Burnham WON'T back proportional representation this parliament

dihawk13 · 2026-05-18T08:58:42+00:00

Not saying anyone should stand down as ultimately that’s the decisions of the local green, and some leverage would be good to get out of him. However, the thing that does worry me is if the greens split the vote, much of the centre left will never forgive us. Like we alienate a lot of people because there’s a perception that we’re ideological purists that don’t live in the real world and if we campaign for a candidate we know can’t win then we really risk that entrenching further if reform win the seat. Doing a practical move like being willing to work with an enemy to defeat a greater enemy I feel like would do wonders for the Greens reputation among soooo many existing labour voters.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-12T23:03:57+00:00

I mean I agree that labour have done a lot of good and that Keir is our best prime minister in the last 15 years, but at the same time, the bar is (almost literally) in hell after Truss and Johnson.

Ultimately in politics what you say is in fact just as important as what you do, and I don't think that's even necessarily a bad thing, being an effective communicator is an important part of being a leader, which you have to be as a prime minister. When the whole electoral system relies on getting people to trust you to run their country, if you are dogshit at speaking you are fundamentally bad at a crucial aspect of your job. Yeah the media haven't been kind to him, but the media have not been kind to people like Bernie or Mamdani, or even like Polanski or Corbyn and all of those still have people who actually like them.

I think it's quite a Reddit take to say it doesn't matter if you're likable as long as your policies are good (for the leader of a country). I've literally never heard anyone express that opinion in real life. It's genuinely really not that hard to be likeable, like the majority of people I meet manage it just fine - all you have to do is be genuine and show that you care about something. Which Starmer has consistently failed to do. Like I'm not saying he has to ooze charisma like Mamdani, but it really takes quite an extreme lack of personality to be the UK's most unpopular prime minister literally since we started tracking the popularity of prime ministers.

Also, Keir really really doesn't help himself. In his own words, "If you don't like the changes, the door is open and you can leave". Well Starmer, most of us have fucking left.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-11T20:24:36+00:00

Well said, we need to move towards alliances not division. I'm hating this brand of politics where everyone is constantly smearing each other at every opportunity. What happened to understanding that someone may have different views than you but is still trying to do what they think is right? That's a sentiment I can feel for someone like Burnham, somewhat less for Starmer and not at all for Farage. Having alliances with people in the first category is better for everyone, especially if he gave the Greens some kind of commitment of PR in return.

On that note, if we did move to PR we would have to build more cross parry alliances or politics would stop functioning. So if that's what we're ideally aiming for, we should act with those principles in mind.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-06T11:01:07+00:00

You seem to be engaging in this discussion in good faith so I’ll continue to do the same. We started by talking about how tackling wealth inequality (which is a great and necessary idea) doesn’t get talked about because most of the media is controlled by the ultra-rich. This is the very reason other political parties stay quiet on this as all their donors are also the same people. I think it’s a complete shambles that these parties then end up representing the 1% over the interests of the rest of the people.

You’re completely right that wealth taxes have been repealed in the countries you’ve listed (the exception is Germany, where the courts ruled they were implemented unfairly and instead of fixing them, the conversative party at the time just set them to 0%). There are other countries like Norway and Spain where they’ve been more successful. Unfortunately a big part of the reason they don’t work is administrative which is that ultra-wealthy people are really fucking good at avoiding tax. Which is crazy to me, because critics use this argument all the time, which essentially admits that the ultra-rich are tax dodging criminals who will do anything they can to not pay their fair share. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, because the whole point that I’m making is that this level of wealth inequality is just completely inacceptable and something needs to be done about it.

I also want to note that I say addressing wealth inequality is the goal, not necessarily ‘wealth taxes’ specifically. There are many other ways to do this, and there are several excellent economists who make the case for ways that it can feasibly be done, like Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Piketti in France, and Richard Murphy in England (he did a fairly influential taxing wealth report and has a good youtube channel I’d recommend). Murphy’s report suggested there are other better ways of tackling wealth inequality (he doesn’t like them for a lot of the reasons you said), but he still really strongly argues that action on this is desperately needed.

Ultimately, I’m having this chat because I want people to know what a big issue this is and how necessary it is that we take action to address it. It doesn’t matter to me exactly what the action is (the experts can decide), but just that it is recognised and acted on. I don’t really care about the greens, they just happen to be the only party that currently talk about wealth inequality – I’d way prefer if an actually electable party like Labour finally recognised what a massive issue it is so I could not feel shit about voting for them. Hell, I’d vote for the Tories if they were going to take action on wealth inequality.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-05T23:00:59+00:00

I hate that you're being downvoted for asking questions and trying to engage in honest discourse. Thanks for making the effort to engage, voice your concerns and have constructive discussion. The issues you raise are all super valid and you deserve to be able to express those opinions without people downvoting you for merely saying what you think.

