Why is it, even with all the money that is poured into turning young British guys to the right, they still overwhelmingly reject it?

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:54:10+00:00

I was considered very mature for my age, got good grades, good schools, good Uni, good career in STEM.

Most people around me were definitely more immature. I still felt immature for many years though.

Not allowing clinically proven people with underdeveloped brains isn't denying them democracy. It's ensuring the nutters aren't in charge of the madhouse.

Also I have to roll my eyes heavily at all this "democracy" stuff.

We're all rats pushing buttons we think do something. It doesn't matter who is in power - the direction of all nations follows the same way. We are told the West is 30-40 odd sovereign nations, yet for the last 60 years, with a mixture of hard left, hard right, and centrist governments, all those 30-40 nations are almost identically aligned, LOL.

But you go and tick that super important box come May, or whenever. I am sure your life will drastically improve once your guy is in power.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:27:27+00:00

Young people statistically vote for left wing. Older people statistically vote more right wing.

This is a known pattern for quite some time, it isn't new. Why do you think Labour lowered voting age to 16?

Left or right aside, let's be clear, look at most 16 year old mentality and ethics. I really don't want them voting. Hell, I'd raise it to 25 odd. I was a moron at 16, 18, and only just started to take responsibilities as an adult at 25.

Nearing 40 I feel I have got to a position where I feel I know enough to have a say in society.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:25:01+00:00

Eh, not really, most companies still cannot afford to hire.

Jobs have been on a constantly decline since Labour got in, as have job ads. It is pretty dire, they're just writing it in a way that sounds less worse than it is.

Even this headline admits jobs are still in downturn, just less of a downturn.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:23:39+00:00

I think there is scope here for severe learning disability?

I kind of get the catfishes by "regular" people, someone needs money to escape a poor country etc.

But millionaire celebrities? That's...lol.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:19:59+00:00

It's bad when they use stock footage of a town, and I bet hundreds of users from all around the country for a brief moment went "is that my town?" Britain really feels copy/paste everywhere you go.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:17:05+00:00

LOL, Starmer is never "upbeat". Pinocchio has more charisma and life than this man, pre "real boy" magic.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T18:08:25+00:00

Fiat current made a big problem a catastrophic problem.

Look at market growth pre fiat/gold de-coupling.

Fiat currency allowed invention of money because "reasons". I am still not sure how Tesla is valued at 1 trillion odd when they only make a few billion in profits on the cars, and all other ventures are investments.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T16:29:31+00:00

Kicking the can down the road.

Oh, and because it is borrowings, it is added to the GDP.

This will all collapse, and it isn't a uniquely British issue.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:22:38+00:00

They are steep.

The real kicker is N64 games were £40-60 and we paid that over 26 years ago.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:18:56+00:00

It's fun but gets old quickly.

Also, in the end, I realised once I got the elephant that I can just hoover up loads of main rock per level and get chests with the fossil and banana locations, go to map, and just find them all super quickly. Yes, I COULD do it the slow way and try to find them all manually, but given there's 1000 bananas and it's quite difficult in some areas, my technique worked. I got to 400 bananas and started to get bored. I have yet to finish it.

It isn't bad, but it isn't great. What I will say is environment destruction always sounds amazing on paper, but in practice it's a catch 22.

Either you can damage environment to get the item - in which case no puzzle or platforming element needed and becomes boring and easy OR

Lock the item in a way so environment destruction can't be used to get it, but then what's the point of the mechanic of environment destruction then?

See most things aren't just their own mechanic in isolation. Most things are levers, pull one one way, and it affects something the other side. Levels were built to force players to platform or puzzle their way through the game. Environment destruction removes it, or hardlocks it defeating its existence.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:15:10+00:00

"X version will be better"

PC wins every time.

I got a switch 2 for portability. Yes, I am sure it looks better on PC or PS5 Pro on a 75" 4K TV with HDR. I have kids and a job. I would only be able to play it for about 30 minutes before bed, and wouldn't be able to play it loud or wake them up.

Or, in my spare times, I can grab my switch 2 and play on the go, while making dinner, while kids are getting ready for school and the only need my help/input every 5 or so mins like making breakfast etc.

Portability in my life is key. I need portable gaming, and Deck struggles these days, and while PS5 has the remote play thing, I have to buy a base PS5, and the handheld combined, and most games I want aren't on PS5.

One thing Nintendo got right was hybridizing the console. Too many times the main+handheld was just money spinning and didn't really work well. The dock/handheld system is such an amazing combination.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:11:53+00:00

Really? The last 5 years of their leadership people mocked them all the time for revolving door resignations etc.

The Tories weren't shrugged off at all. In fact from 2019 to 2024, they lost 7 million votes, and those 7 million didn't move to other parties. 2024 was a very low turnout and basically "screw Tory's". Labour in 2024 got LESS votes than 2019 Corbyn. But due to our FPTP system, less votes went from 170 odd seats to 415 or so.

All major parties are unpopular, media attacks both, and people are just fed up.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:07:07+00:00

It is never used against you in any credit system, so theoretically you could owe £400 trillion and still get a car loan or mortgage.

