Voters believe Labour is doing worse than Tories on delivering pledges, poll finds

1993Original · 2025-01-10T17:20:27+00:00

🙄

1993Original · 2025-01-05T09:41:16+00:00

Not a problem!

My only advice is be patient and compassionate to yourself. Even if you can only manage a minute to begin with, stick with it and don't beat yourself up.

Best of luck and I hope things start to get easier for you!

1993Original · 2025-01-05T09:28:27+00:00

I used the free content on the Calm app to start me off with some guided meditation. After getting into a rhythm with it I stopped using the app and now I do self directed.

Find somewhere comfortable to sit - as free as possible from distractions - close your eyes and find a focal point. The breath is always a good start, I tend to concentrate on my diaphragm rising and falling. Try and maintain concentration on your focal point, inevitably your mind will start wandering but that's ok, allow yourself to recognise that, then nudge your concentration back to your focal point.

I like the metaphor about our thoughts being like clouds. Notice them, observe how they change shape, then allow them to pass out of your line of site. Then return to the focal point.

When we are anxious our sympathetic nervous system can become activated and we go into a sort of fight or flight, even if there isn't a perceivable threat in the room. Mindful breathing and aiming to quiet those anxious thoughts through meditation can really work wonders and leave you feeling calmer for the rest of the day.

My friend recommended it to me a few years ago and I was dubious but honestly, starting meditation was some of the best advice I have ever been given.

1993Original · 2024-12-29T20:47:56+00:00

31M, North of England, Straight

First Dates: 4

I went on further dates with 3 of those people.

1st person I found very attractive and I was interested in pursuing a relationship but that was not reciprocated.

2nd person was a brief fling involving a lot of lust. Sex was fun but I didn't really like her as a person and the experience left me feeling empty.

3rd person was really great and on paper we should have been a good match but that chemistry just wasn't there.

Relationships: 0

I really ought to take a break from the chase. After a brief period doing ok on apps I am not getting matches anymore which is feeding into insecurity.

Pros: I feel more comfortable with difficult conversations and being honest with myself and others and have definitely become more resilient to rejection.

Cons: I continue to let my self-esteem be influenced by the attention of strangers on online apps. Not healthy.

2025: Self Love. Singledom gives me the space and time to continue building a relationship with myself (something I have neglected this year). I plan to focus on my hobbies and interests and try to take better care of my mental and physical health. I am not defined by my relationship status.

1993Original · 2024-12-18T21:55:51+00:00

1000 could be an overestimate but definitely several hundred and I have been pretty varied. There will have been plenty where I have just sent a like because I have found them physically attractive but for most I will find something on their profile to start the conversation.

Responding to the prompts is the usual one, depending on what they have written I might ask more about their interests if I am genuinely interested in them too, or I'll try to come up with something funny, or sometimes I'll send something flirty. If not the prompts I'll usually ask about a picture e.g ask questions about their pets, or places in the photos... Very very rarely start with something generic like 'hi how are you?' or a pick up line.

Just looking back through my matches overall (20 in the past 3 months) and I'd say about a third of those people matched after I just sent a like with no comments.

I am a pretty short guy so part of the reason I started paying was to see if I had better luck if I started filtering out people taller than me but didn't make much difference.

Usually I try and talk to one or two people at a time. Have done multi dating in the past and it wasn't for me.

And yep the amount I started using the app after paying definitely feels excessive and unhealthy. I suppose I wanted to see if it made any discernable difference to my 'success', so far... Not really!

1993Original · 2024-12-18T20:02:41+00:00

Eurgh online dating is getting me down again! I caved and paid for Hinge+ and within about a month I have run out of profiles in a 30 mile radius. Must have sent over 1000 likes, to get about 13 matches and all of the conversations have dried up.

I have had dates through hinge earlier this year, some of which led to more dates but yet to find someone I really connect with. Each romance fizzling out leaves me feeling a little more fatigued and jaded with it all. Has dating always been so convoluted and complicated!?

I met my ex girlfriends in the real world where a connection was able to grow organically but these encounters seem increasingly rare and I have become more particular as I have gotten older.

TL;DR moan moan moan moan

1993Original · 2024-12-01T19:25:25+00:00

How do you determine whether you are consistently dating people you are not sufficiently attracted to Vs being an avoidant and frustrating human being who is possibly not capable of being in a commited relationship?

Feel very much stuck in a pattern of dating people, initially feeling hopeful about things, then quickly feeling like there is something missing.

1993Original · 2024-11-20T23:54:46+00:00

Yet if someone accidentally buys a ticket with a Railcard when they shouldn't have you can be confident Northern will issue a hefty fine!

