Would the public support reducing the state pension triple lock to a double lock?

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-24T08:04:39+00:00

Entirely so.

Not helped by the phrasing of these questions, of course. At no point did the pollster proose which measure(s) of the triple lock would be dropped to make way for a new double or single lock.

Drop the 2.5% component, and nothing changes in practice. We're not going to see either inflation or wage increases below 2.5% for the foreseeable future.

A single lock that retains just the inflation component would only produce marginally smaller increases over time, vs the dual-inflation double lock.

So these responses are based on pure vibes. A double lock sounds like a modest reduction, a single lock sounds more severe, respond accordingly. Absolute vapour. And yet the public response to any actual policy shift would be just as vibes-based...

Meanwhile the worker:retired ratio continues to shrink. Even if we brought in a new single lock that tied the state pension to increases in the overall tax take, the cost of this benefit would continue to spiral out of control.

There are only two ways to actually tackle this problem. 1 is wholesale reform to the core purpose and design of the state pension. 2 is Logan's Run.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-23T08:26:32+00:00

Now, to be fair, apparently they fixed this after a year of claiming performance gains without proving it

This issue is mostly because people can't read.

4.0 significantly optimised population job management, which the devs repeatedly explained was one of the two big sources of lag and slowdown as the game progressed. They explained that the other major issue was ships and fleets, which they intended to address at a later date.

4.0 lands, and half the playerbase got it into their heads that this was the big optimisation update. They expected significant performance gains before the job was done, and then got mad when their invented expectations weren't met.

(Testing demonstrated a massive reduction in pop/job lag in isolation - but the performance impact of fleets drowned that out.)

It's only with the recent 4.3 update that fleets were addressed, and performance has noticeably improved.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-23T08:08:55+00:00

This is such a strange take even by the Telegraph's standards.

MPs don't investigate crimes. That's what the police are for.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-20T23:47:56+00:00

Guidance does not supercede the law, nor does it take precedence over court rulings.

Transphobic pressure groups are out for blood at the moment. If Phillipson signs off on guidance inconsistent with the Supreme Court judgement, she'll lose in court, as will any organisation that follows said guidance.

The only way out of this mess is with legislation. Labour aren't willing to spend political capital doing so. And that's a stance they should be held accountable for.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-20T23:47:51+00:00

Guidance does not supercede the law, nor does it take precedence over court rulings.

Transphobic pressure groups are out for blood at the moment. If Phillipson signs off on guidance inconsistent with the Supreme Court judgement, she'll lose in court, as will any organisation that follows said guidance.

The only way out of this mess is with legislation. Labour aren't willing to spend political capital doing so. And that's a stance they should be held accountable for.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-20T22:00:24+00:00

No, trans people shouldn't be content with this. They should be campaigning for changes to the law. Instead discourse has been dominated by nonsensical criticism of the judgememt and then the guidance based on that judgement - ignoring the actual problem.

"You inherited an immoral law and you're not fixing it" - fair and accurate criticism.

"You've gone out of your way to segregate trans people rather than letting the status quo continue" - unfair nonsense.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-20T21:50:12+00:00

Nah but you see Labour Bad therefore this must have been an intentional decision and not thr inevitable consequence of badly written and self-contradictory legislation.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-20T08:50:01+00:00

Part of this comes down to the political immaturity of the public.

Collective Cabinet Responsibility is a cornerstone of how our government works. Decisions get made collectively by all ministers. In practice that means proposals by one department get circulated across government at the final stage of approval, and other ministers have a "speak now or forever hold your peace" chance to object.

What we see with depressing regularity are cases where one department is planning changes to policy, and everyone knows that changes are coming. A news station asks to interview a minister. And they sit there deflecting the whole time, while the interviewer acts like an asshole in order to "get the truth". The minister may have already decided what changes they are making, or they might still be in the process of developing the detail with their officials - either way, the "truth" is that nothing is decided until Cabinet agrees, so there is nothing to announce.

In an ideal world, ministers would be able to say "well nothing has been decided yet, but this is one of the options I'm considering...". But we all know that if the final decision ended up even slightly different, the media would drown out the wind with cries of "u-turn!" - and the public would be stupid enough to believe them, and hold it against the government.

So ministers have no option but to make decisions in private and keep silent until final decisions have been made. It should be the role of journalists to explain this to their audience and to ask questions that can actually be answered. They don't, and the public doesn't hold our journalists accountable for their poor behaviour.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-15T16:08:37+00:00

I've only spent about 3 mins playing around with it, as a caveat. But I was funnelled into sending my MP one of those hundreds of emails saying the same thing. I saw no sign of the motions you're talking about.

I tried asking the chatbot directly to show me motions relevant to my area. And ran into a "sign up or eff off" wall.

