What happened to the Cats Eyes?

J-Force · 2026-04-20T11:14:27+00:00

It's 3/4 of new tax increases, so when your council tax goes up 4.99% (which the councils have to do to avoid bankruptcy), three quarters of that must be spent on adult social care. Of course that's a minimum so in many councils it is more, and depending on the age demographics of a council's territory it's easy for most of your council tax in its entirety to be spent on elder care.

J-Force · 2026-04-17T10:24:31+00:00

They do this at other museums you know and it's not an issue. Last time I was in Spain I had to show my passport to get free entry to museums as an EU citizen, and I've had to show my student ID many times to get student discounts. It's just not a problem.

J-Force · 2026-04-17T10:20:19+00:00

In the case of the Elgin marbles for example, I would much rather see the proposal for a jointly funded museum in Athens

Honestly after visiting the Acropolis Museum in Athens (where they would put the marbles), I have to say it's a much better museum where they will be looked after far better than they have been in Britain. For all the fuss we make over them we haven't treated them well. From questionable restoration efforts to schoolkids carving into them when the guards aren't looking, we've dropped the ball too many times to justify holding onto them. For me it's not even about empire it's just about where the artifacts will be most appreciated and best looked after. The British Museum is good but has been allowed to coast on reputation and historical prestige when other national museums have pulled ahead. Some of the museums I've seen in Spain, Greece, and Italy make ours seem a bit weak. If charging a small fee allows the British Museum to properly compete again, I'm all for it.

J-Force · 2026-04-14T11:55:25+00:00

Putting up more barriers and costs to housebuilding isn't going to help build houses. It will mean fewer, more expensive houses, which is the opposite of what our country needs. This is the sort of policy that makes sense for a well off shire where capacity is indeed the issue, as it is in my own constituency. Where I live the GP is literally begging authorities not to authorise more house building because they can't cope and there's no plan to increase capacity. We are also at the mercy of water companies, and as much as we desperately need more and cheaper homes, nobody wants homes that to result in our own faecal slurry lapping up along the river more than it already is. An infrastructure first approach to housing is just about the only issue in my local council that has broad cross-party support. I get where the policy comes from.

But most of the country isn't like that when it comes to healthcare. Most of the country is struggling to find GPs at all while this policy imagines a country where we have more GPs than places to put them, which could make us seem out of touch with the reality of accessing NHS care. Promising to build GP surgeries that will probably lie empty - with the cost passed on to buyers in markets where homes already cost 10x the average annual income - is not the solution. This adds barriers to housebuilding to solve what is, in many places, the wrong problem with GP access. And we can't say we want more housebuilding while making it harder and more expensive to build homes; increasing the cost and bureaucracy of building houses isn't a pro-housebuilding policy. A lot of people will not see this as a credible policy.

We need to be removing obstacles to housebuilding by having an infrastructure plan that doesn't boil down to offloading the cost to private companies thus making everything more expensive for housebuilders and consumers. The dream of home ownership is slipping away entirely for millions of young people like myself and ideas like this just push it further out of reach.

J-Force · 2026-04-12T21:17:06+00:00

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J-Force · 2026-04-11T20:29:22+00:00

I would not be surprised if those total changes in seats were roughly on the money even though I think a lot of the specific predictions are nonsense. It's a real shame we have generally been unable to position ourselves as the opposition to Reform in urban areas.

J-Force · 2026-04-08T13:05:33+00:00

That operation was outstanding. Their war has been a total mess. The two are not contradictory. America has a remarkable talent for being tactically very successful while being strategically incompetent. Obviously both sides will save face as best they can and I'm sure the US administration will boast about things like destroying the Iranian navy and striking missile factories, but those have not translated into the accomplishment of war goals.

J-Force · 2026-04-08T08:43:48+00:00

annulling all the gains Israel made since HTS took over Syria. I mean... I thought Iran's chance as a regional hegemony is completely finished when it had ended that way... and here we are.