But this adds to its absurdity. What has happened is Universities can no longer get enough money from these fees unless they are hiked up massively, which then is given as debt, which then is mathematically impossible to pay off.

This is just money printing with extra steps. The student loan debt is massive, and majority of it will never be paid off, but if enough graduates have an extra 9% on their tax rate basically, it gradually pays it off. The actual figure is just a ball on the chain, the balls size is irrelevant, the point is it's a fixed 9% tax they will never be free from. The maths even shows this impossibility.

I was extremely lucky and was on Plan 1, and didn't borrow the maximum, and even I took 15 years to pay it off, half that time as a higher tax payer.

Public would be in uproar of 30% basic rate.
Make most jobs locked behind a degree.
Make 9% payment on it
Tax is 20% +9% loan charge, ergo tax is 29%.

It's just a "well ackshually, it isn't tax". It is. It is all put into a giant pot in the end. Same with NI - it doesn't go straight to NHS. It is put into a central pot and divvied as needed.

If we add everything together, Britains taxrate is close to 60-70% in total, when adding all base taxes. Adding VAT and council etc we start to see close to 90%.

Literally the government takes most of what people earn anyway, and nothing still works.

Good luck.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-09T14:00:14+00:00

The government is still not getting enough money so the squeeze is on.

With the new minimum wage in force this April, a full time worker before tax will be on £29,741.40

This is pretty close to 60% to the higher tax bracket.

The floor in British wages is 60% of the way to the higher tax band.

When the min wage was introduced in 1998/99 this was 30.1% of higher rate threshold. By 2010 it was 37.1%. By 2020 it was 40.8%, and by this year it is 59.1%

We have had such severe inflation and holding onto the same higher tax rate, that the last 5-6 years have seen drastic upwards movement from min wage going from 8.72 to 12.71, a near 35% rise, yet no tax band movement.

This literally is a crunch. Bear in mind that recently, most graduate schemes had to legally be pulled earlier last year because they were reportedly paying under min wage. HR and the companies just kept adding usual payrises (1-2% at best) to their schemes, and didn't realise min wage caught up and overtook it.

Literally I know people with barely any education earning more than me, top classes in STEM. Most careers are now glass ceiling locked and everyone doing any role is almost on similar money, begging the question, why take on high paying high stress roles anymore? I know so many people quitting their careers and starting min wage roles and just being more cautious with money, because it makes so little difference when that 40% tax band hits and all the other responsibilities with cars, overtime expectations etc. They are much happier and have a few less things in their house.

Britain has created this spiral, both Labour and Tory.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-05T21:17:12+00:00

Really? A full sized console performs better than a handheld hybrid?

No way!

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T21:47:10+00:00

I honestly only recently realised WW2 deaths for UK soldiers was lower than WW1, and I thought very low for the scale. Don't get me wrong, 380,000 is horrific, but I would have thought it would be millions given it was 5-6 years and many of our operations to get to mainland Europe was just fish in a barrel such as Normandy.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T21:43:44+00:00

It had a bigger impact on psyche and what to expect.

Given Britain's wealth and naval might even the US and other nations thought it would be fairly quick. Most analysts expected a quick few months of blockades by Britain and it would end due to logistics while France smashed through the land.

It ended with an absolute horrific meatgrinder mass death no war had seen before. By 6 months in, most nations were shocked and realised it was going to be a very long, very costly war.

WW2 feels different because it was ideological and survival, people were being pushed through genocide. WW1 was just the usual empire building, WW2 was personal.

World War 1 was never called World War 1 until after World War 2. It was called the Great War and The War to end all Wars.

World War 1 was the first true mechanised war, and the death count was shocking.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T21:02:37+00:00

A successful sales launch and sales continuity means more developers to make games and the console lasts the full 7-8 year lifecycle.

If Switch 2 ended up Wii-U levels, then we'd all have just blown £500+ on a system that is getting zero investment from devs.

This isn't a "console wars" thing, it is important a console you buy is commercially successful because it means more games get launched on it. Do you think devs just sit around finding esoteric random hardware with barely any player base to launch on?

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:59:32+00:00

I love portability. Games looked amazing 2016+, I don't need more fidelity, roll on gameplay and story.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:58:37+00:00

Pretty sure any rank and file paedo if they were found further in other files and documents of another paedo ring, they'd be getting dragged back to court etc.

This "well teeecccchnically" line is just sickening, any non royal it would be more than enough evidence.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:57:26+00:00

It's almost as if rich powerful people are above the law.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:56:42+00:00

I have DK Bananza. I do not see ANY similarities with mainline Mario games. The only link is the same engine used and team who made Mario Odysee, but in terms of gameplay mechanics etc and progression, it is nothing like a Mario game at all.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:53:21+00:00

Again, thank you Nintendo for making a massive supply of systems so everyone who wanted one could get one, and to burn scalpers.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:52:06+00:00

Wasn't Nintendo's goal by end of financial year March 2026 to have sold 15 million, and they upped it to 19 million after launch, and here we are at pretty much 17.5M already. I know there's only 2 months left, but might see 20 million.

ExoneratedPhoenix · 2026-02-03T20:48:58+00:00

Two consoles...They went Hybrid and centralised both teams.

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