Ex-Foreign Office adviser to Robin Cook. Politics, foreign policy, football. Scottish đ´ó §ó ˘ó łó Łó ´ó ż. Firmly left. HMFCđąđťMUFCđžđŞ.
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I canât see a single âBritish nationalistâ in your replies. Almost all of them liberal or left-wing people challenging your racist assertion that non-white people canât be British. You either know this and are trying to deflect or youâre one of the stupidest people on this site.
Itâs classic behaviour for a sub-set of the left. I get it myself. Again, donât generalise. On the debate in question, I think youâre in denial about just how toxic some people on your side can be.
I was referring Iain who reports being regularly abused. The abuse youâve received seems to be related to a very specific debate in which partisans on both sides are highly abusive in every forum. I donât think itâs sensible to make generalisations about Bluesky or âthe leftâ on that basis.
I doubt there will ever be a social media platform where this doesnât happen. I actually find Bluesky painfully polite, but I accept that Iain has a different experience coming from the right.
Open your mind to the possibility that the strangeness you experienced is a consequence of not knowing something that happens to be true.
Personally, I welcome a bit of rough and tumble. I got my first bit of proper abuse recently and thought, âthank god, this thing has a pulseâ. Hurty words donât bother me. What I canât stand (and why I left Twitter) is automated fakery. Honest abuse from a real person is fine. I just give it back.
German car makers will ensure we get a special deal.
I find little evidence of vitriol in your recent timeline. The exception was when you accused the whole site of embracing âdark age denialismâ, which I think you intended as a provocation. Even then, most responses were politely dismissive, so I think youâre exaggerating to put it mildly.
Iâve felt little incentive to post at times because engagement levels have been low, but that seems to have picked up a bit. The iPad app is still terrible, though. Even so, when I look back at Twitter, Iâm glad I left the nastiness and fakery behind. I wouldnât go back even if Bluesky collapsed.
Imagine including a corporate logo designed in the 1970s as part of your national heritage.
Unfortunately so.
âAssistingâ, you say?
I took it to be a clue that thereâs something seriously sleazy behind this story.
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Ah, Brolin. Scotlandâs player of the year 1992. Shame he didnât come. Heâd have loved the pies.
I was on holiday in the US when this happened and didnât get back until after the funeral. It was a genuinely surreal experience to see it all from a distance. I just couldnât recognise my country in what I was seeing. It still feels like a work of fiction to me.
My favourite bit of this story is Giulianiâs spokesman urging people to ârefrain from spreading unfounded conspiracy theoriesâ. Fucking nerve of the guy. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
I think he currently lives in Mississippi, which is probably part of it.
I saw that one as well. Utterly contemptible stuff.
I still listen to SLF a lot, especially their cover of Johnny Was. Terrific band.
No, Carswell and others like him havenât been âradicalisedâ. Theyâve always thought like this. The only thing that has changed is that they now realise they can get away with saying it out loud.
The âindispensable powerâ is rapidly making itself dispensable under Trump. Europe is learning to cater to its own security needs. Once that happens, it will no longer have any need for American leadership. Iâm not sure this is widely understood in America.
I go to matches. Really doesnât bother me. I prefer a good decision to a quick one.
How fans feel about decisions is the wrong measure of VARâs success, because fans are hopelessly biased and will always complain about decisions that go against their team. It seems objectively true to me that there are far fewer unfair, game-changing decisions under VAR, so it should stay.
Ah, a photo. Such imagination. You win!
I really hope youâve matured a bit by the time youâre old enough to vote. đ
Individual polls can be very wrong. The aggregate of polls can be wrong for short periods. But the long-term aggregate is a reliable guide. Only a narcissist would pretend to have some magical insight that trumps it, but feel free to tell which of the four opinions is not a majority one, bellend.
I got it on the second go. Those Habsburg roofs were a big clue.
I study the polls. Not just the ones that tell me what I want to think, but the aggregate of all of them. I think the arrogance belongs to people like you who think that their âgutâ and their circle of gobby mates down the pub know better.
That will be the limit if they carry on like this. After that, there might not be any more elections for them to lose.
A solid majority of the UK supports Ukraine, thinks Brexit was a mistake, deplores racism and knows that immigration is an economic necessity. If Labour canât/wonât galvanise that majority to marginalise Farage, it deserves to go out of business for good. Starmerâs political strategy is suicidal.
The scenario most in keeping with the way United is run is that Mainoo will be sold on the cheap because he doesnât fit Amorimâs system, Amorim will then be sacked before Christmas because of a poor run of games and his replacement will pay over the odds for a player of Mainooâs profile in January.
