Obinice

I’m quite a glass-completely-empty person thanks to, you know, [points to everything],

but this is one small positive to come in recent years to my city, Manchester, and this expansion is good news too. I hope it continues to improve lives.

In a nation so riddled with poverty, strife, and failing public services, where most of us are struggling just to keep a roof over our heads and get our serious illnesses treated, is it any surprise that things like this fall through the cracks?

It’s these sorts of issues that a first world nation should have the time and energy to focus on improving.

Unfortunately these days we’re a second world nation that still thinks it’s a first world nation. Heck, a not insignificant portion of us still think we’re as important as when we were the British Empire 🤦‍♀️

We’re delusional, we need to have a reality check on our new, smaller place in the world, and on how successful and wealthy our economy and our people actually are.

Once we come to terms with how weak and feeble we have become as a country, we can refocus our efforts based on reality - not on a fantasy of our past glory, and then hopefully backlogs like this can slowly begin to be dealt with ❤️

Well to clarify, he’s not the highest earning MP, he’s the person with the highest diversified income who also works as an MP.

The original statement makes it sound - I suspect on purpose for clickbaity effect - as if his high income is due to his MP’s salary.

Stop the far right events in your area

That’s the police’s job, not a civilian like myself. If you’re able to tell me when and where these events will be, then the police are aware and will be in attendance.

Do you really think I’m equipped to subdue someone like the bloke that chased a muslim out of a petrol station near me today with a CHAINSAW…?

The police are trained, equipped and legally in the clear to attack such people. I on the other hand am not. I will not be attending the far right riots and attacks to attempt to stop them.

There’s standing up to racism, and then there’s being reckless with one’s own safety.

I agree with the idealist sentiment of standing up for goodness and counter protesting of course, but let’s consider reality for a moment. These are riots, not protests (or protests that are on the tipping point of becoming riots).

At best, our attendance to what - mock, jeer and antagonise the far right rioters? - won’t go down well, and could easily lead to even worse violence. At worst, it could lead further, to deaths or life-changing injuries.

Let the police do their jobs. We can fight back in so many other ways that don’t involve physically confronting an angry violent mob in the streets.

Stay safe <3

These lot are fascist tossers, but let’s be fair, you can love your country, want to see it change for (what you perceive to be) the better, and fight the establishment because of that.

Take dissident Germans in the 1940s, or those setting fire to government offices, recruitment centres etc in Russia today. They love their home and their people, and want to change it for the better, and they believe this is their best chance of doing so.

I don’t think that’s what this fascist rioting lot are up to of course, they just want to smash stuff and be dumb racists.

But I think it’s important to remember that often we rush to frame extreme acts as inherently bad or unpatriotic, because we’re on the opposite side of things, or don’t have the full context of the situation.

Especially now, as so much propaganda is pushed down our throats these days - much of it stemming from our government - about how being an “extremist” is automatically evil, and not worth reading further into.

I’m an extremist for example, because amongst other things, I have the extreme opinion that we should nationalise all essential national infrastructure (water, gas, electricity, public transport, internet infrastructure, postal service, and such).

Am I evil because I’m an extremist, or is the government just trying to paint “extremists” as evil in order to suppress opposition to their way of doing things? Hmm.

Anyway thanks for listening! :-)

Ah yes, let’s continue to sell our nation’s infrastructure to rich foreigners, surely this time it’ll go well.

Right?

Is this any surprise? The rich won’t allow any politician, let alone major political party of them, grow to any real level of power unless they are aligned with their interests.

Politician refuses to side with the rich? Well then, they’ll find their funding dry up, their message not getting out in the news, or any online media algorithms, with their more rich-friendly competitors receiving all that support, until their path to any real political office is dead.

By the time any political candidates or party get to run the actual country, we can assume they’re in the pocket of the rich ruling class (and often are members of that class).

So, why then is it surprising that the government and their various lackeys are doing what they can do protect the interests of the rich, to the detriment of the rest of us?

The system is completely broken from its very core.

I don’t have a solution to suggest, I wish I did, but while I do still vote, it’s clear that voting makes very little difference in the end - it just lets us pick which colour scheme we prefer, where we want small amounts of the budget shuffled around to (to make it look like they’re actually doing something), and which version of rhetoric we want shoved down our throats for a few years while what they actually do is work to protect and empower the rich.

I could find common ground with an invading space alien.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to act like that means it’s appropriate for me to work with them or claim they’re not evil.

I keep hearing about this Lammy guy being a right knob.

…Certainly be seems stupid - just because you follow the same organised religion as someone else and come from a similar socioeconomic background, doesn’t mean you’re even remotely anything alike.

It’s a good thing this guy who doesn’t understand how people work (or is lying about it) isn’t in charge of anything important. Right?

For years now, our government and a large vocal chunk of our population are doing their best to keep foreigners out, cut ties outside of the country, and make it very clear that if you’re not British you’re not welcome here.

Why would universities be surprised by this turn of events? They’ve seen it happening for years now.

Furthermore, even young people from the UK are reconsidering university too, partly because we were all deeply lied to about how useful a degree would be in getting a job,

and partly because thanks to huge changes over the past 15 years in the costs of university and costs of living, it’s become impossible for many young people to attend university even if they wanted to.

Some groups in the UK are working hard to both restrict access to education for our own people, whilst also working hard to keep foreign people out of the country.

Think about that for a moment, and you may be as worried as I am.

