I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?
Politics and Current Affairs
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Starmer to Trump:
Go screw yourself.
He must have seen the positive press he was getting for standing up to Trump and said “nope, can’t be having that”🙄
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Netanyahu just made a speech where he said Ghengis Khan was superior to Jesus Christ.
This is some kind of apocalyptic, civilizational confrontation.
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Mentions Pearl Harbor as a shot to the PM:
Now as for the TSA situation at airports, ICE:
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Sigh, arson attack on ambulances owned and ran by a Jewish community transport organisation, cue the internet and social media being ablaze over “Jewish ambulances”.
The reality:
The vehicles hit were used by Hatzola:
They are a community transport operator.
“Hatzola is a non-profit, volunteer organisation established in 1979 to provide pre-hospital emergency medical response and transportation at no cost, to the North London community.”
Didn’t know of them until today.
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First, he went in on megachurch pastors; now, Druski is going for Erika Kirk’s neck:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/811994768614658/
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April 12th there are elections in Hungary, which Orban could lose. That would also be a loss for Putin. There are now stories in the media that Russia could be planning a false flag assassination attempt on Orban, to create sympathy for him and help him stay in power.
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£100k cap on political donations and Reform be squealing foul.
It’s as if Megatron went into politics, he who cares not for rights now pleads for them.
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https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/28/us/live-news/no-kings-protests-03-28-26
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8wy7g1gd1o
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£100k cap on political donations and Reform be squealing foul.
It’s as if Megatron went into politics, he who cares not for rights now pleads for them.
Another potentially really good bit of (lower case) reform is a public interest test for all contracts over £1m for public services, to see whether they’d be better served kept in-house rather than out-sourced. Which admittedly still might not do much if people just hand-wave through the test, but if applied properly, it could really cut down on the out-sourcing empires of the likes of Capita etc.
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There’s an interesting case in Germany that’s caused a lot of discussion. A popular TV comedian/presenter (He’s had shows where he’s basically doing a Sasha Baron Cohen thing) and his celebrity wife have turned out to have… well, she’s been talking for a while about experiencing something terrible when fake accounts and deepfake pronography of her showed up on the net, as well as people being contacted by those fake accounts and thinking they had had cybersex with her. All pretty terrible. And this month, she’s made public that it was her husband, Christian Ulmen, who had been doing all this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg9xvrxz8jo
Now, this has already sparked a lot of discussion, especially of changing laws to make it easier to punish this kind of sexual cyber-crime.
And now our fantastically xenophobic chancellor Merz has finally said something about the whole thing and he managed to, in like five sentences or so, blame migration for men sexually attacking women. While talking about a case in which the perpetrator is called Christian Ulmen, which is about as German a name as you can have.
(And I am saying that as someone whose full name is disturbingly similar to that guy’s name.)5 users thanked author for this post.
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£100k cap on political donations and Reform be squealing foul.
It’s as if Megatron went into politics, he who cares not for rights now pleads for them.
Another potentially really good bit of (lower case) reform is a public interest test for all contracts over £1m for public services, to see whether they’d be better served kept in-house rather than out-sourced. Which admittedly still might not do much if people just hand-wave through the test, but if applied properly, it could really cut down on the out-sourcing empires of the likes of Capita etc.
Yeah, that could have major positive impacts. One of things that got used as anti-EU fuel was the procurement rules. But the choice to go with lowest financial bidder was a UK political one. OJEU rules allowed for awarding to bids of higher cost but with social / environmental benefits the others did not.
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How is this sort of wording anything other than the blatant manufacture of consent?
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How is this sort of wording anything other than the blatant manufacture of consent?
This stuff is all fucking rotten. We saw it at the height of the Gaza atrocities too, weasel wording by people too scared to call something what it is.
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Could be a positive sign of the rats leaving the sinking ship. But it’ll still stay afloat for another three years no matter what, so what’s the use.
Trump’s approval rating are at a new low, which, you know, good, but it’s incredible that they’re still at 36%. Over a third of Americans are clearly fucking rabidly insane.
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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germanys-far-right-afd-demands-withdrawal-of-us-troops/3884583
There have always been Germans saying “Ami go home” and certainly the German far right believe they’re occupied by the US, but sounds like these will become more common with Trump being this unhinged and Israel going crazy. This benefits Putler of course…but maybe a scenario like this is becoming unavoidable.
