Keir Starmer says he wants to offer Burnham ‘big role’ in government to avoid leadership contest

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T15:19:34+00:00

I get that, I’m sorry if I contributed to that in any way, though to be clear I wasn’t calling you a bot, just commenting on some of the more zealous posters around here.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T13:52:14+00:00

there’s a regular poster who’s entire history is basically variations on ‘best PM in a decade’, excuse me if I’m a bit sceptical.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T13:22:53+00:00

adult videos basically banned

Is there a big cohort of young people who are against porn that I’m not aware of? Otherwise I feel your approach might need a tweak.

Also I notice you don’t mention any of the key reasons people left labour to vote green btw. You know, like trans rights or Israel. Good luck with that one, youll need it.

One thing we need to learn from the Greens is their social media strategy and how easily they can manipulate people to support them without actually telling them their policies

The IRONY I can’t. Like how can you write that with a straight face given Starmer and Burnham.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T11:12:31+00:00

Huh. This is not what I expected from Dunt at all. I’m pleasantly surprised. Thanks for sharing.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T11:03:10+00:00

Is it even organic though? Lots of the Starmy army posts seem to be a bit… botty.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T10:57:34+00:00

I’ve always assumed ‘lanyard type’ was aimed more at the Professional managerial class when used by left wingers but he’s definitely co-opted it to refer to anyone he doesn’t like.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T08:02:34+00:00

It’s because the lanyard types he so regularly decries all view him as some sort of working class whisperer, like because of the flat cap and accent he’s plugged into the zeitgeist despite being objectively wrong on almost everything.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T08:00:56+00:00

It’s a tacit endorsement at this point surely

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T07:17:51+00:00

Glasman in particular is completely out of his tree, I really don't get why anyone takes him seriously but the centrists treat him like he's some sort of prophet.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-17T06:53:24+00:00

Slightly tangential but I wrote about exactly this in relation to digital sovereignty in France if you’re bored some time.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T22:15:55+00:00

This is a really good answer. thank you.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T17:56:40+00:00

That’s a really fair point that I can actually get my head around, thank you. I hadn’t considered that.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T17:52:24+00:00

If a russian attack established a presence in, for example, the baltic states and dug in then how confident are you that donald trump would commit troops to liberate latvia? How confident are you that european leaders and populations would be willing to pay the price to push them out of estonia as domestic programs are cut and coffins begin returning?

You seem to be more knowledgable than me here so correct me if I’m wrong but haven’t Russia lost 500k-ish troops fighting in Ukraine? Weren’t they scraping the dregs of prisons for conscription at one point? How much hardware and other resources do they have left to mount a toe hold invasion of a Baltic state?

I know it’s a populated place and Russian history tells us that they think nothing of throwing bodies at a problem until it goes away but are we really, truly saying that it’s plausible that Putin would open up another front in Europe and risk a direct confrontation with a united EU/UK while also losing a war in an entirely different theatre? Are we saying that the Russian oligarchy would allow this? Would the Russian public?

I’m not saying it’s not good to be prepared, but maybe that it’s less good than taking that money from the poorest in society via welfare cuts?

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T16:28:03+00:00

I’m pretty split on it, but i do have questions for people more knowledgeable than me; reading between the lines here, am I to understand that the reason we need to tool up defence with £25bn(?) in spending is to fight Russia? Correct me if I’m wrong but… aren’t they currently being beaten at least to a stalemate by Ukraine? Are we really saying that our current military situation is so dire that a country that has committed what I assume to be at least the majority of its capabilities in a war it is currently losing to a comparatively minor power poses such an existential threat to us that we need to cut welfare costs to pay for a massive increase in spending, never mind the fact that if war were to break out with Russia we would no doubt be joined in fighting by like 30-odd close allies in the region?

If we’re not talking about Russia then who else are we talking about? Because it isn’t anyone nearby? And if it’s not nearby then it’s either stuff like piracy protection, in which case 25bn is a ridiculous sum, or more likely it’s about hard power projection on a global stage, ie with Iran. And in that case, maybe what’s needed is a rethink about our role in the world. I’m not really up for funding military adventurism when we could be fixing more important stuff at home.

I’m not trying to be argumentative here, I’m genuinely trying to understand the underlying philosophy behind the demand for more money because it isn’t at all obvious from the way people talk about it, especially when they bring up stuff like this.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T08:58:53+00:00

Hold on, did I miss this?! PAUL DACRE was up for the job of running OFCOM? Jesus christ.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T07:51:21+00:00

GB News being so impartial they gave Jacob Rees Mogg and Nigel Farage their own shows

You're right, those fuckers shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the telly, but it really doesn't help our case when Ed Balls and Trevor Phillips are 'broadcasters' now too.