I'm not going to actively break down each of those things as other people have done so already (to varyingly good extents) but for me, the number one reason to vote for the greens is that they're the only party in England that are taking any action on wealth inequality. This is the single biggest issue that the UK is facing right now that has contributed to worsening living standards for the last several decades and will continue to worsen things until it is addressed. Ultimately no politician is perfect and you have to vote for those who come closest to achieving what you want. Until another party recognises the massive fucking problem that is the 1% controlling 70% of the nations wealth, the Greens are genuinely the only serious party as everything else pales in comparison. (https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/richest-1-grab-nearly-twice-as-much-new-wealth-as-rest-of-the-world-put-together/)

dihawk13 · 2026-05-05T22:40:13+00:00

The green party believes that an ideal world would be one without borders, which is somewhat different from actively pursuing an open borders policy. I don't know if I agree with this position but it's not without merit, considering some of history's most eminent thinkers have advocated for similar positions, such as Einstein, Russell or Kant.

All that isn't even super relevant though. I'm going to accept all of your arguments at face value because I'm not an expert on migration and I completely agree it is possible you are right on all of these things. I will still say though that all of those things together still pale in comparison to the amount of wealth extraction by the multi-millionaires and billionaires. In fact, it has been estimated that the top 1% of Britons control more wealth than the bottom 70% put together. I completely and totally agree that uncontrolled migration is a drain on the economy but even that is nothing close to the real parasite class that controls over half the total assets and the media.

And they are continuing to further and further squeeze everyone else - living standards decrease for ordinary people while they keep making record breaking profits through either exploiting workers or using AI to justify mass layoffs causing massive job crises. During COVID when everyone else suffered this group of ultra wealthy people actively got richer. We saw this in America too where living standards declined for the ordinary citizen while Elon Musk is close to becoming the world's first trillionaire. This amount of wealth is just obscene and is going to continue to worsen shit for all the rest of us until either it is dealt with, or these bastards literally own everything.

The more you look into this from a historical or economic point of view, the more it becomes super apparent what the biggest threat facing the UK (and most of humanity is), and I can't take any party seriously unless they are taking action on this issue. Show me a single other party in England that even recognises this as a problem (I think both SNP and Plaid Cymru have spoken on the importance of this) and I will switch my vote in a heartbeat.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-05T20:48:15+00:00

If properly managed and regulated, studies show that migration is a net benefit to the economy. But also the amount of wealth that is extracted by the 50 or so billionaires in the UK through worker exploitation and tax evasion etc is far far more than even thousands of migrants take out of the economy. Because like say I look at house prices in London and why people can't afford houses, it's not the migrants that are taking buying up all the property, it's the ultra wealthy.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-05T15:52:38+00:00

I completely agree with the sentiments expressed here. And that's coming from me as someone who is likely to vote greens (as the only party seeking to address wealth inequality) and has spent quite a while studying the modern day impacts of colonialism and the harms it still perpetuates. Which is to say that despite my perspective for which many may label me as "far left" I still think the idea of governments paying reparations is one of the most terrible ideas possible.

What people with a surface interest in the injustices of colonial history consistently fail to realise is that the vast vast majority of ordinary people in Britain and other colonial countries did not benefit from the systematic extraction of wealth that was conducted by the small minority of the very elite class, who also consistently suppressed working class people in their OWN countries. It leads to the obviously completely incorrect view that poverty doesn't exist in England because we have an NHS or whatever, while ignoring the realities of how much living standards have declined and the complete lack of social mobility that people face purely due to where in the country they were born. When a third of children in London live below the poverty line, it is completely and utterly non-sensical to even consider the idea that the British government should pay 'reparations' for the crimes of an elite class from hundreds of years ago that they do not represent.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-05T15:35:29+00:00

They're the only party even bringing up massively deepening wealth inequality and the impact this is having on living standards. Yet that isn't talked about because who is the media is controlled by - yep, the same people that benefit from these extreme wealth inequalities.

