(Thread IKs:
OwlFancier, crispix)
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I wonder if this result will embolden the left within Labour and if so embolden them to do what exactly. Strikes me that it would be a very good time to launch something new. I can't see it and even if they did I am not sure how likely they are to pull it off well but there won't be many better opportunities. At the very least it should strengthen their hand internally.
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Mar 1, 2024 10:33
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Itzena posted:Nah, the NEC will use this as a further excuse to continue imposing candidates: “We’ve seen what happens when we leave selection to the local party, and we cannot take that risk in The Most Important General Election In A Generation” and so on. Surely nearly everyone is selected now? And regardless if they do continue to impose candidates which I'm sure they will wherever they can still get away with it surely it would only make a breakaway more likely as you would have a group of dissafected former MPs.
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Mar 1, 2024 10:45
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EvilHawk posted:Probably not. This result was almost entirely caused by the Labour candidate being a poo poo, and the Tories and Lib Dems being pretty much useless in the area. Galloway essentially ran a single issue campaign and got lucky in the circumstances. By elections can be weird like this. Of course they will win it back, that isn't the point I'm making. More that there is room for high profile independent/something else candidates to damage Labour at the next election. More room than in a great many other elections I would say. sebzilla posted:Nah, if the left of Labour split now they'd all get ChUK'd out of their seats at the next election. Quite possibly. If Corbyn and Abbot can make it back somehow it would be something interesting to defect to nearer the start of the parliament.
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Mar 1, 2024 11:21
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Bozza posted:this is extremely dumb and short-sighted Returning superstar with an extremely good post. Scikar posted:Yeah, the economic point is a valid one and not everyone in the article is necessarily an arsehole, but it's hard to be sympathetic towards people who share no sympathy themselves. I think that's a big assumption. These people tend to be well educated and politically aware, particularly when it comes to local issues. For example you will never find a bigger supporter of teachers at a local primary school than middle class parents. They pretty much consider teachers superhuman and in the most part will back pay rises to the hilt. Post office closing? They can rally an army. Local foodbank needs this or that, who do you think buys it? However they also have nothing to get excited about at a national level and are extremely time poor, making anything nuanced and complex, like the internal politics of the Labour party, a massive turn off. Far easier to be jealous of your neighbour's holiday and moan about the state of the roads. These things used to just work. There will always be twats and people who are never going to get it because of upbringing or whatever, but although some might have a slightly better boat it's the same storm we're in. We need to stick together. Tesseraction posted:I guess the thing that surprises me is that on those salaries I'd expect them to be doing better. I'm on less and not having similar issues, but then I've foregone the idea of home ownership or kids in the near term (if at all), so I guess it's more that the aspiration of a house and kids is unaffordable now, and yeah pretty much. Kids are very expensive. Particularly in the two years before free hours of childcare kicks in. You can easily spend over a £1000 per month, per kid. I remember one thread regular with what a lot of people here would consider a very good salary mentioning that they have two under two and struggling at the moment. In another somewhat bleak post I remember them saying they basically don't go out, which doesn't surprise me either. Owning a house is bizarrely often not as expensive as renting provided you can afford the deposit in an area you would like to have a house. I have a dream that if I ever win the lottery I am just going to provide houses outright then rent them cheaply, give one away to the renters as soon as I have the money to buy another saved up and so on Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Mar 5, 2024 |
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Mar 5, 2024 15:15
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big scary monsters posted:I'm not going to go for the bat for the guy crying about being on £75k but you'd think the fact people like that are starting to feel the squeeze would be more concerning to those in power. If you're losing the comfortable professionals then who is even left to support the interparty Tory consensus apart from landlords and pensioners? This is exactly where we're at. There is a reason so much is being done around childcare. It's because the last remnants of the Tory vote under 50 are struggling and that is a major cost for that demographic. The age crossover for likelihood of Labour vs Tory voting is now 68 (!!! and also lol). https://twitter.com/tom_sasse/status/1762970707284103369 Edit: Can I add as well how openly sexist our system still is. The reason 75k bloke's wife doesn't work is likely because there is simply no point. She can't out earn the childcare costs. She'll have to go back to work later but the decision to have kids will likely hugely impact her career. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Mar 5, 2024 |