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Saudi Arabia
They will never get any part of Saudi Arabia.
If they tried, Israel would be hit by terrorist attacks that would put Hamas to shame.
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But they will try it.
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Saudi Arabia
They will never get any part of Saudi Arabia.
If they tried, Israel would be hit by terrorist attacks that would put Hamas to shame.
More importantly, the US would stop them from doing anything crazy to Saudi Arabia. These are Trump’s oil friends. These are the states the US goes to war for when necessary.
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Also Israel has in the past attacked Qatar, who is also supposedly a friend of the US.
And that’s when Trump put a stop to Israel’s attack. Fuck, he forced Netanyahu to humiliate himself by calling the Qataris from the Oval Office to apologise.
The US will go a long way in their support of Israel, and they certainly don’t give a fuck about a genocide against the Palestinians. But you fuck with their oil money, and that support will be gone in the blink of an eye, that’s for sure.
Also, don’t forget the Saudis let him touch their magic ball.
(Kidding, really. This isn’t even about Trump. Like I said, the US have never been quicker to start a war than when Saddam annexed Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia.)
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Well as this war is showing, oil income is not guaranteed.
Oh, on the contrary, it is very much guaranteed. Saudi Arabia was with Israel in pushing Trump into this war.
SA is making a bank with the spike in oil prices. It is also giving them an opportunity to renegotiate a lot of investment deals to give themselves better terms. This war also will give them better leverage in the oil markets.
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Also Israel has in the past attacked Qatar, who is also supposedly a friend of the US.
And that’s when Trump put a stop to Israel’s attack. Fuck, he forced Netanyahu to humiliate himself by calling the Qataris from the Oval Office to apologise.
The US will go a long way in their support of Israel, and they certainly don’t give a fuck about a genocide against the Palestinians. But you fuck with their oil money, and that support will be gone in the blink of an eye, that’s for sure.
Also, don’t forget the Saudis let him touch their magic ball.
(Kidding, really. This isn’t even about Trump. Like I said, the US have never been quicker to start a war than when Saddam annexed Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia.)
Well Saudi Arabia is a stretch, but it is a goal that has been expressed by ministers like Smotrich and maybe Netanyahu himself. At least I’m sure Netanyahu has expressed this sentiment with regard to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.
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I don’t think Israel or the Saudis counted on Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. But it’s probably correct that SA wasn’t averse to this war happening. There is very old bad blood between SA and Iran.
That being said, who knows what the actual dynamics here were and are, and I think we all pretty much agree on the overall picture.
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An old high school friend of mine became a banker and works for a trading firm in Dubai now, trading oil futures. It’s too bad I have no contact with him anymore, I bet he could tell interesting stories now.
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Die_workwear’s brilliant summary of US politics:
“i swear this administration is a TV show. the head of the department of war accidentally texted war plans to a journalist. the head of domestic intelligence got hacked and used his real name for a porn account. and now former head of homeland security is grappling with her husband’s secret cross-dressing double life in their anti-LGBTQ+ political party.”
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I heard a journalist I do have some respect for on a podcast say he is so pissed off about journalism in the Netherlands being destroyed, while he says in the same interview he wants to protect liberal values. Guess what, the liberal system also destroys journalism. It delivers everything over to the market forces, which cut everything down.
I think we need something like the BBC or Al Jazeera, and use that model for newspapers as well. State funded and state supported.
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There’s also the way in which the BBC has been completely subborned by the last two governments.
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Well, okay, it may not be completely fool-proof.
But just like many other important institutions (including my field), publicly run is still preferable to private companies, to my mind. Yes, some government may manage to take more influence than should be possible, but with a private TV station, newspaper or whatever, the experience is that if some mad billionaire takes over, it’ll just become a propaganda machine immediately and without any means of resistance.
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Of course state media and private media could coexist, as well as social media etc. I’m not saying the state should have a news monopoly.
I also believe the EU needs an anglophone media platform to represent itself to the rest of the world. Al Jazeera kind of does that for part of the Arab world.