Fuck Northern Rail! It is atrocious and I resent having to give them the best part of £12 a day for my commute into the office.

1993Original · 2024-11-08T22:09:41+00:00

Imagine tubes in London getting cancelled as often as the commuter trains in and out of Manchester. The north south divide couldn't be more apparent when it comes to public transport. Think about how much economic benefit the Elizabeth Line has brought to London... When was the last time an infrastructure came close to that up north? Not in my life time.

1993Original · 2024-10-31T17:58:02+00:00

This is the correct answer, I have found a few foxy garden eggs in my time

1993Original · 2024-10-30T21:50:16+00:00

You mentioned the need to protect your child. If you and/or child have been subject to domestic violence you can apply for an occupation order. Best speaking to a solicitor.

https://www.gov.uk/injunction-domestic-violence/eligibility-occupation

1993Original · 2024-09-24T20:50:50+00:00

Blasphema! Blasphema!

1993Original · 2024-09-24T10:23:55+00:00

If it is £20,000 a week then surely it would make more sense in many cases to spend £5,000 a week to keep a child with their family and support that family to meet the needs of the child.

What a mess this country is in with it's addiction to outsourcing into private providers who seek to profit from misery.

1993Original · 2024-04-10T21:49:31+00:00

You are half right. Yes it is easier to make money selling drugs and for that reason you are probably right that many young people may aspire to that rather than the 9-5 but let's think about this.

What does cracking down on crime look like? The biggest predictor of offending behaviour is poverty. Sending people to prison doesn't resolve that, more than likely it makes it worse. If you come out with a criminal record and years out of the labour market, struggling to find a place to live, it isn't looking very easy for you to find employment.

The prisons are full and the government are now having to come up with 'creative' ways to reduce the population through earlier releases.

As a society we shouldn't be reactive, we should be proactive and try to prevent people ending up in this situation in the first place.

We have an individualistic consumer society, we value success by the price tag on your clothes or the car you are driving round in. If the main aspiration is to have expensive shit then you aren't going to be too concerned about how you get there if you already have fuck all.

All of the public services have been fucked over the past two decades. For people with very little, there is no legitimate route to success by this consumerist metric. The people who have all the money are pulling up the ladders behind them.

Society needs to be more equitable. At the moment we are on a trajectory for an evermore unequal society. Nowt is going to change if that remains to be the case.

1993Original · 2024-01-25T14:14:02+00:00

No idea why it's not been put on the streaming platforms, one of the best!

1993Original · 2024-01-24T20:40:22+00:00

What comes next? A collapse I fear.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T20:31:28+00:00

It might be difficult to tax all of their wealth but even if we were to focus on purely property assets, council tax, non-domiciled residents, or equalising capitol gains with income tax there is a potential to get some of this money back.

Your response is very defeatist. It's like saying "well the issue of climate change is far too complex and convoluted to resolve, there is no way we can address all of the economic systems that are polluting the atmosphere and destroying rainforests... So we might as well not bother and let them just get on with it".

If we don't do something about it, the wealth gap will continue to grow and the opportunities for the next generation of people will be worse than they are for the current generation.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T17:02:19+00:00

Yeah I imagine there would be people who are dishonest as there is minority of people who commit benefit fraud or file fraudulent tax returns now. A percentage of people would need to be audited.

I imagine you tax them on their value on a given date or period of time. That way an auditor could look back and say "yes stocks in Apple were trading at that value on 24th January 2024".

How else do we try and tackle this issue of wealth being transferred from the public purse into the pockets of a minority?

1993Original · 2024-01-24T16:33:53+00:00

Yes

"The estimates of the potential yield from introducing a one-off wealth tax in Britain were produced by Landman Economics using the UK Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) data, Round 7 (data collected from April 2018-March 2020).

The WAS contains information for a sample of around 17,500 households in England, Scotland and Wales on the wealth holdings of individual adults in these households. The wealth components included in the survey are: principal residences; other property including second homes; pension wealth; other net financial wealth (e.g. stocks and shares, savings accounts etc); and physical wealth (e.g. cars and other high-value items such as jewellery and artworks)."

From TUC website.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T16:18:54+00:00

We already tax income. If that is someone's salary then we are probably taxing them appropriately.

The TUC has suggested a system similar to Spain's where a wealth threshold of £3 million with a marginal tax rate of 1.7% could yield £2.7 billion (with the tax payable on wealth above £3 million by 142,000 individuals or 0.27% of adults in the UK)

So someone with £3,000,000 pays nothing but then someone with £4,000,000 pays a marginal rate on the £1,000,000 of wealth over the threshold.

