Everyone is not ‘anti-progress’, unless the ‘progress’ you mean is the type we see Elon Musk engaging in in the US.

But wait, the combination of ‘austerity’ and privatisation both parties (red and blue Tory) have engaged in for decades now is exactly a slow-paced what Musk is speed-running in the US. And the UK gradually moves down the global affluence tables while the rich get richer because of it.

So I guess maybe that is why everyone is so anti ‘progress’. You just forgot the necessary quotation marks around the work ‘progress’.

It’s a meme stock, not an ‘investment’.

And now Musk has parlayed it, and his various pyramid scheme-like companies into replacing as much of the US government as he can get away with with his junk.

The US will suffer.

I think the implication is that they come from the plastic bottle.

The cost to public services harms everyone. Unskilled rural labour has absolutely been hammered by immigration. ('they do the jobs British people won’t do! (Actually we don’t want anybody doing that work for that pay.)

I have no idea why you specify London. I only used the ‘not far off a London a decade’ as an illustration that every reasonable person will agree shows that the level of immigration is unsustainable. Please don’t make me waste my time having to respond to silly comments.

I don’t believe Nigel Farage for one second.

There is absolutely no doubt that immigration has battered poor, former working class people in the UK. From perfectly decent people of Eastern European origin taking the role of scab labour, undermining pay and conditions, leading to the misery of zero hours contracts, to difficulty getting any unskilled work, to the ‘benefits’ system and healthcare being absolutely hammered.

This simply isn’t sustainable.

The coming climate refugee crisis will make this look like a picnic. The line is going to be drawn, it is only a matter of when. We have missed all of the chances to minimise the impact of climate change, and help developing world countries achieve a demographic transition to a low birth rate future, without exploiting their fossil fuel reserves. It is too late.

Net migration to June 2024: 728,000. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/

Multiply that by ten gives you 7.28 million - nearly the number of people in London. This is primary school maths. You have wasted my time once, I will not have it wasted again.

And for the record, I am believing Oxford University, the link I provided, not Nigel Farage. Who are you believing? (This is a rhetorical question, I am not interested in an answer.)

I know that people want to feel good about themselves, and they also want a high consumption lifestyle (that is most contributing now to the future climate change refugee crisis). Political liberalism covers the hard fist of neo-liberal economics with a soft and fuzzy veneer of socially liberal policy. Neo-liberals don’t want to feel racist while consuming an amount that destroys others. Unfortunately for many people in countries like the UK, neo-liberalism’s sell by date is passing. The result in our case is the rise of Reform, Trump, and other far right parties across Europe.

You all just assume that is what I want. In fact I want the opposite.

You are currently incapable of dealing, or unwilling to deal with reality. This inability or unwillingness is contributing directly the Reform’s rise to power. This need to feel good about yourself while not only failing to be adult enough to deal with reality, while at the same time insulting and making incorrect assumptions about me is genuinely pathetic. You are an embarrassment. Most won’t be able to learn so the rise of the far right it is very likely to be. Well done.

I am aware of this, however, the reality on the ground is exactly as I described.

Nobody is going to fix capitalism in the time frame available, so deal with the world as it is, not as any of us would like it to be.

This is simple practical advice to help individuals dealing with their current problems. I’m not suggesting the nhs is ok or anything:

Speak to your GP and ask to be referred to a provider under the ‘Right To Choose’ scheme. You might be unlucky again, but I know for certain that people in another area of the country with extremely poor healthcare got assessed (via various forms and an online assessment - so local availability of services might not be a problem) in around about a year.

If you are one of the lucky people who haven’t had their lives decimated by more austerity, more benefits cuts, interspersed by bouts of meaningless ‘essential’ work (such as stacking shelves) on a zero hours contract, good for you. You can have the luxury of taking that attitude, and feel good about yourself while you do so.

But, genuinely with the best will of the world, when you are looking at not far off a London a decade, immigration is simply not sustainable. Ignoring this reality pushes Reform towards power.

The average Reform voter’s unhappiness isn’t a matter of ‘scapegoating an other’ over a media construct.

The consequences of the electorate refusing to accept this will only cause Reform’s voter base will grow.

Pretty much all of your points are dubious or plain wrong, but the truth is I can’t be bothered wasting my energy on a reply. I say wasting my energy because the various attitudes you exhibited are very common, and will lead to the rise of Reform. And like most people, you are not able to change your mind in response to new information. I wish it wasn’t going to happen but it is.

Fair enough, maybe they did and government’s chose not to act.

Edit - but even if they did, they have been busy taking away British people’s rights to privacy and protest, rather than addressing the growing issue of the USA turning to a Russia that threatens Europe. Ultimately the result is the same. Complete failure of those services, in conjunction with government, to provide an open and free, civilised society.

The question for me is why didn’t our intelligence services - who want to spy on everybody all the time - understand the risks and inform former governments to prepare? We now need weapons. We needed them three years ago.

I remember Sunak sitting down with Musk at some conference or other very recently, when in fact we should have been preparing for what this individual and his mates were preparing to do once in office.