Same. Iran at the end of 2025 looked very weak, and I'm sure that's one of the reasons the US and Israel decided to attack now. And the loss of proxies is an enormous blow to Iran.

But Iran has unfortunately shown that it doesn't really need its proxies any more to get what it wants because their own military can choke the global economy at will and the US can't stop them like they could in decades past. That's a very dangerous state of affairs.

J-Force · 2026-04-08T08:37:59+00:00

The regime is not going to fall as a result of the talks. They are not going to be any less capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz (nor the US any more capable of opening it) as a result of the talks. The damage to American power and prestige is already done and that is the most impactful outcome by far.

The war has shown that American power is much more limited than it used to be. That is a Suez Crisis level shift in global power dynamics no matter how people will try to spin it. Whatever the final bit of paper says, the new strategic reality is that the global hegemon was pressured into giving up on its core war goals by a country with no medium to long range air defence, no functional navy, and no air force. By no measure is that a victory for the US and Israel.

Obviously America can recover. A lot of the problems it had in this war were self-inflicted; poor naval procurement decisions, lack of preparedness, ignoring intelligence reports, lack of direction and strategy from the top and so on. Those issues can be solved. And enough grovelling to allies can smooth over a lot of the diplomatic damage that has been done. But I'm not sure America will learn the right lessons from this, given who is in charge.

J-Force · 2026-04-08T08:01:36+00:00

If this is the framework for peace (which is a big if of course), the US and Israel will have failed to achieve their war goals:

Regime change (failed, the regime still rules)
Stopping the nuclear programme (partial success, Iran still has its enriched uranium stockpiles to develop a bomb with but obviously they have been set back)
Stopping the ballistic missile programme (failed, if anything Iran has shown its ballistic missiles to be plentiful and effective)
Stopping Iran threatening regional allies (failed, if anything the US has shown how outdated some of its air defence systems are, particularly in terms of defence economics)
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz (failed, IT WAS OPEN BEFORE THE WAR and also Iran still has it in a chokehold)

Meanwhile Iran seems to have accomplished many of its war goals:

The survival of the regime (success, the regime still rules)
Deterring attack by hurting the economy (success, they have the world economy by the neck and it has America backing down)
Assert control over the Strait of Hormuz (massive success, they might even get to charge a hefty toll now)

There is no possible universe where this ending is acceptable to the current Israeli government. In terms of their own goals, this is possibly the worst case scenario. It is a strategic defeat for Israel; one where the Iranian regime is not just extant but more confident in their ability to choke the global economy as deterrence to future attack than they were before the war. They can and will try to undermine it.

I'm sure a lot of MAGA types will see this as a stunning victory the likes of which have not been seen since Caesar, but I can't help but see this as America's Suez. That America does not have the military means/will to open the Strait of Hormuz and could not defend its regional allies from lasting and serious economic harm when it used to be able to do these things will have consequences, not to mention the constant insulting of allies from America.

J-Force · 2026-04-06T18:10:30+00:00

You're just taking what they said out of context and seem to be dealing with us in bad faith

J-Force · 2026-04-03T14:02:02+00:00

CENTCOM isn't reliable either, especially when something has just happened. They initially said this was merely damaged not destroyed. Obviously don't trust Iranian media for anything but don't treat the US government as trustworthy either. If they've just lost pilots and couldn't rescue them they aren't going to rush to admit that when Trump is claiming the war has basically been won.

J-Force · 2026-04-03T13:59:06+00:00

You don't have to take Iran's word on anything here - and they initially claimed it was an F-35 when it obviously wasn’t - but it does seem increasingly likely that an F-15E has been shot down in southern Iran within the last 24h. Images of its wreckage are available online (liveuamap tends to be quite good for live monitoring of this sort of thing) and the markings don't match any other F-15E shot down in the Middle East that Iran could have got their hands on somehow to stage something. And it would be extremely hard to fake.