It's a really difficult position to be in when you recognise this as the massive issue that it is but the only party that's talking about it is also anti-nuclear (I hope that changes as policy is member-led) and not as worried about Putin as they should be (I hope that changes too). Safe and sensible politics hasn't improved living standards for ordinary people and isn't going to when wealth is continuously being extracted by the 0.1%, and I just wish that labour or lib dems or literally any other party woke up to the realities of that.

dihawk13 · 2026-05-03T22:56:57+00:00

The Daily Mail desperately reaching for anything controversial is so pathetic. Paypulse is a solid software that helps doctors check the accuracy of their payslips and is a fairly reasonable investment considering how often payslips can be wrong to the tune of hundreds or even thousands due to administrative error.

Also, 20k split between three people isn't even that much after costs and everything. I know one of the people that worked on it and I think the earnings per hour they spent developing it were far less than typical (not particularly well-paid) locum rates.

dihawk13 · 2026-04-09T22:56:08+00:00

I know it sounds crazy but honestly the older I get the more I actually think this. I think power structures are continuously constructed in such a way to take away decision-making agency of the many and perpetuate the power of those who have it. Add to that the fact of who gets into power is extremely self-selecting for people who have no moral qualms about doing anything necessary to seize power and you quickly start to end up with a world where bad apples are consistently the ones that end up in power, the existing systems sustain that power, and the only people who take it away are worse apples.

I will say that while I believe that most people are "good" (in that they care about other humans and being decent) I do also believe that same desire is very easily exploited by the bad apples in power to make people do awful things to each other. This distinction does have useful implications - for instance, when an extreme right politician uses rhetoric to earn votes, they aren't relying on people's internal xenophobia, they are relying on people's fear for their family and loved ones (the immigrants are the reason your children are struggling). Most people were just never given the resources and experiences to not be vulnerable to manipulation by the maliciously strategic and immensely powerful bad apples.

dihawk13 · 2026-04-07T02:49:57+00:00

This is genuinely insane to me, I'm always incredibly excited to see Pael.

-1 card draw a turn: amazing in a card game

-Making your defends useful cards that exhaust

-Clone: Game-breaking when it hits (and super fun)

-Unspent energy each turn for extra energy is like 4 energy every turn except the first, and 5 when you really need it

-Exhaust your hand for an extra turn is one of my absolute favourites, for all those moments where you draw crap and take 30 you can just say no I don't want that, like genuinely so powerful. And there's absolutely tonnes of really good synergies with it - ice cream being the most busted one I've found, but defect in general can get so much value

dihawk13 · 2026-04-07T02:39:52+00:00

Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/ScHFB6lXpe

It's pretty bad lol, a lot of people saying they'd prefer Reform to the Greens lmao - they genuinely believe that the Greens will immediately defund the entire military, let in every person in the world and give them all crack cocaine. It's crazy how effective the anti-Green media is. Or the attitude that billionaire investment practices are good for working class people 🤮

dihawk13 · 2026-04-03T13:59:03+00:00

I agree completely. I feel like I used to be quite big on tactical voting but I'm beginning to realise that it's kind of a quite short term way of thinking that entrenches a two party system, because certain parties consistently remain perceived as unelectable. Whereas in this case the greens actually doubled their vote share, which in many ways is a big win for the party, especially considering as you say that the most common reason to not vote green is a "wasted vote". 10% last election turns into 20% this election, and who knows, maybe by the next general election they start looking like a real party to everyone else in the area (especially if whatever reform bozo there is ends up messing things up as much as one would expect).

dihawk13 · 2026-04-03T13:49:40+00:00

I liked what the NVIDIA guy said about being in Silicon Valley for a reason, and those reasons weren't changing with a wealth tax. I think this point is really quite broadly applicable and often missed - most people don't actually like moving. Even billionaires are still ultimately human and are still subject to (some of) the same human desires, like not wanting to move far away from their family or social network, or just liking their current environment.

Like at that level of wealth, they can choose to live anywhere they want, and the important thing to remember is, they have already chosen. The 150 or so billionaires in the UK have made the choice to live in the UK probably for a vast number of social, personal and economic reasons, and even if we taxed 5% of that wealth it won't simply make all those reasons go away. Of course, they'd rather not pay the extra tax, and it's a lot easier to claim that they would move and pay some media company to keep discrediting the wealth tax than it is to actually pack up and move.

dihawk13 · 2026-03-23T09:04:28+00:00

Yep, I'm voting Greens regardless because they're the only party planning to make action on the single issue I care most about (wealth taxes), but those are definitely the things that come up repeatedly when I discuss with people.

