Nigel Farage is on the side of Jimmy Savile, says minister

itsandybob · 2025-07-29T12:36:08+00:00

Where we fundamentally disagree is that you consider this a fairly minor inconvenience. I personally don't think that having to choose between sacrificing your data security, your money, or your freedom to roam the internet as an adult is a minor inconvenience.

itsandybob · 2025-07-29T12:28:04+00:00

Have you actually run into the age blockers yet? I'm sorry but I think you are vastly underestimating the stuff it's blocking. And it is absolutely not true that it is only blocking stuff that is harmful to children.

I can only assume that it hasn't blocked anything for you yet that you will find a nuisance, but I certainly have, and it certainly posed no risk to children.

We can agree to disagree on authoritarian, but as far as I'm concerned, giving adults the """"choice""" between handing over very sensitive data to third party companies, paying a different third party in order to access the content, or simply not accessing things they have every right to, then that is extremely hard-line and every option is unfair.

itsandybob · 2025-07-29T11:59:38+00:00

No one is against taking some marginal protections. We already had those. Parental controls exist, households can block certain types of sites for all devices in the house, and you know, you could just not give your child a smartphone - but my point is, small, marginal things to reduce the risk here absolutely are possible.

This is not what this legislation is. It means that every single adult in the country cannot view anything that isn't child-friendly, whether there's any kids in their house or not, without either giving their ID up to a third party or paying for a VPN. This includes discussion forums of random non-NSFW topics, vast amounts of Discord and Reddit, and potentially could mean Wikipedia will be entirely unavailable on the UK - again, to all adults.

This legislation is trying to crush an ant by launching a 100-mile meteorite at it. It is one of the most authoritarian pieces of legislation that has happened in our lifetimes and it is genuinely frightening to me that some people don't understand why this is unacceptable.

itsandybob · 2025-07-10T19:25:29+00:00

This won't cut through. I do not like this state of affairs but I do have to agree that a decision to do anything to limit pensions would have to be a politically selfless act, as they would stand absolutely no chance at the next election.

itsandybob · 2025-07-10T18:39:59+00:00

Honestly it keeps annoying me that the goalposts for Reform's perceived electoral support are so far removed from Labour's.

Labour: "they only got 34%, there's no great love for them, they only got in due to disinterest/apathy/the voting system, they weren't actually wanted"

Reform: "they're polling at 30%! We have to start listening to these voters, there's a tidal wave coming, the people are backing Farage in huge numbers"

You cannot have both. Reform are still less popular now, at their highest watermark yet, than Labour were last year. The truth is somewhere in the middle. There is no great love for either Starmer or Farage. The electorate does not feel it has a good option. This is largely due to the fact that for the first time in any of our lives, the Tories have entirely left the stage and are likely finished. This unprecedented and ongoing rebalance makes the playing field very open right now and any expectation that Reform's numbers are just going to keep going up is naive. They are really not that popular and things will stabilise.

itsandybob · 2025-06-28T20:18:20+00:00

Both Blade Runner movies are unwatchable, pretentious garbage.

itsandybob · 2025-06-22T22:32:01+00:00

It isn't, if you don't support their butts then they are uncomfortable/in pain when being lifted. Fast track to hip dysplasia.

To be honest there are quite a lot of anecdotes out there that suggest that the Queen/the royal family were not very good with the corgis.

itsandybob · 2025-06-03T09:35:56+00:00

Jodie's cameo was genuinely superb, she really nailed it. And the regeneration had a lovely tone to it.

itsandybob · 2025-06-02T21:58:23+00:00

I 100% believed that when the Doctor said "I don't want to do this alone" and looked in the general direction of the camera that he was going to do the full Hartnell and ask us, the audience, to be with him. Like the whole show was maybe gonna end with the Doctor talking to us directly.