It seems clear to me that Labour needs to get rid of Starmer. Even if the party decided to change strategy and take the offensive against Farage, as it should, Starmer would be incapable of delivering it. Heâs just a blancmange in an expensive suit. No spine, no core beliefs. Completely empty.
Pasaran! From now on, Iâm going to post this every time I see Starmer giving a pass to the far right. Might be every day at the current rate.
This is the source used by Grok (or âMechaHitlerâ as it describes itself) for the false claim on grooming gangs. Try thinking for yourself and verifying information. Donât just absorb anything thing that confirms your prejudice and regurgitate it on social media.
Cue lots of self-pitying conspiracy moaning about a âred cartelâ.
My Mac mini wouldnât recognise my Magic Keyboard. All the advice I could find online said I needed a wired keyboard. However, I actually managed to do it in the end by changing the accessibility setting to bring up an onscreen keyboard and using a wireless mouse with a dongle.
So you think the racial nationalism of the far right is âbroadly similarâ to the nationalism of Nelson Mandela and those who fought for decolonisation? Your statement is far too sweeping, surely?
Indeed.
A government with more self-confidence would be hammering the media (including the BBC) for its absurd over-reporting of these protests. Instead, the media will get a pass and continue pandering to far right narratives.
Trump described neo-Nazis chanting âJews will not replace usâ as âvery fine peopleâ. US social media companies publish torrents of anti-semitic incitement every day. The US has no authority to lecture anyone about anti-semitism. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
I assume so, but also reflecting a general Scottish disdain for social status.
Maddening.
Things they donât tell you in the Apple Store: you canât set up a Mac mini without a wired keyboard. Itâs like buying a new car and discovering that it wonât start for the first time without a crank handle. Now I have to buy a keyboard I will only ever use once. đ
To most people this will look like a funny prank, but itâs actually a sort of national statement.
Pasaran!
The McTominator starts the new season as he ended the last. Would absolutely love him to lead Napoli to their first back-to-back league titles, become some kind of Neapolitan deity and win the Ballon dâOr. It would vex so many people who deserve to be vexed.
Any other country but Israel would already have been comprehensively sanctioned by the West. Do we seriously think the rest of the world canât see our hypocrisy? Do we seriously think it wonât have consequences?
I was just getting a pie, honest!
Yes, but Iâm not sure itâs a joke in the sense that you think it is.
Shouting âsocialismâ because the government has taken a 10% stake in a single company is so silly. Almost every country in the world, including most capitalist ones, do similar things in strategic industries. Why do Americans struggle so hard with basic political concepts?
Isnât parole conditional on accepting guilt (which she accepted in order to get a reduced sentence anyway)? Shouldnât she be going back now to serve the rest of her sentence? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Like Labour, the Democratsâ chosen political strategy invites maximum contempt from all sides. Itâs impossible to respect this kind of preposterous, insincere, cringe politics.
Says women who pleaded guilty to calling for innocent people, including children, to be burned to death. Like MAGA with 6th Jan, the British right is now justifying far right criminality. Expect zero pushback from our feeble government. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08...
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I think this is very wide of the mark. The proscription of Palestine Action is a specific response to the threat Labour Ministers feels from pro-Palestinian militancy and their inability to deal with it politically. Of course, theyâve brought it on themselves by being pathetically soft on Israel.
Infantino is such an unbelievable creep. Always with his tongue firmly up some dictatorâs backside.
Heâs still on the job. Hereâs a recent photo.
Iâll do what I always do and vote for the party best placed to keep the Tories (and now Reform) out, which in my constituency wonât be Labour. Iâll do that because unlike you, politics for me is a serious matter and not some onanistic middle class lifestyle pose.
Sheâll come out completely unrepentant, claiming victim status. I bet she ends up as a Reform UK candidate somewhere.
Twitter was already radicalising at pace when we left, and Musk kept tipping the scales to make sure of it. I came to the view that there was no point in staying and that to do so would increasingly feel like complicity.
Congratulations, youâve found the limit of my tolerance.
Aggro Iâm happy to deal with, but angrily repeating my own words back to me and pointing out the obvious fact that they are my opinions is fucking weird. Get help for whatever it is you have. đ
Very little about the governmentâs Gaza policy is ok, but I donât agree with some of your characterisations there. Youâre using the word Zionist in a highly pejorative way that I donât accept. Iâm also not convinced that the UK is routinely sharing operational intelligence with Israel.
Another bizarre comment. I have never claimed to post anything more than my own opinions, so I have no idea what your beef is. Letâs just leave it there.