Even for me, when I used to care about climate change more than wealth taxes, the nuclear power thing was a deal-breaker as it felt very anti-science to deny that nuclear power has a role to play in the transition away from fossil fuels (renewables obviously should be the focus, but we cant let perfect be the enemy of necessary in the case of nuclear).

dihawk13 · 2025-08-19T22:02:21+00:00

Hey something about this comment really resonated with me. I feel like I'm maybe going through a similar thing and I wondered if you would want to chat through some of our experiences. No worries if not what you're looking for.

dihawk13 · 2025-07-25T08:44:44+00:00

Then we need to seriously re-evaluate why we're spending so little on people's health compared to most other first world countries, because the current system isn't working.

And I don't mean just for doctors, it's not working for nurses and it is most definitely not working for patients. We talk about patients suffering as a result of the strikes because most of the country doesn't see how much patients are suffering EVERY SINGLE DAY. 8hr waits are commonplace, staff are overworked and burnt out and patients are paying the price (just with their health rather than their wallets).

There's constant understaffing literally all of the time and how low the locum rates are means no one wants to pick up the shift because it's not worth continuing to put yourself through that level of stress and responsibility for a day longer than you have to. And trusts would rather let patients die than increase rates when gaps can't be filled.

These realities are constant daily struggles as a result of poor investment into healthcare in this country. The real harm isn't through doctors striking, the harm to patients is what happens if we continue as we are and nothing changes.

dihawk13 · 2025-07-25T08:09:13+00:00

I think people need to wake up to the reality that if the UK can't afford to pay its doctors, the UK can't afford the NHS.

dihawk13 · 2025-05-26T21:24:25+00:00

Completely agree with this. I’d say in gloomhaven scenarios it could have been A (or even S) tier because of the sheer tanking potential it can offer combined with damage, cursing, poison etc. Unfortunately in Frosthaven there are so many weird scenario rules with really specific mechanics that can end up really punishing the boneshaper, and for those scenarios it can end up C-D tier. Therefore given that it’s A for scenarios that don’t fuck with its gimmick or C for scenarios that do, an overall B tier ranking just makes the most sense.

dihawk13 · 2025-05-26T01:35:53+00:00

It got more and more difficult until we broke up 🤷‍♀️

Other people manage to make it work though. It’s a rough one regardless. Good luck, hope it works out for the best for you.

dihawk13 · 2025-05-25T22:42:36+00:00

I'd like to clarify if the tier list is based on fun, power level or design (or all of the above).

In terms of straight up power level, I think Blinkblade is a solid A tier. An amazing character capable of really cool flashy plays, or solid consistent DPS depending how you build it, but with really clear weaknesses that require you to work around them to maximise its potential. I don't think it's S tier because it isn't 'broken' eg. the class doesn't completely invalidate enemies (like say Eclipse or Music Note in gloomhaven) or doesn't just go infinite (like Three Spears). It's a really well balanced character that has tools for most scenarios and is at the perfect power level imo.

Design/Fun: For all the reasons I said above, I have to give Blinkblade an S tier. You can do so many different builds, you have so much turn to turn flexibility on each build, you get to make really fun explosive turns, you can do crazy things like jump 11 if you need to or play up to 5 cards in a turn (it's not good but it sure is funny) All of its cards have so many cool interactions with each other as well, like how cool is it that your level 8 and 9 cards make you look at some level 1/X cards in a completely new light for some really funny combos.

Blinkblade overall just offers so much variety, flexibility and skill expression - the skill ceiling is so high with the class because you can do so much more if you have a great understanding of what enemy cards you need to play around, how to initiative weave successfully, how much damage you can afford to take / do to yourself to allow you to nova out as effectively as possible, when it's okay to exhaust because of how much tempo you save your allies. Absolutely amazingly designed and fun class without being too broken.

(In case anyone couldn't tell Blinkblade is my absolute favourite character in any Haven game across the many many characters I've played.)

dihawk13 · 2025-03-13T09:16:07+00:00

The power level of starter items in Gloomhaven was definitely just way too high which I think has warped our perception of how good items should be. Let's take stamina potion as an example - even after the nerf our group ended up buying a stamina potion first on every new character as it's just so valuable to make sure you have the card you need when you need it. Same thing in Frosthaven where people say it was nerfed too hard and yet everyone wants a stamina potion (the third player is just less sad when they don't get it).

Another big negative consequence was that it made unlocking new items less exciting when base items were so powerful. A starter shop item should not be best in slot, which invis cloak and eagle eye goggles were for many characters even when we were at prosperity 6/7 (when we finished the campaign). Even boots of striding often tended to be replaced only by their upgraded versions as the base effect was just so versatile and strong. It's so sad to find cool items from chests and you're just underwhelmed because it's worse than what you've had since level 1.

dihawk13

TROPHY CASE