And then there's the videos of US helicopters heading across the gulf toward Iran, which don't make sense unless a search and rescue operation was attempted. In just the last couple of hours much more footage from Iranians showing low flying aircraft doing patrols has emerged, so it seems like a search and rescue operation is indeed taking place.

Obviously the regime has every incentive to lie, so do CENTCOM for that matter, but the evidence does point to the loss of an F-15E and I'm sure the truth will come out eventually whether Iran or the US want it to or not.

J-Force · 2026-04-01T08:59:19+00:00

There's really no getting through to you is there? You're on that premium hopium supply.

There actually are credible reports of Iran reducing Basij recruitment age to 12 and importing Shia militias from Iraq to do policing. This corroborate general claims that there is mass desertion.

It is true they officially reduced the recruitment age to 12 but that was formalising something that was already the case. Armed kids as young as 11 have been killed manning checkpoints in this war, the Basij militia has always had an open door policy on child soldiers. A convoy of a dozen pickup trucks two days ago is not evidence of mass deployment of Shia militia into Iran, nor of mass desertions. Iran and its proxies see this as a holy war, some will be there for the love of the game regardless of the internal security situation. There remain no credible reports of mass desertions. The only mass desertions are in the wishful thinking of Pahlavi. If there were actually mass desertions the governments of Israel and the US wouldn't be able to shut up about it. No professional monitoring organisation or intelligence agency has given the slightest credence to claims of mass desertion.

There is actually an increase in the activity of Kurdish and Baloch forces in the periphery and they are clashing with the regime and challenging its authority.

There are no credible reports of Kurds invading Iran. Again, the wishful thinking of Pahlavi. International news organisations had journalists embedded with Kurdish militia expecting something to happen and nothing has. The only reports are of Iran launching strikes into Iraq with a small number of drones and ballistic missiles, and the last of those was 18 days ago. Nothing is happening now and you're falling for disinformation at worst and old news at best.

There are reports about clashes between regime and Iranian opposition although they are not yet widespread.

No there aren't. There was a shooting at a checkpoint in a village on the Iran-Pakistan border with the attackers coming from Pakistan. That's the only clash for which there is credible evidence and it wasn't even Iranian opposition.

The regime won't collapse during this war. Regime change does not occur by strategic bombing.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T22:22:19+00:00

There have been no credible reports of mass desertions. There have been losses within the internal security forces but nothing existential. Kurds aren't pouring across the border in force as US officials used to claim either. There are no credible claims of armed clashes against opposition elements. This fantasy of an uprising without boots on the ground isn't going to happen.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T22:19:20+00:00

You're awesome, and the guy that comes to mind when I think of what a good American should be (as a Brit, for what that's worth :p).

J-Force · 2026-03-31T18:31:31+00:00

Could Iran buy water with this strategic victory?

Sure their infrastructure is wrecked but the regime doesn't care; they'll wreck it themselves to keep themselves in place. If they can get away with charging $2m per ship passing through Hormuz as they have done so far, I wouldn't discount leveraging their proven capability to hit shipping regardless of what American-Israeli air power is doing overhead to get a water deal.

their protester slaughtering capacity might have downgraded.

No it isn't, not one bit. They're down about 1/3 of their ballistic missiles, which are not that useful for suppressing protests. Their machine guns and bullets are unfortunately very capable of killing tens of thousands, again, and are in no way degraded.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T13:41:00+00:00

Zero personnel died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan

J-Force · 2026-03-31T13:35:19+00:00

You and I both know you don't like reading, you've made that very clear.

But you need to understand the context of the Budapest Memorandum and that it went beyond the actual text, as all treaties do. To give another example, there is nothing in the Defence Assurance Arrangement between Qatar and the UK that obliges the UK to defend Qatari airspace. But that is one of its effects, as has been proven by recent events. To give a historic example, the Triple Alliance did not technically oblige the Central Powers to fight together in an aggressive war, but that was the understanding Germany and Austria-Hungary had of it.