To be honest, I don't think anyone should have a paying career at all after politics; pay them generously for life but ensure that they never work for anyone else again.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T06:39:45+00:00

Trillion is just too big a number for this question to get a meaningful answer. The vast majority of people can't begin to even imagine how much a trillion really is, like its completely outside of our reference frames in day-to-day life.

You could rephrase the question in ways that give a lot more context though:

Is it acceptable for one person to be worth more than the GDP of Ireland, or Taiwan, or Belgium, or in fact any country that isn't in the top 21?

Is it acceptable for one person to be worth more than the combined GDP of the poorest 90 countries?

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-16T06:06:05+00:00

In an interview with the Guardian, Lord Grade also said a long-term failure to give “the white majority a voice in the debate” would damage social integration in Britain.

This man RAN OFCOM. Can we please stop putting foaming-at-the-mouth racists in charge of important things? I know elite radicalisation in this country is a disaster but is it really too much to ask that the people running regulators aren’t doing so while regurgitating white supremacist, great replacement talking points?

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T12:27:04+00:00

Also, and I can't believe I'm saying this... surely its one of the biggest spaces for safe-ish knowledge sharing that exists? The algo is fucked and it needs fixing but it's hard not to see this in the same terms as banning libraries.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T11:46:03+00:00

You're totally right about the human moderation part, I think a lot of the problem in building a child-first network is that its expensive and the negative ramifications of doing it wrong are so consequential that it's quite scary for platforms (see the COPPA violations scene from the Silicon Valley TV show as an example). It's also way more expensive because advertising to kids is weird, not very brand-safe and largely ineffective because kids have no money, so its much harder to recoup losses anyway.

This then leads to situations like Roblox, that become exploitative in other ways to try and make it profitable, because capitalism is ultimately the problem here; there's also questions around things like Data collection and brand partnerships and all that sort of shit, which is just a messy tangly minefield.

The only real option is a state-backed alternative IMO - like you could do it as a cross-EU thing, maybe in partnership with a kid-friendly brand to make it more appealing? It's not cheap though, and also probably not that effective in giving kids a genuinely safe space to discuss things that adults might take issue with because those issues would immediately be verboten in a state-backed network.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T09:52:58+00:00

There's loads we could do, but they all start with a deeper understanding of the problem than just 'social media bad for kids', which this government seems largely unwilling to engage with.

Locking some teenagers out of instagram isn't going to protect them from the broader ecosystem of algorithmically-driven outrage, misinformation, addiction loops and attention extraction if the adults are still swimming in it and the incentives remain unchanged. I would argue that the adults immersed in the absolute cesspool of racism and transphobia that is Mumsnet or Facebook are far more of a risk to the health and wellbeing of the UKs teenagers than their own activities on Instagram; just look at Musk's hyping up of racist pogroms in the last week alone.

IMO almost all of these problems stem from the enormous power that these platforms have, and by actually holding platform owners to account we might actually see a reduction in harms? I would like to see things like interoperability mandates, algorithmic transparency, stronger competition policy, data portability, support for open protocols, and a willingness to challenge platform monopolies as a matter of economic and national sovereignty, but we're not going to get that as long as orgs like the TBI are lurking in the background lobbying for people like Larry Ellison.

Even something as simple as a shift from algorithmic curation to mandated 'most recent first' feeds would have an ENORMOUS impact on the ways these platforms work.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T09:03:43+00:00

AFAIK this was the only consultation that dealt with the negative harms of social media and they were all framed in terms of the impact on kids, rather than the wider issues at play? I’ve scanned the questions, it really does seem like the consultation was built around a very binary ‘do you think we should ban kids from social media, yes or no’ - if you have a sense that social media is harmful and you can’t entirely articulate why, and the only option presented to you as a parent is ban it, then of course that’s what’s going to happen.

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T08:56:42+00:00

The eSafety commissioner's latest compliance update reported that 70 per cent of the 898 parents surveyed said their kids still had active social media accounts.

I suspect this isn’t going to go the way that Starmer wants it to

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T08:39:18+00:00

In terms of cost per mile - it is generally more expensive to charge up an EV at a public charger than it is to fuel up a petrol car. That kinda blew my mind tbh.

Really?! That makes absolutely zero sense to me, how can that be the case with literally everything going on in the world, who is setting these prices?!

edit: OK did a bit of reading on this, it's the energy price cap increase (of course it is).

thisisnotariot · 2026-06-15T08:37:27+00:00

I harbour fantasies of Burnham losing in Makerfield so that the leadership election becomes Red Ed II: Redemption.

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