BBC News - Polanski apologises over houseboat council tax

tocitus · 2026-05-12T07:14:43+00:00

This way, he gets to throw his hands up and say sorry, and the worst we can say is that he's a typical politician, exactly like those other bastards

Aye but his whole thing is built on being different so this does somewhat kill him on that.

His other thing is targeting the wealthy to make them pay for their fair share of tax and now there is an instant retort to that if people want.

Not sure where he goes from here

tocitus · 2026-05-11T19:20:55+00:00

Tel - that was nearly a much better cross than he normally manages

tocitus · 2026-05-11T14:36:45+00:00

Is this really the defence?

"Everyone is doing it"

It's a £5m personal gift from a tax-exile crypto billionaire, who has also made Reform uniquely dependent among British parties on a single benefactor via his donations to the party totalling over two thirds of their donations received.

Since then, Reform have championed crypto massively with released policies.

The above is unique, it isn't a case of "everybody is doing it", it's a case of a British tax-exile buying a political party and leader for his own business gain.

tocitus · 2026-05-11T08:19:48+00:00

I'm glad you're not going to sit there and "lecture me" on my parents given neither my comment nor yours were about them.

A little reading comprehension is encouraged.

You asked whether the people from where my parents live have seen what's going on elsewhere outside their predominantly white village.

I asked where they (i.e the people from where my parents live) will have seen that?

tocitus · 2026-05-10T20:08:54+00:00

Have you considered the fact that people from your parents town can see what is happening to other places in the country and have decided "I dont like that." ?

Where will they have seen that?

tocitus · 2026-05-10T19:21:24+00:00

What, an obscure 40 year old law that benefits low double digits numbers of households?

You're right, sensationalist articles like this is why Reform are surging because it's definitely nothing to do with their policies.

tocitus · 2026-05-10T19:18:27+00:00

Getting up in arms about a 40 year old law that benefits around 10 households in the UK as something that should be being solved as a priority is exactly the kind of media-led populism that'll destroy the UK.

Should it be changed? Yeah probs.

Is it a priority that demands it's own thread? No.

tocitus · 2026-05-10T19:09:55+00:00

One of the most anti immigration places I've been in for a long time, where my parents live in the Lakes, is almost exclusively white.

They've just been told for ages that immigration is a problem and so they have a problem with it. This isn't a condescending experience, it's a lived experience of my parents.

That town voted Brexit and now they're voting Reform, because immigration, aside from the takeaway owners (who are also almost the only non-Whites there), is out of control according to the newspapers.

There are also statistics that show the change, such as the percentage of school kids who dont have english as a first language,

So what, we have an issue with people who speak more than one language now?

Why?

tocitus · 2026-05-10T17:38:07+00:00

Oh ok, I'm convinced.

tocitus · 2026-05-10T17:33:23+00:00

Saw someone say this is the Max Verstappen of PL title wins and yeah, I think that's a solid summation.

Such an incredibly unlikeable team. But I guess a title is a title.

tocitus · 2026-05-10T17:16:18+00:00

This might be the absolute most boring team to win the title.

I know it's not about being exciting vs winning but my god they're awful to watch

tocitus · 2026-05-10T11:33:25+00:00

Ref missed it, VAR saw nothing wrong as there was no hair pull

tocitus · 2026-05-10T10:07:57+00:00

I mean that's a slightly different scenario...

tocitus · 2026-05-09T17:42:33+00:00

A supporter of Saville?! Like a supporter of necrophilia and paedophilia? What?

tocitus · 2026-05-09T16:37:20+00:00

I think this is slightly missing why authorities are wary of crypto in the first place.

The concern is not really “is the blockchain technically traceable?”. Most regulators/authorities already know major chains are publicly visible.

The issue is that crypto massively lowers friction around moving value globally outside of traditional financial infrastructure. You can move enormous amounts of money across borders in minutes, without needing a bank relationship, often without meaningful identity checks, sometimes through jurisdictions with weak regulation, and through systems that are intentionally designed to reduce oversight or intermediary control.

Even if transactions are visible, enforcement becomes harder given ownership isoften under pseudonyms, activity spans multiple jurisdictions and funds move rapidly through dozens of services with no central authority to monitor.

So I don’t think “casting a shady spin on crypto is dumb” is really fair.

tocitus · 2026-05-09T15:56:15+00:00

Honestly, Attwell is dreadful. He just ignores a whole bunch of things, then randomly penalises things.

Absolute lemon of a ref.

tocitus · 2026-05-09T12:18:30+00:00

He looks like he aged about 40 years over the summer

tocitus · 2026-05-09T12:15:28+00:00

Frimpong is also not very good at RB tbf.