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Bondi:
https://abcnews.com/US/trump-replacing-pam-bondi-attorney-general-todd-blanche/story?id=131647710
On Iran:
Jet pilot:
On DHS employees:
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-hell-sign-order-pay-dhs-employees-shutdown/story?id=131650312
Executive order… He still talks and acts like he is on “The Apprentice”
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They seem to attract antisocial folks, somehow. They look big and tough, like a motorbike kind of, so I think that’s why the teenagers who are prone to being a bit antisocial get them
But if you just keep to the rules and behave politely in traffic there’s nothing wrong with fatbikes.
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State government in New Jersey (where I live) have cracked down hard on motorized bicycles and scooters. New rules that came into effect last year include:
* Riders must be at least 15 years old
* Riders must have an official driver’s license or a motorized bicycle license (effective July 2026)
* Vehicles must be registered and insured
* Vehicles are prohibited on sidewalksThese rules may read like an over-reaction; but a month ago my wife almost got run down as she turned a corner by a kid speeding down the sidewalk on a motorized bike. Luckily he squeezed on his brake and swerved at the last second, otherwise she would have been seriously injured. As far as I’m concerned, a motorized vehicle should be on the road, not the sidewalk, whether it is a scooter, a bicycle, or an 18-wheel tractor-trailer; sidewalks are for pedestrians and for manually propelled vehicles.
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State government in New Jersey (where I live) have cracked down hard on motorized bicycles and scooters. New rules that came into effect last year include: * Riders must be at least 15 years old * Riders must have an official driver’s license or a motorized bicycle license (effective July 2026) * Vehicles must be registered and insured * Vehicles are prohibited on sidewalks
That seems great. The problem in the Netherlands is that politicians want to make a difference between “decent” electric bikes that look like normal bikes, and so called fatbikes that look like this:
And that’s legally pretty much impossible. They’re just normal electrical bikes but a bit more macho looking and with thick tyres.
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And in “Pete Hegseth is a bigoted prick” news:
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These rules may read like an over-reaction; but a month ago my wife almost got run down as she turned a corner by a kid speeding down the sidewalk on a motorized bike. Luckily he squeezed on his brake and swerved at the last second, otherwise she would have been seriously injured. As far as I’m concerned, a motorized vehicle should be on the road, not the sidewalk, whether it is a scooter, a bicycle, or an 18-wheel tractor-trailer; sidewalks are for pedestrians and for manually propelled vehicles.
Over here, the sideways are only for pedestrians and that’s it. Bikes go on the road or in special bike lanes, where those are available. Same goes for scooters. The only exception are children under, like, ten or so I think.
But I think once you have that, the thing that’s a bit much is the driver’s licence (and the over 15 thing).
I think there’s a lot of 13-15 years old these days for whom e-bikes provide a form of mobility that we never knew at that age, and that’s pretty cool.
Maybe you could limit the speed some more for kid’s bikes. It’s 25km/h generally here, you could take it down to 20km/h for kids.1 user thanked author for this post.
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That seems great. The problem in the Netherlands is that politicians want to make a difference between “decent” electric bikes that look like normal bikes, and so called fatbikes that look like this:
In a bizarre coincidence, there is a brewery in the USA called New Belgium that produces a very popular ale called:
FAT TIRE“>https://www.newbelgium.com/beer/fat-tire/
(I know Belgium and the Netherlands are two different countries, but still, a nice coincidence, dontcha think?)
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I know Belgium and the Netherlands are two different countries
Only since the Union of Arras in 1579! One day we’ll get it back.
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I believe that a significant part of right wing voting men have some secret sexual thing, like being gay or having some fetish, that they can’t accept, something that they feel they can exorcise, cleanse themselves from by voting right wing.
Umm Kamala has some good points…but if I vote for her…I might be homosexual!
This is one of those frustrating things because there’s a truth to it – see the correlation between events like the RNC and spikes in Grindr usage, and the disproportionate number of sex scandals in right wing circles – but at the same time it’s a quick and reductive way to minimise actual hatred and bigotry. You’ll often see people comment online that the homophobe de jour is secretly gay or a transphobe is a chaser, but in the majority of cases they’re just bigots.
It’s also worth noting that a massive percentage of right-wing sex scandals are things that are perfectly fine – like Kristi Noem’s husband’s cross-dressing thing, Lindsay Graham obviously being gay, various people being into BDSM, but as you note they can’t accept it internally.