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Mar 5, 2024 16:37
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kingturnip posted:There also is a need for more academic research on some topics like "Does watching violent porn make you more likely to want to enact it?" (to pick a media favourite topic) but the fact that there's a real taboo around discussion of porn, probably puts a barrier in place. This is a very tricky study to conduct well due to ethics. Several studies have had to be halted because they were concerned someone may be violent as a result. It's not a settled question though partly for that reason. Porn use in general is known to be bad for the brain though and a predictor of sexual violence if not the root cause. It is very difficult to separate out because it's so ubiquitous. Some of the issues are discussed here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/talking-apes/202104/does-porn-use-lead-sexual-violence%3famp I don't make this post to shame anyone. It just is what it is. Edit: It should also be noted that studies have found BDSM practitioners tend to be healthy and well adjusted mentally - https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE94U17K/#:~:text=But%20in%20the%20new%20study,take%20part%20in%20those%20activities. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Mar 7, 2024 |
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Mar 7, 2024 11:20
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Nvm
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Mar 7, 2024 17:23
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Failed Imagineer posted:The banjo is an African-American instrument which was co-opted by whites, but has always had exceptional black players up to current day standouts like Rhiannon Giddens. But I guess we're talking about the same thing Rhiannon Giddens is exceptionally good and everyone who has even the vaguest interest in trad, folk or americana should give her stuff a try.
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Mar 8, 2024 17:19
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Jedit posted:Who wants to take over, is the question. That chalice isn't so much poisoned as napalmed. Or are they just trying to force him into calling a GE because they know that however hosed they are now, it will be worse in six or nine months. I think whoever wants it will be thinking they can move their ratings a bit, get through the election with an inspiring Starmer style "at least I'm not as bad as that guy or that guy that came before him" message then inherit the aftermarth. I doubt it will go well.
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Mar 19, 2024 10:48
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deletebeepbeepbeep posted:It's not just a numbers game though is it? A lack of housing has significant real world impacts for people. It both is and is not a numbers game. The UK actually has plenty of housing, some of that stock isn't great and could use being renewed but we don't actually need to build in anything like the numbers being quoted. The problem is at lot of that stock is in the hands of far too few people and the price of it is hugely artificially inflated. Nick Bano posted:In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. It is impossible to make a case for unique levels of housing scarcity in Britain, in comparative international or historical terms. What has changed for the worse is not the amount of housing per household, but its cost. And cost, in turn, has a great deal to do with the landlordism that is at the heart of the present crisis. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...0can%20produce. I live somewhere where there are a lot of new builds going up, too many for the local infrastructure really. I don't resent it though, people need somewhere to live and can't get one in the city nearby which is basically an Airbnb and student cash cow for landlords despite some legislative attempts to address it. If they could get a place in the city many wouldn't be buying new builds here. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Mar 21, 2024 |
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Mar 21, 2024 09:52
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Bozza posted:London probably has the hottest jazz scene in the world right now as there's a genuine musical fusion / overlap with London specific genres (grime, drill) and also the West African and Indian musical influences, plus a broader willingness to go outwith the bounds of trad jazz These are all great. Glasgow jazz scene also currently totally banging. Recommend Corto Alto and Fergus McCreadie in particular. forkboy84 posted:A) The first time I heard Sons of Kemet I was so excited. I can't even remember where I found out about them, I mean it must have been The Quietus because there's so few other spots, but featuring Shabaka Hutchings from The Comet Is Coming. Your Queen Is a Reptile is such a jawdropping record in a way few are. I need to get my hands on his new album, which I'm just now finding came out last Friday. Apparently Andre 3000 guests on it, playing a native Mexican drone flute, because of course when you have one of the biggest names in rap of the last 2 decades on your record he plays a drone flute Andre recently released a whole album of flute music. It has it's moments but overall sadly I cannot recommend. Save from the the song titles which are excellent. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 11:17