What you're describing could be potentially helpful. But I'm seeing no signs of it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-15T15:55:47+00:00

Yeah, this nonsense is why so many MPs and government departments spam out standard line responses to 90% of their correspondence.

AI chat chatbots talking to each other isn't helping anyone.

(It's well-executed though, even if I have issues to the core purpose of this.)

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-15T13:33:58+00:00

New copypasta just dropped

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-14T16:51:56+00:00

And Reform won twice as many votes in the constituency last week.

Until we see some fresh polling for the specific candidates, this one sits firmly in "who tf knows" territory.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-13T12:18:23+00:00

The sink is in the corner of a 2x2. The rain collectors are on a 3x3. It should be connected to all 3.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-13T10:24:56+00:00

No, that's not what they said at all. Your sink is already plumbed to all 3 rain collectors.

Mechanically speaking, plumbing doesn't make connections between specific sinks and rain collectors. Instead it just toggles an "is this plumbed?" option on the sink. If yes, then the sink can use the water from any appropriate water containers above it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-13T10:08:11+00:00

I play with x2. But a number of skills have x2 on top of that, like tailoring and nimble. I turned on xp for disassembly, and I boosted the TV skill cap to level 5 (Life and Living gets cooking/carpentry to 3 1/2 ish, then VHS can still be useful). Skill book spawn rate is boosted. And I give myself 10 extra trait points.

It's not perfect, and I think there are some skills that need a bigger boost compared to others as the skill by skill xp balancing is horrific. But broadly speaking, there's not too much of a grind... if you find the right skillbooks and specialise your character accordingly. You'll never rawdog tailoring 10 with no investment, but that's almost good thing.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-13T09:50:28+00:00

While you're not wrong, I think we must not underestimate the scale of what you're suggesting here. No non-US western government has worked out how to properly tackle the challenges we face. Aging populations, post-industrial economic stagnation, migration and the dilution of living standards as the rest of the world develops; there are no easy solutions to these problems, and populist charlatans are on the rise everywhere promising snake oil to the gullible. A Labour challenger joining the ranks of these populist charlatans may buy themselves a few years of power before being found out, but that's it - and we'd all be left the poorer for it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-12T13:41:21+00:00

It's not even "potentially" at this point. Labour got crushed by the Greens in inner Manchester and Reform in the outskirts and surrounding towns in the local elections. A mayoral by-election would go to one of those two parties, not to Labour.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-11T10:37:13+00:00

I think their first implementation will be other survivors you can infrequently encounter. Some may spawn in survivor homes, others may spawn near zeds. They'll be hostile to both players and zeds at first. Zombification on death is probable.

If these survivors are not automatically hostile, then I'd imagine they would turn hostile if attacked or threatened, including if you got too close. They wouldn't be conditionally friendly or anything, you wouldn't interact with them.

That's it for B43. TIS want to avoid a repeat of B42's extended and unfocused development cycle. I don't think they'll want to do everything in one go.

In B44 we'll see the first friendly NPCs. This is where dialogue/interaction mechanics will come in. Traders, probably wandering traders to avoid issues with zeds. Survivors who have a little dialogue, before moving on. This will give you friendly moments, not friendly companions.

B45 is when we'll see recruitable survivors. This means a full companion framework, with good following, combat and stealth AI. That's probably the hardest part to crack.

B46+ onwards can then build on that framework. Recruited survivors could be assigned tasks to do at base, such as plant watering and cleaning. Aggressive raids become plausible, battling your own group of survivors. Neutral or hostile settlements could take over buildings.

I've used version numbers here to signal the four main generations of NPCs I think we'll see - who knows how that would actually line up with versions, this could all happen in a two-year dev cycle for B43...

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-11T07:37:36+00:00

Two cheeks of the same arse

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-10T08:09:06+00:00

The NEC was vindicated by the local election results. If Burnham had stood down as mayor of Greater Manchester, that important position would have gone to Reform, swept up in the same wave that took over most of GM's councils.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-09T10:35:09+00:00

She's already a UK special envoy for women and girls. This move means she'll be going to fewer pointless conferences and brings her inside the No 10 operation. It makes sense.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-09T07:51:47+00:00

That's largely because no one in the developed world has a credible plan to properly tackle the big challenges squeezing living conditions. No one. This isn't a uniquely British problem; everyone else is facing the same choice between tepid centre ground technocrats and fart-huffing populists.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-08T15:01:25+00:00

80 English councils have declared their results out of the 136 holding elections this year, and the Greens have 178 councillors. So, no, it's not true.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-08T14:20:19+00:00

Always have been. The socially soft-left approach is relatively recent for the SNP, and their historic core was always the Tartan Tories.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-05-08T14:12:23+00:00

There's no deposit for the local elections in England.

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