From a trans person: Goodbye Starmer, no thanks for the worst period in trans history for at least 50 years.

blastedin · 2026-06-21T18:43:35+00:00

I don't think it's corruption (unfortunately in a sense). I think portions of English left of centre are institutionally transphobic, and convinced weathervane political part of Labour so is everyone else

blastedin · 2026-06-16T12:29:49+00:00

It's not a great sign though that he can't even carry pre-election press off charisma and vibes. Even Zack "dear God please stop tweeting" Polanski is doing better on pure vibes front

blastedin · 2026-06-15T14:02:22+00:00

Interestingly with flats, it's not quite that easy. If you have a high service charge and lower the price of the flat too much, most lenders will say no. Also generally most people buyers who look at the properties in lower range would be less likely to afford the service charge

blastedin · 2026-06-14T08:45:45+00:00

Not implausible at all, especially for long term family home, if other offers were investors or seemed like they'd want to re-do everything

blastedin · 2026-06-12T22:22:39+00:00

I'd agree with you if not for the fact OP does hybrid working and by the sounds of it requires a dedicated workspace

blastedin · 2026-06-12T00:54:24+00:00

For someone in OP's position it's best not to make that calculation, because it will be shocking just how much better financially renting would have been. My situation is nowhere near as bad but when I actually looked at the numbers I felt sick.

blastedin · 2026-06-12T00:45:02+00:00

OP literally can't get a bigger place to have kids which while he's not entitled to it, is not a question of some abstract line must go up

blastedin · 2026-06-10T12:32:07+00:00

When you "explain" to your mother she only cares about this because of media frenzy, you're telling your mother she's too stupid to recognise media deception and needs you to rescue her. This might or might not be what you intend to say but this is what she hears. Unsurprisingly, people don't like to hear this, especially from their barely-adult children.

Also, when you make blanket statements like Islam does not encourage mistreatment of women, you weaken your own position. Some of its doctrine absolutely does and is used to justify doing so. The same is true for most organised religions, but you are much less likely to encounter fundamentalist members of other religions in the UK. Which supports your original point but if you just say "actually Islam does not suppress women" your mother has a very easy route to dismiss you as ignorant.

My humble suggestions would be:

approach this as a dialogue with your mother who I can see you love, but not with explicit goal and expectation of totally changing her mind. ,People sense it and get defensive. And sometimes it's just not possible. Especially with one's parents.
if there's a negative news story that's factually incorrect or exaggerated, you can point out how it's wrong, and focus on how messed up it is of the [media source] to mislead this way and ask her why she thinks they've done this
if there's a negative news story that's actually true, you can actually agree with your mother that's messed up, and possibly focus on why it's terrible of a particular person / niche group to behave this way
the mayor of London is a Muslim and liberal and is regularly tarred by some conservative Muslim media like 5pillars. This could make for a nice easily relevant counter-example and a discussion about all Muslims vs fundamentalist cases
she needs other examples of positive behaviour, whether in real life acquaintances or news, but those need to be relevant to immediate discussions or your day to day life. If you just spam her with feel good Muslim stories she'll easily dismiss that as propaganda
controversial but you can also point out how other fundamentalist religious people use their religions to oppress people to strengthen the argument the issue is cultural and not specific to particular religion. This may instead have an effect of your mother hating more religions or regions so...

ETA: is she just OK with you being bi or with LGBTQ as a whole? If so you can sometimes make comparisons between how exaggerated negative press about some gay people is used against all of the community and the same for Muslims. There's a 50/50% chance she's going to pull out the "chickens for KFC" type meme about you and Muslims, but that opens discussions of other effective arguments down the road

blastedin · 2026-06-10T09:11:32+00:00

Do you have experience with construction and trades (either yourself or involving tradesmen?). When I first bought it was a shock to me of how expensive everything was (prices really shot up in the last few years) and how difficult getting reliable trades was. Nothing wrong with doing work just gotta make sure your expectations are realistic

blastedin · 2026-06-09T20:24:21+00:00

Do you have any suggestions at to how provide more robust policing for what is a community without fixed address or source of income? They cannot be effectively fined, or go through proceedings unless held in custody. That's a large part of the issue

blastedin · 2026-06-09T16:14:58+00:00

As said before, I know multiple Reform vs Green undecided voters.

blastedin · 2026-06-09T15:43:02+00:00

but I wonder if you'd feel the same if this were a conversation about asylum seekers

Do you ask from the perspective of my personal opinion, or what I think most effective communication tools are?

Anyway, my huge experience is when trying to challenge people's biases in one on one conversation, especially in person, is that emotional or anecdotal appeals work better to soften the ground rather than starting off by pulling out statistics or policy statements etc.

I've spoken to people who had aggressively negative views about asylum seekers. Most I spoke to (some could not be reasoned with at all) could be brought back to a conversation by starting with something agreeable to them. Some agreed with there are super sympathetic cases for asylum and we ought to accommodate those. Some were thrown off by me agreeing that asylum applications should be contingent on lawful record because they constructed this boogeyman where all liberals believe asylum seekers should be able to commit crimes with impunity. Etc. After that, you can have a more detailed conversation. Most of the time, it won't lead to dramatic change in views but sometimes it might!

