Tophattingson
No bio...
User ID: 1078
The low growth low interest rate, low increase in government spending situation we had before wasn't great, but it was sustainable. After spaffing trillions up the wall on lockdowns, however, the economic situation is no longer sustainable. You can project every NHS worship, pension worship, build-nothing worship and debt interest trend out and by the end of the century it results in demands for government spending exceeding 100% of GDP.
If Labour blows another hole in the budget with another 20% increase in healthcare spending that doesn't actually improve healthcare at all, and voters get mad at this for the same reason they were mad at the Tories for doing the same thing (even if they can't identify why it didn't work), who do they vote for next? The NHS Uber Alles Party?
Tophattingson
7d ago
It remains to be seen to what extent voters understand that development being illegal is the problem though.
Not at all.
In my experience, the average Labour voter (and thus the average voter) thinks that the cause of the UK's economic malaise is that Tories are channelling all the money to their mates, though they cannot name or identify any specific examples of this occurring. Unless "channelling" means pensions, and "mates" means all pensioners in the country, this doesn't explain the UK's budget problems. They just see a government taking in endless amounts of tax, no more services being produced, and assume MPs are personally pocketing the difference.
Tophattingson
8d ago
A few years under Starmer might have people realise Labour have no policy for fixing housing.
It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.
That was my 2020 experience with lockdowns, but add all of society to it. And even worse because at least the Hezbollah fans generally fall short of demanding everyone wave the Hezbollah flag, whereas lockdown fans made their political symbols into legal obligations. Because of this, afterwards, I tend to be rather unfazed whenever the latest lobotomy balance patch is released. My expectations are rock bottom so if anything other than everyone around me being as stupid and awful as possible happens, I get to be pleasantly surprised instead. And sure, maybe it's egotistical to think everyone around me is a lobotomite, but so what? If they're not, it's on them to demonstrate otherwise.
Tophattingson
11d ago
Via conversations with the people who are most affected by this, those who use sites like Pixiv commercially, they seem to believe that there's a cabal of anti-porn American Evangelicals behind payment processing restrictions. This seems to be approximately a consensus. When I tried to question them on alternative hypotheses involving a Visa/Mastercard Duopoly, even the "moderate" suggestion that excess chargebacks is the primary motive for not wanting to deal with adult content, there was a lot of pushback. Didn't even risk discussing right-wing hypotheses involving debanking or Operation Chokepoint. My impression was that they pattern match all politics they dislike to political groups they dislike regardless of whether there's actually a link.
Tophattingson
11d ago
(i.e. the same thing that made Pornhub pull out of Texas).
Pornhub loves the kind of regulations that Texas are doing. They just dislike that they don't get to be in control of them and use them to eliminate the competition.
Of course, this will not happen because the current state of affairs is not an accident. Remember Wikileaks?
If you look at the history of Apartheid South Africa, they still had a lot of support from the WH right up until the end
The end of Apartheid coincides with the collapse of the USSR, not some sudden shift in external political pressure on behalf of activists. That there was relative certainty that South Africa would not immediately turn into a Soviet satellite regime because the USSR was too busy collapsing was what enabled a consensus on ending Apartheid. That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.
Tophattingson
26d ago
Policies for the one don’t work for and aren’t wanted by the other.
There is no particular reason to think that urban policies worked in urban areas either.
Sunak's current political strategy is an ambitious plan known as Net Zero Seats, where he tries to secure an overwhelming defeat in the next election.
More options
Context Copy link