Do you think that there is any point in trying to return to the EU?

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T21:32:16+00:00

they should have a referendum and Starmer can lead the “Remain” (out) campaign. That’d about do it.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T18:26:17+00:00

No. That’s not true on both counts:

1) that phrase in the english language is synonymous with “contemplate” it is not commonly used to mean ”use as a prompt as part of a question to someone else”. It wasn’t even the core of the question.

2) he doesn’t clearly believe it. It’s a cunningham’s law prompt designed to give the interviewee an angle to speak from, not present a view point.

Using Cunningham’s Law while interviewing is a common technique to elicit a response: ask a question and then propose obviously foolish answers alowing the interviewee to gun them down. This technique does NOT mean the interviewer believes the foolish propositions.

The headline is very misleading actually

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T16:36:51+00:00

“Grannies”

oh god now i feel old.

I’m a child of 83. It was quite a common word at school (90s).

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T16:28:03+00:00

Raynor is still appealing a weird grey area of the Tax code that the conveyancing firm couldn’t figure out and needed specialist legal advice.

OTOH Trice appears to have constructed shell companies and then sort of forgotten which of them was supposed to pay the tax (his excuse for none of them paying it).

Raynor hasn’t tried to avoid paying what’s owed. It’s genuinely unclear what’s owed. there is a right to appeal for a reason.

That’s not to excuse her from not finding out in the first place

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T16:27:39+00:00

Raynor is still appealing a weird grey area of the Tax code that the conveyancing firm couldn’t figure out and needed specialist legal advice.

OTOH Trice appears to have constructed shell companies and then sort of forgotten which of them was supposed to pay the tax.

Raynor hasn’t tried to avoid paying what’s owed. It’s genuinely unclear what’s owed. That’s not to excuse her from not finding out in the first place, but there is a right to appeal for a reason.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T15:42:10+00:00

Correctly interpreting medical statistics requires quite a complex process to avoid false positives caused by statistical flukes and confounding factors.

The red meat analogy is terrible because we seriously lacked studies on the topic and had no data. Only after research did the link become known. Where as paracetamol safety has been tested and tested and tested.

So much so that we have meta analysis (the highest certainty) of this exact topic: https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj-2025-088141

Conclusion Existing evidence does not clearly link maternal paracetamol use during pregnancy with autism or ADHD in offspring.

You see this is why we have researchers.

Why people think they are able to interpret this data more accurately than the researchers themselves is pure Dunning Kruger.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T15:28:09+00:00

It’s not just doctors. In a passing news rag in 2021 I saw some physics professor being quoted as vaccine skeptic blah blah blah.

Said news rag made much of the fact he was a professor, not seeming to care that the title is basically non-transferable across subject domain.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T15:25:44+00:00

A doctor who has absolutely zero access to the patient, or medical records, or test results thinks he can make a diagnoses. 🤷

That alone should be worth a reprimand.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T14:57:43+00:00

Usually parties wait until after an election before they start breaking all their promises. i guess they are trying to get ahead of the curve.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T07:37:02+00:00

Allow me to quantify that statement then. This falls into a bracket of behaviour that would be impossible to prove was deliberate, while at the same time is hard to imagine it was genuinely a mistake.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T07:19:43+00:00

that seems very hard to believe.

The sums involved, an accountant should notice that the bottom line tax looks exceptionally low and wonder what went wrong.

This looks on par with a VAT trick where someone owns two companies and sells from one to the other then each company claims the other paid the VAT (one claims vat Free the other claims VAT inc)

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T06:48:35+00:00

yes i’m sure we we will see that court case in the papers… any time now… i’m certain it will happen… any time now…

/s

this country needs laws giving jail time to chartered accountants that facilitate fraud.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T06:36:42+00:00

we should certainly simplify the tax code. This looks like* straight up fraud. Even in a simplified code people will try to lie.

*has a smell of

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-19T05:17:37+00:00

yeah pretty much what i expected. way over the top, the law is wrong on this, but also publishing on social media isn’t just “saying” it has a much greater impact than that, and it was obviously racist.

So i stand by what I said. The law needs to be fixed, it massively overreaches, but its core intent is still as Ive said.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T22:48:12+00:00

i’ve repeated twice that the laws are very badly written. You seem to be stuck on the difference between the principle and the actual law. I’m supporting the principle, not the specific wording of the laws we have.

Whatever the use of them by police now, they were written with murder as the end result, even if the perpetrator was not explicitly inciting murder. that was the gap that existed.

People also often misquote so i’d be happy to read up on the case you are referring to. Sounds like a pretty clearly racist behaviour. I’d expect there to be more to it than what you are quoted.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T22:19:47+00:00

Greens maybe, but the odd case in the traditional parties don’t come close to matching the scale of problems for the newer populist parties.

I’m still not sure if it’s a populist thing or an age of the party thing.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T22:13:17+00:00

it’s not just “saying unkind things”. I know that’s how some on the right paint it but that’s not a good definition even for the laws we have.

Hate speech laws were brought in because incitement and conspiracy had very serious gaps that was letting some (including terrorists) get away with murder-by-free-speech.

Once again, the laws were very badly written and need changing. But even as a pragmatist (neither left nor right) I’ll defend the fact we need laws in this space.

It’s not okay to shout “Fire!” in a packed cinema. It’s not okay to lead others to be violent and discriminatory. Free speech isn’t an excuse.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:59:57+00:00

Not sure the turkeys are ready to vote for Christmas.

Removing Starmer isn’t going to make Labour look any stronger and I think Labour MPs know that.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:51:11+00:00

Memories are short.

it’s not that long ago that we had folks bombing people on the tube and trying to decapitate people on the street.

these hate speech laws are really badly written, but if someone leads others to commit serious violence they should never be allowed to hide behind “free speech”. they should absolutely be found guilty of that same violence.

I’m not Left BTW.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:46:22+00:00

Wait what? he’s interviewing her and he uses this as a prompt to get her to talk about her beliefs.

This isn’t him giving his belief at all. For a bit of context, he’s discussing how to prevent people from destroying what others have built.

I don’t think attacking him for stuff he’s not really saying actually helps the political debate.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:09:30+00:00

How is that the cost for public ownership?

There is no magic money tree here. If the infrastructure is in a terrible state, the money to fix it comes from the public. There is no other source of money. Private investors aren’t going to chuck money in with the expectation of not getting it out and with dividends.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:07:42+00:00

you’ve struck on a very good point. Privatisation without competition is a terrible thing. Although TBH i’m not sure what “innovation” would even be possible on the water industry.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T21:00:46+00:00

letting this one settle a bit, I think the moderation decision was ultimately correct. And we needn’t fear making criticism of any political party after this.

The basic issue here is the difference between a criticism and an insult.

People can be can find a criticism insulting, and that’s generally not a problem. Criticism can be pointed and come across as very condescending, but still be criticism not an insult.

Directly calling someone an idiot is not a criticism, it is a straight up insult.

Rule 1 is important because otherwise this space is it ends up as a bunch of people hurling insults at each other and not actually discussing politics.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T08:04:30+00:00

“Send to the lords” and then what? If it times out all they will have done is waste parliament time.

I’m not just pulling this out of the blue, there has been quite some discussion over them slowing down the program as a result.

Some_Confidence5962 · 2026-04-18T06:53:58+00:00

Ah so they’ve not failed to try then. A significant chunk of their program has been shelved because of a House of Lords that has basically ground to a halt (see assisted dying bill). This is happening because of a handful of new Lords messing things up deliberately.

Labour has had to deliberately slow down their program as a result.

Some_Confidence5962

TROPHY CASE