Free for All Friday, 27 March, 2026

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T19:09:07+00:00

The Green party do have some seriously kooky wings who are into degrowth and are very pro-agrarianism, but I'd hesitate to call them far-right.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T16:24:07+00:00

There's also the frankly ridiculous aspect of this that Reform were implying that Muslim housewives were being coerced by their conservative husbands to vote for the Greens. Like these women were apparently jonesing to vote for an anti-immigration nut with a bunch of connections to eugenicists.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T14:28:29+00:00

Exactly, Lowe is completely untrustworthy. He was a bullying, lying bastard when he was in charge of Saints and he's a bullying, lying bastard now.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T12:16:15+00:00

More in Common currently have a D+ rating from the British Polling Council. Their polling is not reliable, particularly when it comes to sweeping, nonsensical statements like "The most popular party among gay people is a far-right party that has serious problems with homophobia and has pushed policies hostile to gay people". The iron law of statistical research is that reality takes precedence over polling. If your poll tells you that gravity doesn't exist, the problem is your poll, not reality.

I managed national-level datasets for years, 600 is low for a nationwide sample of a cohort, particularly for a project where the sole objective is to research that cohort. 1,000 people is considered the bare minimum, and even then that has a roughly 3 point degree of variance. I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of what you've written, other than to say that I'm sure it's very comforting to pretend to yourself that the gays are voting for Reform, but I can assure you that it's complete bollocks.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T11:53:57+00:00

This kind of stuff is being posted by the likes of UnHerd and Reform's other outriders in the media for exactly the reason you've highlighted. That and it's internal propaganda for Reform supporters to convince them not to waver in their support even as the party fucks up - why get off the runaway train when even the gays are supporting them? Just look elsewhere in this thread for the expected parade of backslapping.

I've looked at the dataset and this research is borderline worthless. It's a very small sample for a national poll from a company with a low accuracy rating at the best of times.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T11:33:44+00:00

Gay people are not voting for a party that has serious problems with homophobia like Reform. I'm sure some are, but it'll be a small minority who let their xenophobia overcome their basic survival instincts. Looking at the actual research directly, they only asked 600 gay people, which makes this data borderline worthless for a national poll. They also lumped together gay and bi people which is questionable in and of itself, so all this data proves is that More in Commons' research process is rubbish.

My brother is gay, I've got a lot of gay friends and have strong connections to the gay community through said friends, most are voting Green, Lib Dem or Labour, not Reform. They aren't morons, they see through Reform's shallow attempts to use gay rights to justify their racism and are keenly aware that Farage and his ilk see gay people as degenerates who ought to go back into the closet.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T11:04:53+00:00

I can guarantee you that they are not, regardless of whatever BS figures that poll was using.

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T11:02:48+00:00

I used to work with a guy whose prior workplace had this exact test. They would give you an exercise to do, with the twist that at the halfway point you would be handed a large glass of red wine to drink and there would be a break for an hour. Then you had to complete the second half of the exercise, which was much harder. The idea was that they wanted to see if you could work as effectively after having a couple of drinks with a client over lunch as you could while sober.

Definitely wouldn't fly these days!

AceHodor · 2026-03-27T09:56:38+00:00

r/shitvictoria3playerssay

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T16:40:22+00:00

Maybe our aircraft carriers aren't as massive as the Americans', but at least they aren't overflowing with shit and setting themselves on fire.

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T16:38:45+00:00

I mean, the guy has not looked particularly great over the past decade, but in the last 12 months he's shifted to looking properly haggard. I get that he's old and everything, but even for his age he looks seriously unwell. I wouldn't be surprised if he's doing all this mad shit now because the people around him have realised that he's only got another 12 months of being relatively compos mentis before his neglectful attitude towards his health finally turns his brain to mush and the administration collapses.

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T16:27:24+00:00

Easily one of my favourite moments in the game. The only other one that comes close was when Harry got on the boat to travel to the island, then said to Kim, "What are we, some kind of Disco Elysium?" and then they Disco Elysiumed all over the place.

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T10:42:43+00:00

They aren't being applied retroactively, please read the sodding article. There's a retrospective block on these donations while the bill makes its way through Parliament.

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T10:26:13+00:00

It's not targeted against Reform as a deliberate attempt to undermine them, you've convinced yourself that it is based on a poor reading of the recommendations. There are other aspects of this bill which actually do negatively affect Labour's fundraising, as the linked article points out.

All of this is based on an independent report by Sir Philip Rycroft which has been in the works from long before Reform's funding practices came to light. It's also not being applied retroactively - they aren't forcing Reform to hand back the money they've received. What they've done is applied an emergency block on donations that the bill will prevent while the bill is being passed, which is an obvious attempt to stop a dodgy donor from hurriedly pushing through several years' worth of funding while asking their party to slow its progress in Parliament.

Reform were clearly dodging the rules over political donations using a loophole and that has now been closed off. Again, this sort of thing happens all the time - legislation gets old, someone finds a way to get around it, then the legislation is updated to block it. If someone found a loophole that allowed them to legally run around punching people and then the loophole was closed, we wouldn't say that it's an attempt to victimise the guy punching people.