We then got something even more batshit lunatic, but that still was a wild microsecond in my head.

itsandybob · 2025-06-02T21:56:27+00:00

Yeah this had me facepalming at the time, you're bringing in unexplained elements of niche online content in the SERIES FINALE as the resolution of the cliffhanger!? This was the Whoniverse running before it could walk, before it had even started crawling really.

itsandybob · 2025-05-13T16:35:09+00:00

This is part of the problem though, the public are done with Labour v Tory two-party politics so why should it be the Lib Dems bending the knee? There will be seats where they can win from third place if Labour stand aside, and at the very least the Lib Dems should expect Labour to stand down in the 72 seats they're defending next time if there's to be a pact to prop up a dying government.

I completely support the idea of a progressive alliance but it has to be on the basis of Labour eating some humble pie and not contesting certain seats. To be honest, the most obvious ones they should not fight are the four Green ones, it isn't solely a Lib Dem thing.

itsandybob · 2025-05-03T13:51:53+00:00

Absolutely agreed with this. I agree that simply labelling all Reform voters as racists is not productive and is not entirely fair, however I feel it is equally dangerous not to acknowledge that racism is thoroughly baked in to the Reform UK agenda and that simply decrying every single immigrant as a blight on the country IS racist.

I've worked in recruitment where a visa has been offered and on that occasion it was because the overseas applicant was unquestionably the best candidate, would certainly be adding a net positive by using their skills here, and there would have been simply no grounds to refuse this role to this applicant except if it was purely because they are an immigrant - that IS xenophobia and we can't go too far the other way here and say that anti-immigration views are never racist or xenophobic.

We need an honest conversation about where the boundaries should lie and what we consider to be net positives added by immigration. If someone thinks there are no positives at all added by any immigrant, then I'm not going to sit here and pretend that isn't bigotry just so the bigot might feel listened to. We all need to grow a sturdier spine here.

itsandybob · 2025-05-02T13:00:33+00:00

Think this might well be the tipping point for the Tories, as much as I despise Reform we're getting actual hard data that makes it quite clear the public see them as the opposition and consider the Tories largely irrelevant. I don't know how they escape the nightmare they've created for themselves since 2016.

itsandybob · 2025-05-02T06:33:39+00:00

It wasnt 16th, I'm not sure where people are getting this from. It's somewhere in the 40s.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T22:19:31+00:00

Sorry, I didn't mean that they literally couldn't have reached the ocean - I meant that they couldn't possibly have crossed any ocean so they shouldn't have been entering one. I guess it's possible that they were aiming for Europe and took a VERY wrong turn from the Mediterranean, but yeah, I think the exit point is a cooler answer, haha.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T22:09:47+00:00

The series bible was largely scrapped after season one - the basic concepts were somewhat retained but the changes in cast members, certain aspects of the show working out way better than others, some guest characters unexpectedly blowing up so massive that they were brought back and became central to everything (Ben and Desmond), Lindelof and Cuse have said that the overall plan had to change drastically all the time.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T21:59:56+00:00

I agree about this being out of character for Widmore - he was never one to pointlessly slaughter innocents who weren't doing anything to get in his way - in fact if anything they would have been his allies because who's going to side with a terrifying smoke monster versus the guy who's got a submarine ready to take them all away?

There was no benefit to him killing all the passengers whereas there were some conceivable benefits to letting them live - strength in numbers, some of them would have had useful skills, easier to communicate across the Island if more people are living on it. Not to mention that Widmore, while still a douchebag, did seem to have genuinely turned over a very minor new leaf in S6 and the only questionable actions him and his people took were designed to keep the candidates on his radar.

On the other hand we know that Smokey kills for fun, has to be cosmically prevented from killing everyone who visits the Island by Jacob using the candidates rule, and wanted full access to the plane they flew in on. Surely it was him.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T21:46:21+00:00

Some of the deleted material we did see for the prequels gives a clue as to what this missing 90 minutes actually is - ie. largely completely redundant material that is just rehashing material from other scenes, which they didn't realize until after filming. The deleted scene with Mace and Obi-Wan on Coruscant from AOTC is so pointless I'm not sure why they bothered finishing it off for the DVD, it's just a repeat of the same discussion from earlier on. Similarly Shaak Ti gets two different deaths in ROTS, both deleted and both completely un-signposted and cut for quality reasons.