Our intelligence services were and are too preoccupied with labelling teachers doctors and scientists as domestic terrorists for protesting that climate science is being ignored to devastating coming effect, and banning protests, rather than dealing with the actual threat. Unless of course they don’t really see Musk and Trump as at least an ideological threat.

I’ll have a look at that sub thanks.

Hi thanks. I have grown sceptical of most online food advice, but I will look into your link.

Contrary to what any reader of this thread might think, I would very much like to be shown nutrient dense low carb vegan food. I lived for more than a decade with my staple protein (and carb I suppose) being legumes/pulses. (At one point I had five pressure cookers lol - many large consumer of pulses/legumes will understand this). Even with copious amounts of dried seaweed the ultimately perpetual bloated stomach > gas is what forced me back to eating meat. It just wasn’t good for me. I now quickly put on weight if I eat a high carbohydrate diet. Low carb I am in good health and shape.

I know we have so many problems stacking up, including food production. Climate change ultimately means many millions, maybe more, will die of hunger over the next century. And I respect people’s wishes for the humane treatment of animals, but plenty of people pushing a vegan diet don’t exactly deal with reality. Nature is red in tooth and claw, and there appears to be plenty of evidence suggesting eating meat is what caused us to evolve as we have due to the nutrient density of it. I personally won’t willingly accept a diet that isn’t good for me. I did it for more than a decade - possibly longer than many of the vegans I read online.

You are mistaken again.

You are completely missing the point. As long as you remain unable to deal with the actual issues facing people who will vote reform (never mind demonising them) you make reform’s rise inevitable.

Yeah but if you value the cultural diversity of Europe why would you want to see it homogenised under one corporatist banner? Why should diversity be reduced to the special designation of a few products such as stilton and champagne?

What is right for the UK might not be right for the Republic of Ireland, what is right for Greece might not be right for Germany, What is right for France might not be right for Italy. Why should laws be drafted by completely unknown people in Brussels and applied to everybody?

Ultimately, why shouldn’t people all across Europe have self-determination and autonomy? Don’t we need more devolution not less?

Could we achieve this, and have free movement of people? Yeah, but not under what the E became. It certainly requires that people from poorer countries aren’t used as basically scab/cheap labour to undermine pay and conditions of local workers of whatever origin.

Anyway, enough of that. What should best be considered a warning shot of future fascism was all sorted out about a decade ago. Hopefully UK society took note of the disaffection amongst the people that voted to leave the EU, looked at exactly what was bothering them, and, if they had good reason to be pissed off, addressed it!

What? They did fuck all but try and reverse the vote for years, terribly undermining the UK’s negotiating position, then ignored the issues voters had thus opening the door for the reform party?

Oh right.

Downvote away but you can’t downvote reality. We can still stop the fascists getting power in the UK, but not without addressing any legitimate issues reform voters have. Brexit should have been taken as a warning shot. It still isn’t.

The answers were alarming

And what were the answers?

The two most common complaints on the Reform supporters’ websites are that immigrants are bad and the Government doesn’t care about ordinary people.

This is ‘alarming’?

The idea that after more than thirty years of a Red Tory Labour party, they have any time whatsoever left to demonstrate they ‘care about ordinary people’ to new and future reform party voters shows how out of touch the writer, and if this site is representative, then the media in general is. (I can’t read anything on this site as at the time of this post is temporarily busy or unavailable.)

Brexit is another expression of this exact same dynamic that to history might look like an ignored warning shot. Absolutely nothing was done to try and ameliorate living conditions for poor people in the UK in the intervening years. they were vilified as racists for freely voting in what they considered was their best interests. The Labour party have simply continued austerity since coming into office last year.

I despise this rise of the far right (I don’t want to be trapped on a small island with Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson with no freedom of movement across the rest of Europe) but I understand the anger those former working class reform voting people feel. And although I disagree with the new reform voters’ response: place the blame on immigrants (who should really be allies), and vote for a reform party that clearly won’t have their interest at heart either, I have come to terms with the fact that we will reap what successive former governments have sown.

I don’t see any evidence whatsoever that any of the mainstream parties have the capability to reverse the decades of decisions that have lead us to this point. You can’t cut everything that provides quality of life, including access to education, then expect a considered intelligent response. You don’t get governments that protect bankers, and the house price rises from which bankers profit so handsomely, for years and years while a large proportion of the population are completely left behind without any push back. This is that push back. Reform will not hurt those bankers in any way. The home ownership ‘electorate’ class have never got out and protested on behalf of the poor when it is against their personal interest, unions and other organisations that might have defended these people’s rights are gone, protest increasingly becoming criminalised, so the far right it is very likely to be.

I said direct me to a low carb plant based diet.

In response you told me you had, but that it didn’t need to be low carb. Then you suggested an Indian diet, as if everybody in the UK is going to adopt that. You are talking nonsense. This is an easy block for being a waste of time.

You didn’t say what diet your mum changed from. You could replace a lot of grains and root vegetables (very high in carbohydrate), (not to mention high sugar) with a lot of non-root vegetables and see a big reduction in diabetes symptoms, but that doesn’t mean the diet is particularly low carbohydrate.