>>102665
>>102666
I see what you're saying, but I would suggest that a major factor that isn't being considered is the feeling that things are either not improving, or actively getting worse. In 1920, a back-to-back terraced house with 30 Irish people in it was certainly worse than what we have now, but most of those people probably thought their children's lives would be better than theirs. If you can just tread water in a house like that, your life would improve anyway because society was improving in general. Nowadays, if you have a child running around your mum's bungalow, that child will quite possibly never have a bungalow of its own.

To further support my argument, if you are indeed a right-wing loony, consider this: I don't think immigrant families are breeding less. If you came here from Afghanistan, your kids might have to work in a call centre for minimum wage for their whole lives, but it's still better than digging goat shit in Helmand, so go ahead and bring children into this upwardly-mobile world you are inhabiting. Life is getting better for them, but it's not getting better for anyone who has been English for more than three or four generations.

>>102668
I'd say you're basically right there. I suppose this situation exacerbates the cultural problems I mentioned. I still have this idea that large numbers of younger people of a native background embrace what I called "isolated hedonism" rather than see it as the result of a broken system that is crippling us, but I can't really quantify that, nor confirm that immigrant families would necessarily have fewer children if they somehow saw less hope in their situation (especially as very poor counties tend to have good birthrates all the same).

> if you are indeed a right-wing loony

My family think I'm a right-wing looney, other people think I'm a libshart soyconservative, such is life.

>>102669
>I'm a libshart soyconservative

You lads are straight up making shit up now.

>>102671
And “consoyvative” was right there.

>>102665

>our ancestors living in one-room houses shared with livestock, or one room tenements shared with another family, generally had no problem pumping out babies.

The difference is you'd have them helping raise the livestock and till the fields near enough as soon as they could walk. A child was not a drain on a family, it was an extra pair of hands (assuming it lived that long.) All the way into the Victorian and Edwardian era, or whenever it was that they stopped having kids work in the factories because they were small enough to dart underneath the moving machinery, kids were economically contributing to their household, and I would not be surprised if it was practically a necessity back then with your literal slumlord charging you a penny a day (£2,000 in today's money) for the one up one down with unglazed windows, no plumbing, and open sewerage.

Nowadays you've got to look after them right up until they are 18, at which point you have to pay to get rid of them because there's no way they can afford to go to uni without your help either, and they sure as fuck aren't just leaving school to get a job. Unless you want them to just work at McDonalds or worse, drive a van all their life.

>>102671
It's an autocorrect, I typed that I was a libshart soy_c_u_c_k, which you will of course recognise is a legitimate word. I would never fucking call myself a soyconservative (which sounds like something they put in Kikkoman), jesus.

I think you gentlemen have come out on top here hyuk hyuk, or ,at least, my thoughts about people's reluctance to start a family might belong to a different kind of debate.

>>102673
>or worse, drive a van all their life.

You leave otherlad out of this.

>>102673
I don't understand how driving a van and McJobs can be lumped together. You could easily be in the top decile of earners and drive a van.

>>102675
>>102676

It was self deprecation chaps, I am vanlad. It's an alright gig.

>>102677
Do you ever get a little worried about the long-term effect of all the road pollution you're inhaling? I'm starting to wonder what the impacts are for the country with all the commuting on roads and motorways. My guess is that cancer rates will fall faster than we might think once the roads are dominated by electric.

>>102678

Not all too seriously. When I lived in a city centre on a main road, I started to experience pretty severe bouts of asthma that would wake me up in the night. Since moving further out, that entirely cleared up. I am assuming if the pollution from driving all day was bad enough, I would start to experience that again. At a guess I would say it's probably bad if you are one of those e-bike deliveroo guys and you spend all day in busy built up urban areas, especially in That London. I really can't imagine that does your lungs any good. But in the rest of the country, you're going to be driving on pretty quiet back roads a lot of the time, so you're exposed to a lot less.

Besides when you are actually in your car/van, you've likely got the AC and re-circulation on so you're at least not directly breathing in diesel fumes from the lorry in front.