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Jakabite posted:I just remembered the next gig I’ve got planned is a full play through over two nights of The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs in London. Can’t loving wait. Any other Merritt heads in here? We're going to the Sunday of that - wedding on the Saturday somewhat annoyingly but I'm sure it will be fun. Looking forward to it. Lunsku posted:As to music, there’s just so much interesting one around nowadays that I’m mostly looking for decent human curation of it all. Used to listen to this weekly Independent Music Podcast, by two lads from South London, which was absolutely great, but they stopped at the end of the year. Backlog is definitely worth checking out, found some good stuff through there: https://open.spotify.com/show/5aUs2wPS2gwIGaHtIaFqc8?si=aEA0ysXAR3ea6o7loL4fgA Thanks for the tip. I'm in an "album club" that started over lockdown. Four of us pick an album each for everyone to listen to and chat about over a week. Really useful for new stuff but I am always in the hunt for more. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 14:16
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Danger - Octopus! posted:If you use Bluesky, there's a couple of different feeds you can subscribe to which automatically scrape for any posts with a bandcamp link in them - just search for 'bandcamp' in the Discover New Feeds box. You generally need to mute a couple of radio station bots that link to everything they play othewise it gets a bit much, but once you've done that it's a nice way of just being able to occasionally dip into what people you don't know are posting about and seeing if any of it is interesting. Thanks, that's another great tip. Failed Imagineer posted:This kind of stuff is v helpful. I have a few DJ mates, and one is a DJ/blogger/podcaster/Discord-er/etc so i get plenty of good steers. We also have a "random gigs" WhatsApp groups to encourage each other to get off our asses midweek and take a punt on new music shows And this is to be applauded. Local shows are fun in their own right even if the music ends up being not your cup of tea and if they're really naff you can always have a laugh. That said, my mate has never forgiven Simon Neil for spitting all over him during Biffy's set supporting King Adora in front of about 15 people at The Mission in Dundee.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:20
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Failed Imagineer posted:I laughed hard at this bit. But it was in the movie Amsterdam, not See How They Run - both kind of twee period romps so understandable confusion. This is how I viewed her but recently I have gone a bit deep end. Got into her kind of backwards - from Folklore with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Aaron Dessner (The National) - through to the earlier stuff. She could always sling a hook and is a very good lyricist imo, but I don't think you really appreciate her until you start to see the journey she's been on from bible belt country pinup to beatlemania level superstar. Red and 1984 are the key nuts to crack, when I understood how autobiographical they were they become a lot more impactful and you could see the themes running through from earlier and to later records. Warning - understanding this may require you to listen to a Swifty go on about Jake Gyllenhaal a lot! She has improved a ton over ten albums as well. I honestly think she'll be remembered as a feminist icon - akin to Boni Tyler or Joni Mitchell - in retrospect. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 15:51
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Failed Imagineer posted:She's very good, but it just gets a bit much. I can appreciate that and might have recently reached my own saturation point with her. Done it with plenty of other artists as well. That said I think it's very hard to compare backwards and say definitively who is or isn't an amazing songwriter. Her songs mean a great deal to a great number of people and she is probably the most high profile voice of this generation of women. I wouldn't say she is as good as Joni Mitchell either but who am I to say really. Time will tell I'm sure. In the meantime I am going to continue to annoy my obsessed mate by telling him the best thing The National have made in the last decade is a Taylor Swift album. smellmycheese posted:Fun fact. I have kissed Boni Tyler This is an excellent fact.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:21
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Kin posted:It's anecdotal, but I could swear any polls showing bumps for labour up here only appear after heavy negative press for the SNP. I generally think the SNP get far too easy a ride on here but without a proper alternative I reckon there will be swing back during an election campaign. They look like a late stage administration but not as late stage as the Tory one and the election campaign will give Hamza a platform. Pretty much all he needs to do with it is look like a human being.
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Apr 18, 2024 10:30
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forkboy84 posted:The SNP need to win so we can get independence so we can bin the SNP Even if we assume independence would definitely be a good thing I'm not even sure the SNP being in power is helping that cause right now - at least in terms of polling. It can't work being both the change and status quo party forever. The longer they hang around the more baggage may get attached to the idea. I can very much understand voting for them though.
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Apr 18, 2024 11:07
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Also, unless you're in a real property hot spot, it's unlikely the offer will get pulled as if they have to go back on the market they're looking at a minimum of another 6 months. This, I think it's far more likely they are worried you are getting cold feet as interest rates fail to drop.