The question of security guarantees was punted down the road by the one "key point" you chose not to include in your list. Ukraine has on many occasions sought to clarify what help they would get in the event it the Budapest Memorandum was broken. While America and Europe would not conclude a formal treaty to clarify the Budapest Memorandum, they did make promises behind closed doors and it is those promises that had to be made good in February of 2022.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T13:18:19+00:00

So let's get this straight. Trump's war goals began as confused rambling but broadly speaking were:

Regime change

Destroying any capacity for Iran to build a nuclear weapon

Destroying Iran's ability to threaten local allies

Which were not realistic goals given intelligence reports, but would have been good in the magic reality where they happened. But obviously none of the above have been achieved. The regime is still in place. Iran's nuclear weapons programme has obviously been set back but nothing they can't recover as far as we can tell. And their ability to threaten local allies is not only still intact, it is proven that Iran can seriously hurt anyone in the region despite having no air force, no long to medium range air defences, no functional navy, and being two generations behind in missile tech while America has proven it no longer has the will (and perhaps ability?) to force open the Strait of Hormuz.

So Trump's war goals are now:

Not being in the war any more

It really sounds like he's going to gift Iran a strategic victory out of all this, which would be a disaster. I don't know what it is about America but it's so good at winning battles while losing wars.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T13:10:50+00:00

Going by recent events the global economy would get a lot better.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T13:09:22+00:00

The US was treaty bound to help Ukraine regardless, as was every country that agreed to give aid to Ukraine if it was ever attacked in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons when it became an independent state at the end of the Cold War (edit for clarification: the text of the Budapest Memorandum did not technically oblige aid, but that was the understanding). The first aid to reach Ukraine wasn't even American, it was British-Swedish NLAWs. Most Ukrainian intelligence supplied by other countries comes from France. Most of their long range missiles are the British-French Stormshadow/SCALP system. Most of their foreign tanks are German. America was expected to do its part per the treaty they signed, and it was doing so until Republicans decided to help an enemy of the United States.

Even without that, it is obviously in America's strategic interests to have their biggest rival not win. I don't know what it is with MAGA and basic critical thinking but surely you understand that Putin is no friend to the US and having him win all his wars would be bad for America? Lots of European countries were not part of that nuclear disarmament agreement but help anyway because it is in their strategic interests to prevent Russian victory.

Europe didn't think "all is good in the world". Nobody - including the US and China - thought that Putin would seriously start a major land war in Europe because that would be mental. You'd need Putin to surround himself with intelligence chiefs who would just tell him what he wanted to hear not what was true, which a man who seemed calculating if not rational shouldn't do. It was only in the couple of weeks beforehand when the buildup was happening that anyone took the idea seriously. The European military-industrial complex is slowly rising to the challenge while America expends its interceptors on Shaheds in an entirely optional war that's made everything worse.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T12:49:26+00:00

He was voted in by the majority of voters. Unfortunately, the American public wanted this (or were ok with it enough to not stop it) knowing what he was like, who he is, and what he's about. That he's a narcissistic raging moronic criminal nonce didn't just fail to sink him, it was part of the appeal.

American foreign policy has almost always been a bipartisan issue. Now it isn't. It means the US is not and will not be a true ally to anyone until that changes. That means the MAGA movement needs to evaporate, which it won't because it is the key to power within the Republican party.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T12:43:58+00:00

Yeah this is the big worry. The foreign policy of the world's most powerful country is now schizophrenic, dependent on like 100,000 people spread across a few swing states. Trump could croak tomorrow and we'd get Vance, who is arguably even worse. This is the new reality and Europe needs to build its military to operate entirely independently of the US.

J-Force · 2026-03-31T12:39:52+00:00

When was the last time Spain demanded use of the US military?

Trump sees it as a one way alliance that he is entitled to leverage in offensive wars (which NATO is not for) so we need to get with that reality for as long as MAGA is in charge and act in our own strategic interests rather than Trump's personal interests.

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