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State government in New Jersey (where I live) have cracked down hard on motorized bicycles and scooters. New rules that came into effect last year include:
* Riders must be at least 15 years old
* Riders must have an official driver’s license or a motorized bicycle license (effective July 2026)
* Vehicles must be registered and insured
* Vehicles are prohibited on sidewalksThese rules may read like an over-reaction; but a month ago my wife almost got run down as she turned a corner by a kid speeding down the sidewalk on a motorized bike. Luckily he squeezed on his brake and swerved at the last second, otherwise she would have been seriously injured. As far as I’m concerned, a motorized vehicle should be on the road, not the sidewalk, whether it is a scooter, a bicycle, or an 18-wheel tractor-trailer; sidewalks are for pedestrians and for manually propelled vehicles.
Depending on local ordinances in Texas, sidewalks are supposed to be for pedestrians only. You are not supposed to ride any sort of vehicle on them, including bicycles.
My big issue is when there is a sidewalk, and people choose to walk or run in the street. That is so fucking dangerous.
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Trump being a selfish psychopath isn’t news, but the amount of people, either elected or appointed to high office, enabling him should be.
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Trump being a selfish psychopath isn’t news, but the amount of people, either elected or appointed to high office, enabling him should be.
And I’d be willing to hazard a guess that not one of them will face any consequences for that.
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Trump being a selfish psychopath isn’t news, but the amount of people, either elected or appointed to high office, enabling him should be.
And I’d be willing to hazard a guess that not one of them will face any consequences for that.
The only ones facing consequenses are those who voted for him. They are getting fucked over hard (along with hte rest of us) and many are openly expressing regret.
I’m at the point that when Trump does something horrible or something goes wrong, I blame the voters who put him in office.
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Honestly it’s tough to blame people for their votes. People are often raised in a bubble and influenced in ways that make them vote some way, like evangelical Christians. To some extent it overrides free will.
There are also voters who focus on one issue, and don’t have the capacity to see the broader picture. For instance they vote Republican because they don’t like abortion or they are afraid of losing their job, for instance in the coal industry. And there were people who were naive and thought Trump was truthful when he said he would make peace in Ukraine or Gaza.
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That might have flown, with a great deal of charity granted, in 2016 but not 2020 or 2024. At some point, yes, the voters are guilty. Voting is a responsibility that should be taken seriously, too many do not.
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It’s also worth noting that a lot of the analysis of Trump’s initial win that the media pushed turned out to be bullshit. His base wasn’t financially precarious working class people, it was middle-aged, upper-middle-class white people with no college education for example.
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I’m interested in this IQ drop issue, so I’ve had Perplexity give me a quick overview
::sideways look at camera::
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I’m interested in this IQ drop issue, so I’ve had Perplexity give me a quick overview
::sideways look at camera::
I ALREADY WAS AWARE OF THE IRONY, THAT’S WHY I WROTE THAT COMMENT IN PARENTHESIS!!!!
But it will be interesting to see the effects of AI on those IQ points, not to mention other test scores.
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Pakistan are apparently negotiating a ceasefire between the US and Iran at the moment (no mention of Israel in the reports I’ve seen, which seems like a big omission). And, honestly, the Iranians would be mad to agree to anything. There is practically no chance the Americans will stick to anything they say. Trump has already shown the worth of his word on all those “trade deals”, like the one with the UK, which suddenly became irrelevant the next time he had a tantrum and wanted to change tariff rates.
I’m no fan of the Iranian regime, but it’s hard to see how they’re really at fault for much of anything in this conflict. The Americans have achieved the impossible in making the Iranian government seem if not sympathetic then at least in the right. I kinda think the Iranians should just stick it out and wait for the Americans to crumble. Trump’s negotiating position is highly dubious.
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I think there is a connection with modernity and capitalism. People seem to be losing, I dunno, nuance. Everything is about short term gratification of desires. Getting a quick dopamine hit. Concern for others, for mutual benefit, the building of societal trust and the overall good, are dropped to some extent. It blunts the skills we use for such things. We function more on primal emotions.
I also think the “social distancing” during covid is damaging because of this. We lost some of the skills we use in communicating and having social connections.
It is actually cruel, especially to kids who are still acquiring those skills, to do social distancing. In a time of trouble, as corona was, you should encourage people being more social. You need social connection, not social distancing.