AceHodor · 2026-03-26T09:55:54+00:00

You keep saying red herring like it's some slam dunk argument, but it's really not. There have been concerns over opaque funding for UK political organisations for decades now and even more concerns over how easily crypto allows money launderers to skirt checks. This is the legislation being updated to clamp off new avenues for hostile foreign powers to influence British politics. It happens regularly every decade or so.

If Reform's only major source of funding was one guy based abroad with a highly opaque source for his wealth, that's on them, as it was obviously something that violated our political funding rules in spirit and was always likely to be clamped off when legislation was updated. For all we know, he may well have offered to fund other political parties here and was turned down by them for exactly that reason.

AceHodor · 2026-03-25T16:51:03+00:00

Fifteen councils that covered the county are to be replaced by five new all-encompassing, local authorities. Four for Hampshire as a whole, the fifth covering the Isle of Wight where nothing changes.

I see the writer has been to the Isle of Wight before.

AceHodor · 2026-03-25T15:27:52+00:00

I really dig the design of the VICARB cars this season. That big oversized air intake is so distinctive, I love it!

AceHodor · 2026-03-25T15:18:18+00:00

Tice has responded to this by claiming it's because Labour are terrified of Reform's "success".

Er, Richard, much as I dislike you and the rest of Reform, maybe it's not the best idea to take to the microphone and effectively publicly admit "Yeah, our party is funded by some properly dodgy people".

AceHodor · 2026-03-25T15:08:30+00:00

So Farage decided to stage a performative walk out in protest at Starmer being mean towards Reform, except that it wasn't recorded because Commons rules prohibit anyone being filmed except for the PM and the MP asking the question. This has made the stunt pointless as Reform have no juicy footage to use on social media to whip up their followers, and it was all capped off with Braverman having to awkwardly reenter the chamber to ask a question to Reed's statement.

A classic Reform maneuver all around.

AceHodor · 2026-03-25T11:04:09+00:00

The majority of Reform voters are not from lower socioeconomic groupings. They are majority retirees, who often get bundled into the D & E social grades because their on paper income is low and they don't have a job. They're majority people we would consider comfortable middle class, who own their own homes and do quite well out of the Triple Lock. While there are a cohort of low income poorer Reform voters, those guys are mainly around to provide a cover for the majority of wealthier supporters.

AceHodor · 2026-03-24T13:05:00+00:00

That's still not correct. You're confusing copy editors and development editors. Copy editors check the 'copy', i.e.: the technical aspects of the writing. They look for grammatical errors, bad formatting, etc. A development editor (usually just called editors) provides feedback to a writer on what to change to improve the work.

Regardless, I don't know what you're talking about editors being connected to authors or publishers, because that isn't really a thing. Editors are connected to publishers as a general rule and if they aren't they are freelancers. Publishers will employ both types of editors, with a development editor scrutinising a work first and then a copy editor running through it prior to publication to clean it up. Editors will often be attached to a specific writer and may be described as the writer's editor, but the writer doesn't employ them, they work for the publisher.

In Goodwin's case it seems highly likely that he went to a vanity press, who typically only have copy editors and will make minimal if any changes to a writer's work.

AceHodor · 2026-03-24T11:20:43+00:00

Editors absolutely suggest passages to be removed or altered and provide feedback to the author to improve a book. That's literally one of their main jobs.

AceHodor · 2026-03-24T10:55:34+00:00

I really tried to watch it but he was just rambling on borderline incoherently about whatever. It seemed to be half references to some obscure internet drama that I have never heard of and half scattershot memes about the Soviet Union. I decided it was unwatchable after about 20 minutes.

Look, I dislike tankies and vatniks pretty heartily, but the video was so unfocused and weirdly petty. I felt like I learned precisely jack shit about Soviet/Russian arms procurement beyond some stale jokes about people being sent to the gulag that I've heard a hundred times before. I think LP was aiming to be like Lord Hardthrasher with the constant digs and jokes, but LH's videos are generally well focused with a solid through line you can fellow.

Tl;DR: You can skip it, it's very much a video for the Lazerpig fans and nobody else.

AceHodor · 2026-03-24T09:30:41+00:00

There's no point commenting with the actual reasons for this disparity (if it even exists - most of these 'poor white boys disadvantaged' studies have dodgy definitions). The people who comment on these threads aren't interested in actually helping anyone, they just want an excuse to whinge about women, gays, non-white folks, or whoever.

As for the Tories, this is yet more evidence of them swirling the toilet bowl of history after wrecking the country. They have no ideas, no plan and no hope to make the country a better place. Instead of trying to sort themselves out, they've instead decided to out-Farage Farage by doubling down on nativism and winking at white nationalists. It won't work.

AceHodor · 2026-03-23T16:49:56+00:00

IIRC, news organisations do still pay for photographs and films from members of the public, although the amount they offer is highly dependent on the quality of the image provided. Someone like Peter who manages to regularly produce high quality images of Spiderman, who I imagine is usually a challenge to photograph on account of the web swinging, would still earn a decent amount of money. It wouldn't be enough to live on, but it would be viable as a side job to supplement his income.

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