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Apr 19, 2024 09:52
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Can't say I was expecting the Scottish coalition to collapse this morning. I for one am shocked etc that the SNP seem to be heading to the right. I expect a bit of pantomime is involved here as not only can the Greens make the extremely valid moral point re. the ditching of carbonation targets but they can also better position themselves for next year's election.
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Apr 25, 2024 09:24
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Communist Bear posted:Can they though? This was the nearest they had to power, it's extremely unlikely they'll be in this position again. It depends whether you regard politics as a game to be won or a means to represent what you believe. I personally think it's very, very hard for them to stay part of a government that is essentially shrugging its shoulders on climate targets. Not sure their leadership agreed, although that may be performative, but their membership seems to think so. I anticipate them picking up more of the left's vote at the election on the back of this but lots of wheels still in spin. They could just implode. It's likely being part of the SNP Government won't go down that well at the next election so it depends if they can distance themselves from that gracefully.
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Apr 25, 2024 09:51
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Reveilled posted:The SNP has survived as a minority administration before, for confidence and supply, don't they only need for a few MSPs to agree to abstain? Because of this maths and the fact that Labour and Tories will get performative about coordination I think it very unlikely that the Scottish Government will collapse. I do expect them to struggle to get anything even mildly controversial done though. There's going to be a lot of procedural jiggery pokery.
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Apr 25, 2024 12:00
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Scotland getting its VONC on. Life sure comes at you fast. Reckon he'll scrape through but depends how pissed off the Greens are. Pretty embarrassing if he needs the presiding officer to decide. That one Alba MSP is going to be after some bizarre concessions most likely.
Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2024 14:04
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Pistol_Pete posted:The question is whether the people running Reform are prepared to play the same political game that the Brexit party did, of if they're genuinely aiming at destroying and replacing the Tories. Aren't they in many cases exactly the same people? I wonder if they've learned anything.
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May 2, 2024 14:19
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Yea I don't think the internet itself is bad. It's kids having a smartphone and being attached to it 24/7, rather than only accessing it via a desktop PC at home (where it's basically another console). The drive towards smartphones is mostly driven by social media. This is the difference imo, it's just so ubiquitous. When I was growing up kids TV was over when the BBC stopped putting it out at 5 pm on a weekday and 10 am on Saturday. Now any streaming service can be on anytime, anywhere. It creates huge pressure and is very difficult to manage.
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May 8, 2024 09:19
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fuctifino posted:I know vulnerable people who were swept up in this nonsense, and they ended up disconnecting from their families and friends and ended up in bad mental health places, The tactics used and the end result seemed like textbook branwashing culty behaviour to me. Alpha is really just an introduction to Christianity. It has better production values than some similar things but is fairly standard as these things go. It probably goes into a bit more historical stuff than some similar courses - ie it will talk about people like Constantine and how the modern Bible was put together. Christianity is meant to change people but there are definitely safe and unsafe environments for that. I think one of the big challenges that churches, even very good ones, face is trying to deal with vulnerable people without the necessary expertise or resources. Increasingly they have nowhere else to send them for help either. MP's offices have the same problem actually.
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May 9, 2024 09:51
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Tesseraction posted:Enjoying the dual threads here of "Alpha made friends and family insane cultists" and "nah mate it's a harmless intro to Christianity" atm. You get a big enough group of people some of them are going to be a bit insane. I bet Alpha would even let Natalie Elphicke in if she asked. Guavanaut posted:This is why I'm a fan of Adam Smith's "free marketplace of religions"/"every man his own priest" philosophy. It exposes the dual/tri/quoit nature of man, but somehow ends up better than all the alternatives. You do you bro. Zalakwe fucked around with this message at 10:06 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 10:04
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Guavanaut posted:Yup, that was exactly his point. It turned out much better than the alternative where clergy lynched students in Scotland from trees for refusing to affirm the Trinity during the time he was alive. Working out his own salvation with fear and trembling. Also lots of money. Personally I consider completely rampant individualism to be one of the biggest issues facing our society but I'm also deeply suspicious of any institution claiming to know the one true way to this or that with certainty. Viewpoints like that only ever seem to be used to exclude and persecute less privileged people although thankfully not in trees anymore, at least not in Scotland. Is there an ultimate truth, possibly. Is it worth looking for, probably. Can we hope to know it fully, probably not. Judge not, lest...
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May 9, 2024 10:26
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