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Honestly it’s tough to blame people for their votes. People are often raised in a bubble and influenced in ways that make them vote some way, like evangelical Christians. To some extent it overrides free will.
I’m sorry, Arjan, but that’s just bullshit. I cannot excuse people who vote mindlessly.
Every person who has the right to vote also has a responsibility to make an informed choice about which candidate they should give their vote to. Many Americans spend more time deciding what teams to pick on their March Madness betting poll, or what color to pick for the new car they buy, than they do on choosing who to vote for to run their country for the next 4 years.
I want my vote to reflect the issues and national direction that matter to me, not what matters to my employer, or my union bosses, or to the archbishop of my church, or the guys I play poker with on Thursday night.
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Well, if not as justification, at least it does serve a purpose as analyis, I think. Partisanship has always been a big issue in the US, but with social media, this has been exacarbated to an extent where it’s not even possible to see any kind of common cause with the other side. So the question becomes, how do you reach people for whom the rejection of your politics has been drilled into their nature to such an extent?
I think there is a connection with modernity and capitalism. People seem to be losing, I dunno, nuance. Everything is about short term gratification of desires. Getting a quick dopamine hit. Concern for others, for mutual benefit, the building of societal trust and the overall good, are dropped to some extent. It blunts the skills we use for such things. We function more on primal emotions.
The loss of nuance is one aspect, the other is the deliberate rejection of empathy. This is where libertarianism has led; it’s an ideology that rejects the idea of the common good and even of any kind of empathy with people who aren’t your direct family completely. And now this has become acceptable in mainstream politics, it’s what Trump and his ilk as well as Musk and the tech bros preach, and it’s – besides misogyny – at the root of the whole manosphere and transphobia thing. Once again, Orwell got it right – if Trump announced Two Minutes of Hate every day, led by himself, that’s be a huge hit with his followers.
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Pakistan are apparently negotiating a ceasefire between the US and Iran at the moment (no mention of Israel in the reports I’ve seen, which seems like a big omission). And, honestly, the Iranians would be mad to agree to anything. There is practically no chance the Americans will stick to anything they say. Trump has already shown the worth of his word on all those “trade deals”, like the one with the UK, which suddenly became irrelevant the next time he had a tantrum and wanted to change tariff rates.
I’m no fan of the Iranian regime, but it’s hard to see how they’re really at fault for much of anything in this conflict. The Americans have achieved the impossible in making the Iranian government seem if not sympathetic then at least in the right. I kinda think the Iranians should just stick it out and wait for the Americans to crumble. Trump’s negotiating position is highly dubious.
Yeah, it’s bonkers that Trump has managed to render the US as worse than Iran, but he’s managed it.
Did anyone predict the US losing a propaganda war to AI-created Lego attack shorts, created with US AI tools?
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Honestly it’s tough to blame people for their votes. People are often raised in a bubble and influenced in ways that make them vote some way, like evangelical Christians. To some extent it overrides free will.
I’m sorry, Arjan, but that’s just bullshit. I cannot excuse people who vote mindlessly.
Every person who has the right to vote also has a responsibility to make an informed choice about which candidate they should give their vote to. Many Americans spend more time deciding what teams to pick on their March Madness betting poll, or what color to pick for the new car they buy, than they do on choosing who to vote for to run their country for the next 4 years.
I want my vote to reflect the issues and national direction that matter to me, not what matters to my employer, or my union bosses, or to the archbishop of my church, or the guys I play poker with on Thursday night.
Well there’s a lot of propaganda ot there influencing how people vote, and that is outside of the voting individual’s control. (As well as other factor’s outside of our control, like what religion one is born in, one’s education, how parents and friends and loved ones influence them etc)
For instance in Russia, which is saturated with Putin’s propaganda, Putin’s approval rating, according to reliable polls, is very high. Can you blame the voting Russian for that? Can you say a Russian who supports Putin is just a bad person? He is in a closed off information bubble. Obviously it’s not that bad (yet) in Western countries, but still we are not immune to our own propaganda.
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I’m interested in this IQ drop issue,
A cognitive neuroscientist testified in front of US Congress, attesting to the fact that Generation Z (and Generation Alphas after them) are the first generations ever to decrease in cognitive abilities.
