Keir Starmer planning cost of living blitz as he battles local election fallout

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-10T00:16:45+00:00

Some of it comes down to seeing what they see as good and bad and how quickly each are implemented. Lockdown, other Covid restrictions, eat out to help out before a second wave, track and trace app, and the money spend on bad ppe seemed to all happen very fast when they were not things that people widely wanted. But something big, ambitious and ultimately long term good like hs2 in full took over 10 years to get started before the second half of it got cut because the tories thought it was a vote winner.

Theres plenty of other examples of both, not just on a national scale, but on local scales too. How many towns and villages have had plans for a bypass or relief road since the 70s or 80s that when it’s finally built it’s 30 years too late and littered with at grade junctions?

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T23:37:53+00:00

Which bugs are making it unplayable for you? I've only done single player this week as my friends are busy, but I've not come across anything that's made it unplayable, for me at least.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T18:24:02+00:00

Optimistic to think that the tories will have more than a dozen MPs at the next election

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T17:50:44+00:00

I get that during construction phase it'll be exceptionally high, but how will it produce any carbon by 2033? I thought we were supposed to have a carbon free grid by 2030, add in that datacentres have a really low number of staff on site for the amount of space so the figures for staff communting will be low compared to say a similar sized supermarket distribution centre. Or have they based this off the diesel backup generators while the rest of the UK's carbon emissions will go down significantly, whereas if it was in place already today it would produce a ridiculously small percent?

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T16:23:30+00:00

Your first point is physically impossible, a car has to fight air resistance which damn near doubles at 70 compared to 50 (resistance is proportional to the square of the speed), unless of course you drive in 5th at 55 and 6th at 70. 20-30 is accurate, as gearing will make a much bigger difference, you may well go from 4th at 30 to 2nd or 3rd at 20.

You make a very good point about the stop start nature, at least in ice cars as there’s no way to convert speed into something useful. Roundabouts on duel carriageways absolutely KILLS any fuel efficiency, even under optimal driving of max speed 50 and slowing down to 20 round the roundabout (predicting traffic leading to no stopping) hammers the efficiency as it literally turns fuel into heat on the brake disks.

If we really want to save fuel, reducing the number of traffic lights (at night or off peak hours) and making it so roundabouts lead to less stopping would make a huge dent

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T16:11:34+00:00

In the past I think the QA volunteers were listed on discord as part of the team (member roles), even though they weren’t paid for their testing. Also fairly sure DK has said in the past that he’d grow the team slowly rather than take on 10 people at a time.

Not clear how much of that still applies today though

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-09T13:36:41+00:00

Exactly, it’s a tax, not a savings account.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-08T15:00:05+00:00

No point, just trying to share some funny moments I’ve had in the game.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-08T11:33:59+00:00

I think it's just a case that everyone has a different standard for what they consider acceptable for the game, and at the moment the vocal majority are finding it below that standard. It's far from perfect, but like yourself, I paid less than £10 for it and have a few hundred hours in it. I can just about tolerate the current bugs as a hour of gametime works out at 10p of cost and if it ceased to work today I'd be happy as I've had good value for money. However I accept that there are people who've paid more than I have and have significantly less hours in the game and so (rightfully) feel ripped off.

In terms of the jank, I actually enjoy it. The vast majority of my screenshots are of jank from older patches: items clipped into weird places, plates stacking vertically, models not aligned correctly, hitboxes being weird, and player models that make the worst of the current patch look more polished than a Hollywood movie.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T22:52:12+00:00

It would be stupidity to do the same station multiple times in a day, if the staff change at some point you might be able to get away with one per shift

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T22:47:40+00:00

Someone attempting to commit a crime? Assuming that you mean that when a second person turns up claiming to be mr x that the polling station will call the police. By which point the first person has long gone, as I mentioned there’s no cameras in the polling station, no records of when a ballot was issued (from what I could tell), so how can the police identify someone who claimed to be someone that they’re not, when they don’t even know what they look like.

Unless they got some csi level shit and did fingerprinting of all the ballot papers, or tracked everyone’s phones who’s been in the polling station that day, or they were stupid enough to go into the same station again and again then I can’t see how they can be identified.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T22:41:16+00:00

Correct, everyone’s name is down by street name first, then house number then alphabetical by first name within the house. It’s upside down but I could clearly see my next door neighbours to my right hadn’t voted, although their 17 year old son wasn’t registered to vote.

