This may save you a click:

It’s just an AI thing. The UK is not, I repeat not, building a Stargate.

• Just some AI thing ✅️
• Gateway to desert planet Abydos ❌️

Turns out it’s the Welsh.

Was it the flag of the Turk, St Georgios of Palestine, patron Saint of Ukraine?

Hahaha, I guess you must be Keir then.

So the press likes to tell us every day. I’d really think it was more down to the fact that a lot of people actually thought Boris Johnston was a good idea at the time (in the 2019 election) - compared to in 2024, when a lot of Tories/Undecideds (for a variety of reasons) voted for the UKIPs instead.

If you’d put Keir in the 2019 election, he would have done even worse.

These are first-past-the-post problems really, and problems of how boundaries are drawn.

Anyway, it’s all theoretical anyway - as you say, it’s hard to compare one election to another in this way - and it won’t change anything, we’ve got a right-wing Labour Prime Minister for a few years, whether we like it or not.

I know that’s what the news told us every day for years and years on end, but more people voted for Corbyn in 2019 (10.2 million) than Starmer in 2024 (9.7 million), and Starmer ended up PM with half a million fewer votes than Corbyn got. The difference between the two elections was that in the latter, the Tories got fewer votes.

If Starmer was electable, so was Corbyn.

[Edit] Also, Corbyn got 12.8 million votes in 2017, that’s 3.1 million more people voting for the “unelectable” man, than the apparently “electable” man.

Labour aren’t meant to be like this. If Ed Milliband or Jeremy Corbyn had got in some years ago, this wouldn’t be happening.

Maybe some other shit would be happening, but not this.

Keir Starmer and his right-wing clique have taken over the Labour Party, and pushed anyone even slightly left-of-centre to the fringes, or out of the party.

The Tories are still even further to the right, and the UKIPs are even further right than that.

I miss Mock the Week :(

I think that all went out the window during the Tory era, with things such as replacing the head of the BBC with a Tory, threatening to pull all funding unless they started promoting the government’s right-wing perspective and caving into Rupert Murdoch’s pressure that he is poor and starving because the evil BBC is taking all his rightful TV money and viewers.

BBC comedy show and dramas are still on the whole centrist or a bit left leaning, but the news skewed heavily to the right about 10-15 years ago.

Anything less than “Grent” will be disappointing.

I am Spartacus Banksy.

I hope nobody crops the image out of the many photographs, then gets it printed large on thousands of posters, then accidentally fly-posts it on every surface in the area.

(To clarify, I do in fact hope someone does this)

Where are these centre-lefts who have any power? The 1970s?

Basically, though they’re traditionally considered to be left wing, and people were expecting them to be slightly-right-wing, they’ve enacted all the Tory (very right wing) policies that were in the pipeline, and in an attempt to appeal to the far right, have jumped from “a little right of centre” into a government more right wing than David Cameron’s Tories were. They’re probably still to the left of where we’d be if we’d actually got Tories or UKIP.

For example (I have paraphrased and sensationalised the descriptions, because I am sad and angry):

• Starving the elderly and disabled
• Banning trans people from being allowed to use public toilets
• Implemented a ban on any website which could ever potentially contain a picture of a boob, or offer things like “quitting smoking support”, unless you upload your name/passport/3d scan of your face, postal address and email address to a dodgy company in Cypress or the USA
• Come out in complete support of a genocide
• Banned peace protesting and arrested hundreds of innocent people
• Come out in complete support of the other year’s Tory/UKIP rioting
• Come out in support of far-right nationalist flag-shagging
• Come out in support of killing refugees
• Various other atrocities. I’m sure you get the idea

I’ve used slightly loaded language and twisted a few specifics, but I’m sure you get the general idea.

If you live in a “less desirable area” you can still get a house for less than £100,000 in some places in the UK. You might find yourself with limited job opportunities or a long commute, or poor local facilities though.

“Budgie the Little Helicopter” and “Jimbo of the Jet Set” are both terrified.

I hope so too, though I’m not going to let myself get my hopes up too much.

In the larger scale of things, not really - but more left than most were expecting, and arguably has drifted leftwards from where it was under the Tories. Leanings towards possible nationalisation of (aspects of?) rail travel and production of renewable power, and had made quite a few pro-employees-rights policies around wages, terms and conditions etc (in favour of the worker, not the company owner).

Obviously moving leftwards from “very right” is still “right”.

Oh, fuck off with your fucking ID cards again.

(Sorry if this sounds like I’m whinging at you - I’m really whinging about them)

a & b) I get that peak times exist. I didn’t argue against it. I regularly experience ~400 people squashing onto a 200 capacity commuter train - so yes, dissuading other people from thinking “that’s a good time to go for a day out” is fine. Regarding telling you when it is, maybe some operators do, but I’ve not been able to find this for any of the routes I use. The ticket buying website knows when peak is, as if you select a time, it either does or doesn’t show you an off-peak return amongst the tickets offered, but nowhere actually tells you exactly when and where. In some places they have some peak in the morning and afternoon, others morning only. If you’re working away for a week, and head over on the Sunday night and get an off-peak return, which return trains are peak or off-peak? You finish an hour earlier then expected - peak or off-peak? You don’t know until it rejects your ticket and they fine you. Really, if they’d just show on the ticket buying websites/apps “this one is peak” “this one is off-peak”, that would do me fine.

c) Yes - I’m looking forward to it :)

d) It might say that, but that’s not what seems to happen. Even if the person in the station says “yes, don’t worry, this will be valid on that train”, the person on the train can still decide it isn’t and fine you (you can appeal it when you get home, assuming you’re rich enough to buy another full ticket plus £100 fine).

Maybe I’m just travelling on the routes with the shittest train companies? :)

Anyway, as you say, half of these problems should hopefully disappear when the separate privatised companies’ contracts run out :)