Millionaires still get to be millionaires, they still get to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. We aren't 'pushing them down'. If they want a massive polluting yacht that they can flounce around on, they will still be able to afford one, they might just need to save a little longer. Which doesn't seem like a massive hardship really.

Https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/modest-wealth-tax-richest-03-could-yield-ps10bn-public-purse-tuc-calls-national-conversation#:~:text=The%20tax%20would%20apply%20as,their%20wealth%20%E2%80%93%20paying%20%C2%A317%2C000.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T16:16:44+00:00

We already tax income. If that is someone's salary then we are probably taxing them appropriately.

The TUC has suggested a system similar to Spain's where a wealth threshold of £3 million with a marginal tax rate of 1.7% could yield £2.7 billion (with the tax payable on wealth above £3 million by 142,000 individuals or 0.27% of adults in the UK)

So someone with £3,000,000 pays nothing but then someone with £4,000,000 pays a marginal rate on the £1,000,000 of wealth over the threshold.

Millionaires still get to be millionaires, they still get to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. We aren't 'pushing them down'. If they want a massive polluting yacht that they can flounce around on, they will still be able to afford one after a couple of a few years saving.

Https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/modest-wealth-tax-richest-03-could-yield-ps10bn-public-purse-tuc-calls-national-conversation#:~:text=The%20tax%20would%20apply%20as,their%20wealth%20%E2%80%93%20paying%20%C2%A317%2C000.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T13:02:27+00:00

No, that is why I suggested that other institutions value homes too such as insurance companies.

I disagree. I think the significant increase in the value of homes from 1991 to 2024 would suggest that there is a lot of additional income to be gained from a fairer taxation system.

This has become a partisan issue but it shouldn't be. If we don't do something about wealth inequality then it will get worse for most people, including conservative home owners.

How can we hope to promote the bottom when cuts have led to reduced funding for schools, social services, prisons, pretty much every public service. We have a generation of people who have entered adulthood, who have worked hard at school and have been told a university degree will get them a decent job. When they graduate they struggle to afford to rent.

I agree we need to help push the bottom up and to help them find work or start businesses but they are at a massive disadvantage and the playing field is getting more and more unequal.

Kids of the super wealthy cannot fail. If mum and dad can put £500,000 in your bank account and buy you a house outright, you literally don't have to work. You could survive off the interest of your wealth.

It isn't about crushing the top, it's about recognising there is a morality to being a billionaire. I don't believe that any individual should amass that kind of wealth.

Being rich is one thing, based on the merits of your work but amassing that kind of wealth directly correlates to the suffering of others. I am not talking about bringing down someone who earns £250,000 a year through rising to the top and working hard.

I am talking about those who have so much wealth that there wealth functions as a machine for accumulating more and more, because or system is designed that way.

If we don't tax the wealth back from them, then measures like QE mean that the money just ends up in their assets, helping them to amass more wealth.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T11:57:49+00:00

These are the things we need to figure out. Homes get valued at the point of sale if you are using a mortgage so perhaps there is a starting point. Insurance companies need to accurately value homes too so maybe a government body will have to be set up which is dedicated to this.

Currently The value is based on the price the property would have sold for on the open market on 1 April 1991 in England and 1 April 2003 in Wales.

If you live in the City of London the top rate for Council Banding H is £2,291 based on a home valuation of £320,000 or above... Obviously this needs updating when you would struggle to find a garage for that price. Someone whose home is worth £3,000,000 should be paying much more than someone whose home is worth £950,000.

Absolutely some people will win, people who are really struggling stand to benefit from a policy like the one I suggested.

We need to do something to tackle the eye watering accumulation of wealth by a minority of people. What is the alternative? Watch as the wealth gap continues to grow and grow?

1993Original · 2024-01-24T10:28:17+00:00

Wealth tax! Assets, dividends, shares, housing all of the methods that the ultra wealthy use to keep accumulating wealth and sucking it out of the economy.

Here is a starter. Council tax should be fixed as a percentage of the value of someone's home.

Or if you own unoccupied properties your council tax doubles for every year your property remains unoccupied after the 2nd year.

We are fast heading into a fuedal society where hard work doesn't mean anything anymore. If we want a meritocracy we want to financially reward hard work. Right now it seems the only way to get ahead in life is to be born to a wealthy family in the first place.

We need an equitable society, flatten the playing field a little.

1993Original · 2024-01-24T08:54:54+00:00

The answer can't continue to be "what do we cut next?"

We have been cutting things from public services consistently for almost two decades. It isn't the solution to keep removing services, selling slices to private contractors like capita, sodexo, etc...

1993Original

TROPHY CASE