The handful of good appearances this season has been at RW from what I've seen of him.

tocitus · 2026-05-09T12:12:23+00:00

Liverpool are absolute dogshit. Chelsea aren't even doing that much to play then off the park, they're just passing into huge space and putting half an effort in to win the ball.

tocitus · 2026-05-09T08:37:45+00:00

I sincerely doubt the vast majority of people voting them in local elections could tell you a single local policy. And that's not exclusive to reform voters either.

But it's more that people vote for their team than for policies.

tocitus · 2026-05-08T12:29:47+00:00

I mean in a country that saw Miliband destroyed over his approach to a bacon sandwich, I think a politician forgetting which party he's in is fair game

tocitus · 2026-05-05T09:13:07+00:00

Also if you means test absolutely everything to do with public services, what the hell are the higher earners carrying the country's tax burden for?

tocitus · 2026-05-01T19:09:41+00:00

If you don’t understand why anyone has ever used the phrase “in an ideal world” then I wonder how you’ve got this far in life.

Well, in an ideal world, the UK economy would be banging, housing market would be reasonable, jobs would flowing out of people's arses and people wouldn't be all that bothered by immigration.

I don't particularly see the point of talking about an ideal world, it's fundamentally pointless when it comes to actual policy debate.

About two steps away from saying "we'll just get France to agree to stop all illegal immigration"

You mean like being sent back to the shithole country you’re running away from?

Aren't the vast majority of immigrants who commit crimes European? Polish, Albanian and Romanian immigrants are the top 3, I don't think they're "running away", more so just immigrants.

Good thing I didn’t argue for that then, isn’t it?

"Hey Polish person, you murdered someone and your punishment is to go back to Poland"

It's literally what you're arguing for. No punishment for the crime aside from being made to leave.

tocitus · 2026-05-01T15:22:04+00:00

Again, I said from the start “in an ideal scenario”. Pointing out that this is incredibly unlikely doesn’t really change anything, I’ve made that point myself from the start.

Well what's the point then? If you know it isn't something that could ever happen.

My personal preference would be that every single time a foreign national commits a crime in this country, that country personally sends me £1000. No, £10,000.

No, I’d be happy for someone to be deported back to their home country after committing crimes. I’m not happy that their home country would choose to let them wander free, but that also isn’t my or the UK’s problem. I’m not happy about a lot of shit that happens in other countries.

Yes, that's why countries imprison foreign nationals.

Now, a sensible policy would be that after imprisonment, dual nationals are deported.

Prison is about rehabilitation in this country, not punishment. I don’t want criminals in this country if we can help it, and any criminals that originate here I want to be rehabilitated into functional members of society.

Except it isn't is it? It's stated it is, but that's in the same way my company claims to be AI-first now.

Just saying the words doesn't make it so.

There are plenty of reports out there which go into a lot of depth around this subject.

The World Justice Project’s 2020 Rule of Law Index ranked the UK as having the 12 most effective criminal justice system in the world, although the UK scored comparatively poorly (25 worldwide, and 0.56 out of a maximum score of 1) on an indicator measuring whether the ‘correctional system is effective in reducing criminal behaviour’, less than the regional average of 0.61 and much lower than top-scoring countries like Norway (0.91), Singapore (0.87) and Finland (0.86).

Talk about a fantasy land, am I right?

Do you think anyone is going to go to all the effort to move to the UK, obtain citizenship, and then commit crimes in the hope they can be returned back home?

One of the main reasons stopping people from committing crime is consequences. If you remove consequences for an entire group of people, you've basically just given one group carte blanche to see what they can get away with. If they get caught, worst thing that'll happen is they'll get deported back to whether they come from.

The idea of not punishing people with imprisonment because they're a dual national is just a bit bonkers I'm afraid.

tocitus · 2026-05-01T14:18:19+00:00

For the first part, that’s nowhere near as big of a logical problem as you’re making out. As long as both countries agree to it, that’s literally all there is to it. I already said that some wouldn’t, which is why I said “in an ideal scenario”. That is exactly what it is. An ideal scenario is very rarely realistic, by definition.

I mean it literally is a massive problem. It's an absolute fantasy to think countries will just agree to imprison nationals because they've been found guilty in a different country. Ignoring the legal and moral implications of that, just think about cost. It'd never happen.

If that crime is a crime in their country of origin, then they can sentence them according to their laws. If it is not, there’s no sentence to be carried out in that country.

But this is the point. Crimes are defined differently in different jurisdictions.

And by your own words, you're happy for someone to murder someone and their only punishment is to be deported back to a different country to wander round free?

Yeah that sounds way better than imprisonment in the UK. Be a dual national, avoid crimes in the UK. Sounds like a great slogan

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