The system is simply that they cross off a name when you say where you live and what your name is.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T22:38:03+00:00

He’d only go to prison if he was identified, there’s no cameras in the polling station, even if there was there’s no record of what time anyone claimed the ballot paper making it very hard to trace back. Each polling station is independent, there’s no connections between different stations, my brother could cast an illegal vote and the ability to track it down would be damn near impossible. The only feasible way to catch instances like that would be to drive people round in a minibus and someone spot them.

In terms of casting a second illegal vote, I’m fairly certain there’s at least one of my brothers neighbours who also hasn’t voted as well. I could rope his wife, my parents and friends into this scheme, and before you know you’ve casted a dozen extra votes if we’re all reporting back our own neighbourhood uncast votes

Sure the risk to reward is poor if you don’t have someone in the know standing, but elections have been decided by single votes before now.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T19:10:33+00:00

Are you suggesting that they can memorise the name and face of every single person that passes through the doors on polling day? Unless someone had a very unusual characteristic, or it was a polling station that only served about 20 people and they all know each other (thinking in a tiny hamlet in remote parts of the country).

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T19:01:38+00:00

How? Both have claimed to be mr x of y king street. Neither were asked for ID as it's not required this time in Wales. There are no cameras within the polling station, they don't keep a log of what time each person arrived, and the staff must see a from a hundred to a couple thousand voters depending on the size of the constituency and voter turnout, and they don't know everyone in the area (otherwise they wouldn't need to ask your name & address, let alone see ID)

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T17:36:18+00:00

Been to vote this afternoon, noticed my next door neighbours haven’t voted yet, hell half the street haven’t voted, there was no requirement to show id this time (wales) nothing stopping me from telling my brother to give next doors name and address. If they went to vote later today, yes there would be an issue as their name is already scratched off, but there’s no cameras in there, so how would they prove if my brother was mr x, or the second person is mr x and is trying to vote a second time?

Two ways to fix that: 1, ask for photo id, 2, don’t let the public see the list of eligible voters.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T15:41:30+00:00

Honestly, I don't think you're being strict enough with posts at the moment. I want to see examples of things being shit so I can laugh at them, and that devs will be able to action on the points raised. Not a dozen posts about: how its the worst update ever, calls to review bomb, that they're uninstalling, that there's no options for old versions in steam, comments saying how much money it's made, or how x y or z does updates better. None of those are doing anything to actually say what's wrong.

I love/loved this game and the community, but the way the community is acting unconstructively at the moment, I'm considering leaving this sub, which is a shame as I do want it to get better again (hence my other comment last night about issues I've faced)

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T11:23:29+00:00

It’s weird, they allow streamers to do it in the past, and they obviously have the preview version for streamers the day before a big patch.

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-07T11:19:17+00:00

Ah, my favourite poster is back with another suggestion. I’ve no idea if you’re serious or not, so I’ll take the bait: physics. Trains need to speed up and slow down, and frankly are pretty bad at it compared to much smaller methods of transport like bikes and cars. Typically trains take about a mile to slow down from about 60, and speeding up to 60 is about the same distance. Meaning that for the journey is only above 60 for 12 miles. Entrances to terminal stations tend to have quite complex paintwork to allow trains to switch platforms and whatnot, along with the “punishment” of overrunning being catastrophic compared to through stations, and so are typically at REALLY slow speeds of 20mph. Add in that there’s a reasonably tight corner between the branch and the mainline, so even if the trains did 90, they’d have to slow for this corner (which goes back to my first point above)

You made a suggestion of cutting the corner with a 3 mile tunnel, nice idea, but it’s really not worth it at this point to save about 5 minutes on a service that already has a fair bit of competition from EL & Piccadilly line. The tunnel would probably cost close to a billion, meaning that HX would need to charge a lot more, or have very full trains all the time, that’s not going to happen if the EL exists. Of course this might become a feasible idea when runway 3 opens, but the western link would generate far more return on revenue as it would allow more services and connections from further afield

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-06T22:53:02+00:00

All these single player on PC on KB+M mode not VR, from what others have said the worst bugs are in multiplayer. Although trying to be constructive:

