyone refused to pay it... says the right-wing Tory who worships Maggie.

When someone makes arguments like this, you've got to wonder. Do they know - at least on some subconscious level - that the argument they're making is knowingly wrong? That they've tripped themselves up on their own lies, and accidentally ended up contradicting themselves because they can't keep their cognitive dissonance straight in their own heads?

So, yeah, "non-Tory thing is evil, because it's exactly like that Tory thing no-one liked", says Tory.

Nice argument, Jacob. How are things back in the 18th century?

[merman]

That’s not the daftest thing Lord Snooty Rees-Smug has said.

Get this.

Brexit stopped Russia defeating Ukraine.

JRM’s rationale?
Because Boris and Britain were not bound by EU rules on joint diplomacy, Britain offered support* to Zelensky quicker than the EU.

Not only is it completely inaccurate, it also has nothing to do with Brexit BECAUSE WE ARE STILL PART OF NATO. NATO doctrine would have had us supporting Ukraine anyway.

JRM is of course part of the new “Conservative Democratic Movement”, the pro-Boris dregs of the European Research Movement. At its first meeting they were deathly afraid of the possibility of a Starmer Government - because it could potentially reverse the voter ID rules and offer the Lib Dems a deal on PR that could keep the Tories out of power for decades. Which would be terrible, wouldn’t it? #sarcasm


*Britain offered support, but was slow to deliver beyond limited financial aid. Poland is actually the most generous European country so far, taking in 1.4 million refugees and spending a larger percentage of its GDP on financial aid and weapons.
The long rumoured Storm Shadow missiles which were promised two Prime Ministers ago have finally arrived.

[KlaxonCow]

Rees Mogg is on a roll.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 39068.html

Another thing he's said is that the new law on voter ID has backfired on the Tories.

Note that implicit in him saying that is an open admission that "voter ID" was not, in fact, about stopping the essentially non-existent problem of election fraud, but was totally about gerrymandering the vote for the Tories.

He's just openly saying it. They lied - and were corruptly trying to sway the elections. Just plain and honest: This was gerrymandering, and it didn't work.


(Interesting article, as it also covers another Tory MP who spoke at the same conference that we should be encouraging "British people" - dog whistle! - to have more babies, as it's a threat to Western civilisation. Which is basically an outright "white power" supremacist argument, happily being touted by Tory MPs openly. Oh, and it's pointless - melanin expression is a dominant gene, so "preservation of white people" is genetically doomed to failure, short of bringing in racial segregation / Apartheid to enforce some kind of fascist "no half breeds" racism on the entire nation. It's insane that Tory MPs are happily and casually making neo-Nazi talking points at their conference... and, apparently, this is fine?)

[(o)(o)]

Home Office uses executive powers to insert rules that were voted down by parliament into a statutory instrument.

https://twitter.com/georgemonbiot/statu ... __TpkjT55A