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I had a thanks to njerry posting… I have always been railing about voter mentality for the longest. The US has been called a “stupid country” and there have been books touching on the sociology of people voting against their best interests, voting to spite others, single issue, ignorance, being fickle, not seeing the bigger picture etc. and then always these questions of “Why can’t the US have some of these cool national programs like in other countries?” (As one book said when it came to things that used to be exclusive only to them, they would rather not have that benefit that would be all inclusive. They would vote against it out of spite just to deprive the rest.)
Some of the MAGA voters are regretting their decisions only because it’s starting to affect their bottom line. They really voted for others to be the target and are upset now that they did not see how interconnected things were. They never expected it, but they ended up voting for their own foreclosure, being let go from work, paying more overall (gas, groceries). Some ended up voting for their own deportation. It’s all a mess.
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Utter lunacy, this is The Guardian’s headline of an hour or so ago.
“Middle East crisis live: Trump says military action helping people of Iran because ‘they want to hear bombs because they want to be free’”
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Well there’s a lot of propaganda ot there influencing how people vote, and that is outside of the voting individual’s control. (As well as other factor’s outside of our control, like what religion one is born in, one’s education, how parents and friends and loved ones influence them etc)
That’s a weak excuse at best.
It is every voter’s responsibility to do their due diligence. There are many, many sources they can check and review to get a better understanding of candidates and issues. If they are only getting information from a narrow focus of sources, that’s either laziness or willful ignorance, or both. There is no excuse for not doing the work.
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I’m interested in this IQ drop issue,
A cognitive neuroscientist testified in front of US Congress, attesting to the fact that Generation Z (and Generation Alphas after them) are the first generations ever to decrease in cognitive abilities.
And it’s worth noting that in the US, this is by design. The education system has been thoroughly sabotaged over the course of decades by the religious right
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I think there is an Atlantic difference in this respect. Both in the UK and Europe I think we’re circumspect with disclosure and publicising political identity. That’s not so in the US, with people registering as Republican or Democrat voters. The Republicans have for decades stoked the fires of vilification and polarisation too. That hasn’t transferred save for the likes of Farage and Wilders. There’s far more fearmongering in the US.
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Most people vote for the candidate they think is best for the country.
If that was true, Trump would not have won in 2024. The real truth is that people vote for the candidate who they think is going to make their lives personally better, regardless of what that means for the country.
If people wanted what was best for the country, then multi-millionaires and billionaires would happily pay their fair share of taxes to improve our infrastructure, our education system, and especially our health care system.
If people wanted what was best for the country, then we would welcome immigrants who are willing to perform the menial labor jobs (harvesting crops, stocking shelves, working on assembly lines, providing janitorial services in our schools and hospitals, etc) that we don’t want to do but which are necessary to keep our economy and everyday lives moving smoothly.
If people wanted what was best for the country, we wouldn’t elect an incompetent, arrogant, thin-skinned convicted felon and suspected pedophile who actively insults our allies and neighbors and puts into effect laws and tariffs and military actions that turn us into a pariah state.
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Here’s a picture that sums up the insanity of politics:
Texan Republicans consistently run on a platform of fixing broken systems, but have been in power for an unbroken span of at least 20 years. So who broke that they’re claiming to fix? They did, but they still get votes.
The same is true over here with the Tories and they still get votes after 14 years of chaos, including Brexit.
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That’s a weak excuse at best.
Weak or not, it’s still true. You may wish people were different, but most of them don’t make the effort to try and check a variety of sources when they’re forming an opinion, they’d rather just listen to the person telling them what they already believe. And these days, we have a media landscape in which that’s very, very easy.
In contrast to Arjan’s example of Russia, people in Western democracies are theoretically free to form to see a broader and more diverse and realistic picture, but that’s not how most people work. Especially if they lack education (see also Lorcan’s not that Trump voters mostly aren’t college-educated).
It may make you angry at those people, but it’s still how we all work.
Here’s the kicker though: The people who are choosing willful ignorance and/or laziness are also the one who are very big on “personal responsibility”.
The hypocrisy would be hilarious if it weren’t so destructive.
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When they say personal responsibility, they mean they want to see poor people and people of colour get fucked over.
When they say anything, they mean that.
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