Education, along with the mixing of cultures and peoples is important for the health of any free, prosperous nation. But these things are the enemy of authoritarians, fascists…

I adore this website! So much! ❤️

Lots of people have issues with the concept of voting based on policies, for valid real world reasons,

but this survey does a great job of making you sit down for the better part of a hour to compare all the high-level policy promises and weigh then against each other, and at the end giving you an idea of which party at least claims to be more your cup of tea.

It’s an educational tool, and a way to get the brain working and thinking about the election a little differently.

Will I vote for who I got in my results? That’s between me and my ballot, but I certainly found the results eye opening! :-)

gasp

So that’s how it works! I’m relieved someone finally filled me in.

Harry Potter actor? This man is the Doctor.

He’s a national treasure.

Colin from Portsmouth is on the line hello Colin!

We are at capacity on the west coast mainline

Don’t worry, as we continue to price people out of rail travel (poor people were priced out years ago, we’ve almost cut the whole lower middle class out too, just a little further, I believe we can do it!), fewer people will travel and that’ll reduce the hit on your capacity.

All part of our genius plan 😎🍹

The evidence suggests that in about three weeks, we’re going to give a landslide to the party promising the most radical green policies in this country’s history.

The article doesn’t mention which party the evidence points to or which party is promising the most radical green policies in the country’s history, and neither did you, I’d like to know.

Could you elaborate on this please? I assume the Green Party are the group that support the most radical environmental reforms, but it would be nice to have some more context and information, thank you :-)

it can be revealed

Gasp, they’ve got the scoop of the century!

You make a good point, throughout history there have been many times where change began or could only be achieved through direct protest action, not by elections and votes alone.

So long as it’s harmless and raises awareness for how evil and hated by the people of the nation certain groups or individuals are, throwing milkshake, rotten tomatoes and the like, are an excellent idea.

the fact that this just helps Farage and garners more sympathy for him and his party.

How does this garner sympathy for a fascist pig? Is it some secret cheat code that makes people forget all the evil someone’s done, and make us feel sorry for them instead?

It was milkshake not poison, why should anyone sympathise with him who wouldn’t already have done so, because of this?

An election to change governments away from one that I feel has been greatly damaging to the nation and my life should be a happy occasion.

Yet, I look at the alternative in our two party system, the new government, Labour, that will undoubtedly get voted in (unless they somehow catastrophically implode within the next few weeks, getting caught sacrificing goats during an orgy at Stonehenge or something)… is basically just a slightly different shade of Tory.

That’s not to say everyone in the party is, or that they’re identical, but enough are, especially the ones in power, and while small things will change for the better, Labour, like the Tories, are too far gone to actually fix any of the underlying issues we face.

Are they going to reverse privatisation of the failing NHS, failing water suppliers, failing rail infrastructure, etc etc? Of course not. Are they going to stand up for unions, workers rights, and our rights to protest? Of course not.

Are they going to begin the long slow process of rejoining the EU, which was such a huge benefit to the UK and yet was taken away through brainwashing, misinformation, and good ol’ right wing racism, a process that I will only see come to fruition within my lifetime if started right now? Of course not. They can’t anger the right wing portion of their following that they’ve been slowly building since dropping the guise of being an even slightly to the left of centre political party.

They’re certainly not going to go against big what big business and the rich want, because those are the groups keeping the ruling class of the nation - including the government - in power, and in the lap of luxury, both now and when they leave office and move on to a private paycheque full-time.

Notice how both parties harp on about “the economy”, (as well as the media that tells us all what to think - owned by the rich), and do everything they can to make it happy and healthy, but do nothing at all to address the growing - now utterly gigantic - distribution of wealth gap between the rich and the majority of us, which stretches much further than simply poor wages - it affects what we have access to, what job and education opportunities we have, how healthy we are, who we’re able to meet and spend time with…it affects everything, and it’s all being ignored in favour of helping “the economy”.

They tell us that a strong economy will bring us all prosperity, that somehow the billions in profits made by the rich will drip down into our teacups for us to lick up, but the reality is that the businesses they serve just find more ways and excuses to raise prices, reduce service quality, cut wages, and get more payouts.

The current government is the worst of the lot, to be sure, and I’m glad they’re going soon. But I’m sad, because I know we won’t get any real change in this election. Just a chance of colour scheme, and a shuffling around of minor priorities and allocations for services, which will make some people happy, as it will appear as if the new government are truly changing things…

But it’s akin to rearranging the furniture in a house that’s on fire. It might feel fresh and better for a few people for a short time, but the whole thing is still burning down in the background.

Probably because the heat from the fire will keep “the economy” nice and warm.

:-(

“the answer to child poverty, ultimately, is not simply about handouts, it is about a social security safety net, that also acts as a springboard that helps people into work and with good work that makes the cost of living affordable for everyone.”

Holy crap, a politician that actually gets it, for once? Someone that actually understands that a strong foundation of social services will uplift the nation, making them healthier, happier, better educated, safer, etc, and thus more productive, more successful, more able to give back to the state to help support those very services and uplift the quality of the entire nation?

…Does he know that his party is basically at best a Centrist/Center-Right ‘Tory Lite’ these days? He won’t see a strong government run social system under either of the main parties, alas :-(

Labours would be slightly less ineffectual than the Tories, but they’re still just slightly shuffling things around to look like they’re doing something, whilst lining their pockets and focusing only on helping the economy (aka the rich). As opposed to focusing on helping their actual citizens, which in turn will help the economy.

Still, it’s amazing to see someone actually understand the situation for once and admit it publicly. It almost gives me hope!