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Reply | I don't agree....
at 13:55 18 Sep 2025
Regarding " driver/cyclist/opperator skill", I would agree if we were discussing someone turning at a roundabout or something. But this was a sudden and probably involuntary movement in response to something (you yourself used the word "swerve"), not a matter of skill.
I was once cycling up a steep hill (standing up to pedal) and my chain snapped as an HGV went past - luckily I fell leftwards into the verve, not rightwards under the HGV. If I'd fallen rightwards and died, would you have been questioning my cycling skills?
I'm bemused that you still can't see how insensitive/distasteful that comment was, and even more so that what you took away from that discussion was that you'd been unfairly maligned. |
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Reply | I don't agree....
at 01:40 18 Sep 2025
I don't think this is an accurate representation of why you copped some flak in that thread. Halfway through the discussion you appeared to try blaming the victim for their death. It was an appalling thing to say.
Having re-read it, I'm struggling to see why it's scarred you. It's not like you got 97 downvotes or something. There was some robust debate in there but you also had supporters.
weird story: pedestrian jailed for causing death of a cyclist by giant_stow 9 Mar 2023 9:36If cars speed down a 3 lane 40mph limited road, because everyone does it, does that mean no one's speeding in law?
Re your last point, why has no one asked why the cyclist didn't swerve to the inside? If she had, no death. If the path was so wide and plentiful, that should have been an option.
[Post edited 18 Sep 2:49]
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Reply | This place is fooking awful at the moment
at 23:04 17 Sep 2025
Why the need for the second comment? I would consider myself firmly on the left from an economic perspective, but I think Vylan's comments at Glastonbury were pretty disgusting. |
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Reply | This place is fooking awful at the moment
at 16:07 17 Sep 2025
Really? I find this place a much more pleasant environment for political debates than Twitter or Facebook, where racism is openly allowed. Here you see people posting nonsense and bigotry get called out, dissected and rebutted, which is what I suspect makes political discussions on here deeply uncomfortable for some posters, as they aren't used to being challenged. |
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Reply | If there was an election today, who would get your vote?
at 02:15 17 Sep 2025
I would say FPTP is the worst of all the electoral systems. It produces highly unrepresentative results and is the easiest to manipulate via gerrymandering. AV would have been an improvement, but it would have been better to go for full STV (like Ireland has), which isn't a bad system as it tends to weed out extremists (but it also doesn't produce proportional results).
There are various forms of PR - my favoured approach would be open list PR with multiple constituencies (based on recognisable geographic units like counties) and perhaps 50 levelling seats to make the overall result properly proportional. Open list PR would mean voters get to rank the candidates of the party they vote for, which gives them less ability to stitch up selections. This would be preferable to the full national / closed list PR system that countries like Israel have, where there is no regional representation and a single list of candidates (sometimes just selected by the party leader).
One issue with systems that don't produce majority governments all the time is the unhappiness about post-election coalitions (like in the UK in 2010 or the Danish Social Democrats abandoning their usual left-wing allies and forming a government with right-wing parties after their last election). A system in which parties have to declare which other parties they would and would not work with after an election could help with retaining trust (or perhaps someone could invent a new system with a kind of second ballot where you vote for a preferred coalition). |
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Reply | If there was an election today, who would get your vote?
at 01:40 17 Sep 2025
The referendum was on the AV system, which is the one used for mayoral elections (thankfully reinstated). It not a proportional system, but is undoubtedly a better system than FPTP.
Italy is always cited as an example of why PR doesn't work, but conveniently ignores all the other countries that have it and don't seem to suffer like Germany and all the Scandinavian countries. |
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 16:39 16 Sep 2025
I'm aware of that. I was asking what the Islington bubble is meant to mean? |
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 16:06 16 Sep 2025
What is the 'Islington bubble'? The council estates where he is very popular? The young professionals stuck in the outrageously expensive private rented sector who he was offering hope to? There are some wealthy people in pockets of the borough but they are not his main constituency.
Corbyn was popular with groups of people around the country, not just in Islington. |
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Reply | Far right politico Charlie Kirk just shot in the neck in Utah
at 21:35 15 Sep 2025
One of the big issues here IMO is use of misinformation by the likes of Kirk.
For all the discussion about debates, a conversation where one side offers the truth and one side offers lies is not a debate. It's not possible to have a meaningful debate with people relying on misinformation, because they don't have to back up their arguments with facts and can just pull any old nonsense out of their backside (as our Prime Minister before last used to do). And, yes, of course the person relying on the truth can point that out, but as we've seen for the last 15+ years in the UK, that doesn't cut through.
Politics needs a reset, and I would like to see that reset being all sides agreeing to stop using misinformation. Programmes like Question Time and leaders' debates need a real-time fact checker.
But it's not going to happen; the right in particular have become more and more reliant on misinformation over the last 20 years to the point where their lies are Trumpishly blatant. And what's worse is that their supporters don't care. As long as they're 'owning the libs' or whatever the term is, they'll accept it until it really hurts them (like the infamous 'I voted Tory but didn't think they'd cut MY benefits' woman on QT). And I'm not sure we can get out of this mess given social media allows people to lie (and now be openly racist) with impunity.
One thing I very much appreciate about having moved to the Falkland Islands is that it is very human. Nearly everyone knows each other; there are no political parties and there is no dehumanising of anyone by any of the politicians. The tone of the one newspaper is as far from the Daily Mail as you can imagine. |
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 16:54 11 Sep 2025
"Most people can get a holiday visa" is utter nonsense.
People coming from the countries in question would find it very difficult, if not impossible to get a holiday visa. My Chinese partner's mum has been denied a visitor visa in the past (because she's not working, which shouldn't be a surprise given she's over 70). |
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Reply | Banksy
at 16:47 11 Sep 2025
'middle class' is the new 'champagne socialist' |
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Reply | Some murders should not be mentioned ...
at 16:28 11 Sep 2025
I appreciate logic and reason have no place in American politics, but I'd be interested to know how that incident justifies removing public transport subsidies. |
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Reply | People considering voting Reform
at 16:33 9 Sep 2025
Aren't Reform proposing massive tax cuts that would hugely increase the government deficit (like Trump has done)? |
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Reply | Democracy in action?
at 16:21 9 Sep 2025
IMO this is why the government is coming unstuck - the Labour right don't seem to have any principles other than being in power, which means when they get it, they don't really know what to do. |
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Reply | Rayner resigns
at 21:13 8 Sep 2025
This is a bit different isn't it?
What she's done here is tax evasion (i.e. breaking the law), not tax avoidance (which I'd personally define as a legal but convoluted and morally questionable scheme to get out of paying tax). |
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