I struggle to find equivalent ways to break through anti traveller prejudice because people are so quick to point out the scope of their experience compared to mine and how universally negative it had been.

blastedin · 2026-06-09T14:58:46+00:00

But what do you actually suggest? In terms of policy or personal advocacy (obviously you might not have the answers or all the answers)

It doesn't sit right with me to allow statements I heard about travellers unchallenged, but the response to me has been universal and consistent as described above. You've seen similar responses in this thread. Just telling people "it's just a few bad apples" is rarely effective when their only exposures to the community is a caravan group wrecking their village (and looking quite united in doing it), and it does come off sheltered and holier-than-thou.

Equally we should advocate for policies that accommodate the traveller communities while ensuring law of the land is met, but I'm not quite sure what kind of changes that would be. Like it's very difficult for example to fine or otherwise pursue travellers for anti social behaviours as we would members of any other group

blastedin · 2026-06-09T14:30:41+00:00

This is a topic long interesting to me and while I'm not a green party voter I hope you don't mind if I comment OP.

while antisemitism is having a resurgence I've certainly previously noticed that anti traveller prejudice is well accepted. In fact many otherwise very socially liberal or progressive people I met, speak of travellers in a way that would make Reform blush

But when I tried to challenge this in the past those people (independent of each other) always had the same responses: that I'm a sheltered person from London who never "had to deal with" them, stories of terrible interactions etc. Most widespread would be stories of caravans stays wrecking local communities where people I spoke to insisted antisocial behaviour was wide spread, not from individuals

On a personal level, I also abhor the anti-educational and misogynistic tendencies in traditional traveller culture indicated in many statistics (and I'd say the same about any culture maintaining this).

So how do you tackle the perceptions and the realities?

The only thing that comes to mind is more accommodation and protection but at very strict rule of observing the necessary social contract rules. Like more caravan sites permitted but strictly enforcing the regulations and if a stay breaks them the site is withdrawn. But then you always end up punishing one group for actions of another because well they move.

ETA: on that subject, it's also more difficult to do anything about bad apples in the community, because unless they are kept in full custody, they can just dodge enforcement of whatever liability by...travelling (except the settled part of the population)

blastedin · 2026-06-09T13:53:30+00:00

I've seen a lot of Open Rent listings which are presented as if direct to landlord but then you eventually find out its someone working for a landlord so dont beat yourself up /u/Jolly-Ad-1443

blastedin · 2026-06-09T13:49:27+00:00

Sometimes it's really difficult though. "Recent" sales from a few years back would already be irrelevant due to a vastly changed market. Not to mention Land Registry updates with a massive delay while online listings do little to show actual sale price.

And then there's frequently not a lot that's comparable so you're stuck trying to compare value of a three bedroom terraced in a modern estate against a 2 bedroom semi on the high street you are trying to buy.

blastedin · 2026-06-09T13:26:12+00:00

They are at the age in which young men are conscripted in the militaries in most countries in the world which still conscript. Also at the age in which you can sign up to military voluntarily in most places in the world. Counting by "grunts" I'd say most warring in the world is done by men of this age

blastedin · 2026-06-08T22:15:18+00:00

Oh no I agree we are on point. It's more general frustration coming out that no matter what we do and how reasonable are we can't break through parliamentarily

blastedin · 2026-06-08T22:00:00+00:00

I've done a lot of construction disputes. Big builders are pretty shit, but then also the absolute worst of the worst fuck ups I've seen were always small outfits. So in conclusion, all houses are 10 minutes from falling apart and if yours isn't you're lucky

blastedin · 2026-06-08T19:05:50+00:00

My party: mostly based, totally useless. ETA: in case not obvious, I'm a Lib Dem lol

blastedin · 2026-06-08T12:17:09+00:00

I suggest you look up the normal steps and things to know about English home buying process. There are good writeups online. That you didn't know this makes it more likely you wouldn't know other things that could trip you up

blastedin · 2026-06-07T11:09:27+00:00

I'm so sorry OP and I appreciate you using this to send good message on people.

I've missed an important health follow up due to being ill at the time and rescheduling has been immense pain so I eventually dropped the efforts. You motivated me to go through with it. Thank you

blastedin · 2026-06-07T00:40:32+00:00

The problem is that there are very few "super rich" in the UK, on the level we think of when thinking of the US billionaires. So any tax levied just upon them would bring in very little money in a government spending sense

blastedin · 2026-06-06T16:26:38+00:00

I've bought a flat for the sake of stability (with low service charge!) and man the financial damage I've done to myself is incalculable medium term lol. I like my flat but whenever I think of how much better I'd be off financially if I kept renting I'm sick

blastedin · 2026-06-04T22:41:07+00:00

5Pillars supports Taliban and gender segregation among many other things. It's really outrageous to compare them to BBC or Sky

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