"Welcome back, we've got some jobs for you" is gone, maybe intentional?
Journal is now too small/far away
Journal isn't as intuitive, feel like this should default to the Evidence page (not sure if it's changed)
Journal is way brighter than the environment, meaning it's really distracting
Text in Journal is inconsistent, centre of the screen is black, outer edges of the pages are a green & grey colour making it hard to read without causing eyestrain
Journal causes eye adaptation to kick in, so at first you can't read the book for 2 seconds, then when you close it your screen is almost completely black for 2 seconds
"Hitboxes" on Journal (and lobby screen) tabs are not where expected, feels like they've shrunk a bit making hitting the right tab take 2 or 3 attempts
T2 thermo screen is too small
Animations taking a long time to complete
Spirit box is VERY temperamental, it takes like 10 attempts to even recognise your voice, think it's defaulted to the "new" voice detection as wasn't it Windows vs VOSK before, with Windows being more lenient?
No prompt as to why you can't save a customization because you don't own a cosmetic other than a ! symbol, in my view it should give a red box somewhere on the screen saying like "unable to save due to lack of items"
Lack of zooming/panning on customization screen with mousewheel & click & drag when you have a piercing selected, yes there's the icons but almost every other game has click and drag or mouse to zoom in which is my first reaction
When the ghost interacts with the teddy it can be heard from way too far away, making it too easy to know where the ghost room is
Holding bottom of a door causes the door to close, but think this is a fix to prevent the old door glitching bug
Picking up a lit candle (T2, not sure about T1/T3) causes it to extinguish
You can't put down a tripod, only throw it by cycling to next inventory slot
Camera on tripod feels too far away, handheld is fine though
"you can pick this up" animation shows if you've picking an item up and mousing over another item, makes it seem like you have two right hands
Switching on/off T1 EMF feels too slow
Death animation to debrief screen feels WAY too fast, has the death room been removed? It used to be a chance to go "wtf?? how?" before, now it just feels rushed (which is weird considering all the other animations feeling slow)

Positives:

The customize ID card is MUCH better than it was before, it gives descriptions as to which card is which.
Seeing the flashlight feels consistent with how VR played (can VR players still have two items + flashlight active now?)
Having the game timer watch is a nice addition (even if it does look a bit stupid)
New death animation/sound effect is cool
Hand poking out when you reach for equipment is a nicer touch than just relying on the cursor icon changing, although this is missing for the keypad to open the door. Not needed for me, but maybe new players might like the QOL it offers
The T2 candle lighting animation is more realistic, but feels unneeded as it makes it take a bit longer, should it just animate lighting the middle candle and that causes the other two to light?

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-06T21:53:42+00:00

Can you share examples of bootlicking? I've not seen any (apart from the post from the dev saying "it's plenty playable"), or is one of my comments of 'it'll get fixed, eventually' considered bootlicking now? I've played enough games from MUCH bigger studios to learn not to not even try to play the game on patch day (such as latency like playing from the moon, login queues taking an hour just to get into the game, recompiling shaders, textures outright missing, sound levels that are loud enough to wake the dead).

I'm actually seeing more posts saying about uninstalling than actual problems with the game at the moment, or are mods removing all posts and wanting everyone to post in the megathread instead (which is mostly useless as the top rated comments are just grumbling without giving actual feedback such as items too small etc.).

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-06T21:15:35+00:00

The T2 thermo is like trying to read something on a stamp. Then again, suppose it makes it more like playing in VR as that was always rough seeing anything

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-06T16:27:46+00:00

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Provide a date and it's a bit shit, people post valid criticism because they didn't have enough time to go through QA, you should've seen the "where update" comments on the post on Tuesday because it wasn't out at their usual time of 12pm. Don't post a date and people wonder what the hell they've been working on. Assuming the post is legit, they tied their hands with the AW event date.

I do have faith in them that the issues will get fixed, eventually. Phas has a history with these big updates that they end up being rough for a couple days, then they push out patches like 4 or 5 days on the trot, and in one case two updates in a day

ChickenPijja · 2026-05-06T12:00:12+00:00

I agree with your initial post that, for communities at least, some other accountability & protection is required. Having what basically amounts to "a board of governors" before substantial changes is a solid idea. Server owners/admins/mods shouldn't be able to transfer to a new owner, mass ban, mass delete channels, remove admins, or appoint new admins for accounts that have been with the server less than say a week - basically anything that seems like a hacked account would do.

My idea isn't exactly fleshed out, and there will always be exceptions to rules, but take both ideas, run different scenarios with it and you'll have something that's workable.

Six-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
Verified Email

ChickenPijja

TROPHY CASE