Bizarre comment. All we have here is the ability to post our opinions. What applies to me applies to all of us.
His response on Gaza has been culpably weak and cowardly, but itâs going too far to say that he supports genocide.
I think heâs incapable of becoming the kind of leader this moment demands, sadly. He isnât brave because he doesnât believe in anything strongly enough to make a stand.
I would have a lot more sympathy for Starmer if he didnât create so many problems for himself. Let asylum seekers work so they can support themselves. Rejoin the single market to get growth up and inflation down. Do these things or donât come begging for a pity vote in four years time.
This place is not for you, son. Get back up Elonâs sphincter where you belong.
The Millwall fans donât need to do racist chanting anymore. They can post it on Twitter and get away with it, apparently.
The analogy stands. Closing Twitter down for me is a last resort option if regulation is resisted. If fans routinely do racist chanting, clubs can be forced to play in empty stadiums, and rightly so.
I donât see that as a strong argument. Should we allow racist chants in football stadiums because people say racist things elsewhere? Twitter provides instant, mass reach. All platforms with that reach need regulation.
Nice birthday present from my daughter combining three of my favourite things.
Itâs totalitarian and it wonât work? FFS! đ¤Ł
I donât think thatâs remotely true. Why do you say that?
*Labour defender* đ¤Ł
*No reason* đ
Putting at lid on it is a condition of maintaining a free society from the threat of oligarchy. Youâre quite naive if you canât see that.
You wouldnât waste your time arguing against something youâre convinced is impossible. Youâd just ignore. And the Monty Burnsâ of this world are the ones controlling the digital space and gullible people like you. There is no âtown squareâ. Most of it is automated fakery.
And thereâs the digital cringe I mentioned.
We regulate broadcasting and print journalism, and thereâs nothing totalitarian than that. To argue that an immensely more powerful tool should get a pass is just crazy to me.
I could cite the unrestricted flow of racism, hate and disinformation, but for me the main problem is the industrial levels of fakery. In the era of AI, Twitter is a tool of mass manipulation in the hands of the very worst people. If Bluesky became the same, Iâd say blocking it should be an option.
I didnât have a major problem with it pre-Musk, but with hindsight that was the time when rules should have been introduced because it was always likely to become a weapon in the wrong hands.
The aim isnât to prevent every single person from accessing these platforms. As you say, thatâs unachievable. The aim is to stop them being tools of mass manipulation in the hands of bad actors. That can certainly be done with sufficient will.
Weâre all being forced to live with the consequences of it, so again this argument isnât relevant as far as Iâm concerned.
By âcentral government diktatâ you mean regulation in the public interest. Believing that thereâs any other solution is for the birds, frankly.
We disagree. It damages everything, so using it or not is irrelevant.
We may have to shut down other things as well. The real absurdity is thinking this will just go away spontaneously when in fact it will continue to get worse. Why regulate broadcasting and allow a free-for-all with something much more powerful?
Just shutting Twitter down in the UK should be a serious public policy option. Itâs a cancer on society. Weâve got to overcome the digital cringe of thinking that social media is untouchable on specious free speech grounds.
In that case she would be a political prisoner and recognised as such by most of the democratic world. It would be the UKâs shame.
Your argument is that there is only one way this can play out - the most extreme scenario. I think otherwise. Time will tell.
Sure, but this isnât really a question of how to interpret the constitution. Itâs there in black and white. No real room for fudging it, so Trumpâs only option will be to suspend the constitution by declaring a state of emergency. I donât put it past him btw.
That is not his base. Hardcore MAGA is 25-30%. The rest is trad GOP voter swallowing their doubts and âlesser of two evilsâ independents.
Doesnât the constitution state that VP candidates also have to be eligible to stand as President? So the term limit would still be a bar.
His base isnât 45% and the judiciary is much more than just SCOTUS, especially at state level. Weâve seen quite a few examples already of Trump not getting his way with judges. Heâll try to subvert that, but itâs nothing like Russia 1999. Serious, yes, but far from game over.
Heâll face many more obstacles than Putin did. State level government is stronger in the US, the judiciary is more independent, voters are less deferential and he wonât have a network equivalent to the Chekist deep state to help. Heâll work to change some of this, but with mixed success.
Heâll certainly try.
Who would be the Medvedev sock puppet in this scenario? JD Vance? Don Jr? Hard sells even in a rigged system. Anyone else might have too many ideas of their own, might slip the leash.
Putin changed the constitution (because he could). Trump will need to suspend it. Iâm not saying he wonât try, though.