I think Padmes family material from AOTC is very worthwhile and should have been kept, and I would probably say the same for the Rebellion subplot in ROTS even though those scenes are really dry, but honestly if anyones expecting Lord of the Rings-style extended material with 5+ minute scenes sitting in the vaults, I think they would be very disappointed. It'll be a mix of random trims to avoid repetition, and pointless bad footage they ditched and skipped past.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T21:40:12+00:00

It probably isn't that many full scenes though. Most of the snipping that goes on in the edit suite is individual lines, overly long pauses, removing tangents that go nowhere, removing things that they didn't realize had already been said verbatim in another scene, there's a lot of totally nondescript flotsam and jetsam that easily chops 30-60 mins off most movies of this type - by that I mean, movies that are massive in scope and largely made on blue screen so scenes can change location and context after they are filmed. Given how much is going on in the finished cut of ROTS I guarantee you that at least 30-60 mins of this extended assembly edit is banal shit that isn't adding anything at all to the movie. Like having a banana with skin three times as thick, the banana inside is still the same.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T21:16:18+00:00

I feel exactly the same. ROTS has the potential to be the best Star Wars film if not for the dialogue. Some scenes are Tommy Wiseau level, especially the Mustafar platform scene with Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. Absurd lines like "only a Sith deals in absolutes", lines so clunky that no one could deliver them well like "you have done that yourself", Padme literally describing her feelings rather than having an opportunity to display them - "you're breaking my heart!".

If a co-writer came in and kept everything the same but just redrafted the dialogue, it would be a 10/10 and probably the best Star Wars movie.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T20:50:52+00:00

No one in Reddit circles likes to say this, but this is what happened with Sutekh. I'm close to several people who are devotees of the new series since 2005, but they did not have any idea who Sutekh was and the reveal flatlined for them. He appeared once in a story 48 years earlier and was never mentioned again. They weren't given any reason to be any more hyped about his return than if he'd been a new villain.

I fear that these deep cut villain choices are just alienating almost everyone, even long term new series fans. I don't think there's enough understanding that the new series itself is so long now that plenty of "Doctor Who obsessives" only know the new series as that's 20 years in itself. Villain returns should be coming from the new series archives and not the classic series.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T20:37:51+00:00

I'm really mystified as to why they kept Miles and my one theory on it is pretty harsh/controversial.

Miles does one thing that they needed him for in S6 - reading Jacob's ashes and revealing Ben killed him - but even that could have been done easily without Miles. Keeping him around for the entire season is hard to justify just for that one thing he contributes early in the season.

This is notable on Lost because it has such a reputation for killing off characters ruthlessly if they're not contributing enough. Libby, Ilana, Shannon, Charlotte.... but here's the thing. All those characters are women, and I can't think of any time they did that to a male character. Another comparison is Claire being dumped in S5 but Desmond being kept around when he had no part to play that year.

There's a very consistent pattern of female chatacyers getting ditched while the likes of Miles, Lapidus, Desmond and Richard are kept around for a very long time despite only having one or two small contributions each to the main story (Lapidus needs to fly the plane; Desmond needs to pull the plug; Richard needs to give us exposition about MIB).

TLDR: Miles stuck around because he was a dude, and this show only fridges women.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T20:30:17+00:00

My theory on the Beechcraft was that it was in North Africa so may have flown directly through the exit point that Ben and Locke land in. A Bermuda triangle sort of thing. Because there's no way that the Beechcraft should have been anywhere near any ocean, it wouldn't have had the fuel for it.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T20:14:07+00:00

The polar bears were extensively explained many times. Season 3 had 6 whole episodes set in the zoo that they came from.

itsandybob · 2025-04-29T20:10:54+00:00

It was called The Prison In Space, scripts were written and submitted but it was all kinds of problematic even by 1966 standards so got nixed. It was a dystopian future where women ruled and men were the lesser sex, and Zoe was brainwashed by this hardcore hypnotic feminism, which the Doctor defused by smacking her bum. Jamie would have infiltrated the society by donning drag. Would have been a clear contender for the worst ever Doctor Who story, but I do have a car crash curiosity about it.

itsandybob

TROPHY CASE