>>102679

>Besides when you are actually in your car/van, you've likely got the AC and re-circulation on so you're at least not directly breathing in diesel fumes from the lorry in front.

I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't leave recirculation on for more than roughly the first twenty minutes of a car ride, because it can cause oxygen depletion and carbon dioxide buildup in the air inside the cabin. Especially when there are several people in the car.

>>102680

Surely somebody would have suffocated or blacked out at the wheel and the resulting pile up and inquiry caused them to fix that, by now? Can one of you DuckDuckGo that for us?

>>102681

You don't immediately pass out from slightly low oxygen and slightly high carbon dioxide in the air. But it can impair your judgement and reaction time in traffic.

Theoretically. Driving after two pints will almost invariably be much worse.

>>102682
This makes me think sometimes about the way our government physically works. Parliament is a mess of shoebox rooms and converted closets being used as offices, 10 Downing Street is a townhouse and most of the government's property has been sold off for short-term profits. So what happens during a day-to-day crisis when you have lots of people shut in a cramped room making decisions for hours on end?

>>102683
This is one of the things Dominic Cummings goes on about: Our buildings and rooms were insufficient for dealing with the crises of 1914, let alone for those of 2024. The COBRA room is a marginal improvement, but it's still just a big desk with a telly for showing powerpoints or BBC1 at the end of it. The alternative he repeats often enough for it to be a cliche is something like NASA mission control, where everyone's got their own screen and all the relevant information relating to the problem can be shown to the specific person responsible for that area, and ideally where there are various models so you can run through different scenarios and see what's likely to happen.

>>102683
>>102684

All of this ties in with the sort of stuff I was alluding to in

>>102650

But apparently just because I was being a bit playful in tone it was worth entirely dismissing.

I really think we are struggling a lot because we hold on to the past too much, and it's making us kind of backward, without realising it. Just because we had the money to put modern central heating and internet into all our 1800s stone cottage buildings, doesn't mean they are suddenly modern. Half of this country and its infrastructure is just fucking ancient.

>>102685
I've heard many times that the Oosah always seems to stay abreast of things because whenever their economy weakens and old industries decline, the economic centre of the country just shifts to a different region.

According to this perspective, the current centre of industry is in the south west of the country and in Texas. We, on the other hand, haven't got a gigantic, undeveloped desert to build new infrastructure in. I think a sort of advantage the yanks have is that they don't really have a sense of deep roots in the way we do, it's not like they can walk past a church where their ancestors from 500 years ago are buried, so I think it's not much of a problem for them to be living and working in bland, artificial environments in the way it would be for many Europeans (although I gauge that most of you here aren't too bothered by that kind of thing), so I think this as well as a lack of actual space compared to America and Australia makes it harder for European countries to easily rejig infrastructure. Especially as our attempts to do so in the 1960s had mostly disappointing and depressing results.

My solution is just to reintroduce the bubonic plague.

>>102685
>But apparently just because I was being a bit playful in tone it was worth entirely dismissing.
I dismissed it because Warhammer is fucking lame. But also, your post was about the systems themselves being arcane and Byzantine, while I took >>102683 to be more about the actual physical environments. People could go outside and follow complicated corporate hierarchies and endless meetings in the fresh air, and then your analogy would still apply, but the other post's problem would be fixed because it was about people performing worse in low-oxygen environments where everyone else is breathing all the air in the room.

You were writing about government structure being complex. >>102683, in my opinion, was about lots of people meeting in small airless rooms to make decisions, and then struggling to get them right because of low-level suffocation. So your post was completely unrelated, and I'm glad I dismissed it, you big gay Warhammer fan.

>>102687

You're fucking lame.

I didn't read the rest of your post and I'm not going to. If you said anything worth reading I'll never know.

>>102684
But you can just imagine the Daily Mail headlines if the government started building proper offices or (dare I say it) have people working from home. Or imagine if MPs had to vote on moving Parliament to Birmingham.

>>102686
I don't know if I buy that, we have plenty of land in the UK going for (relatively) cheap and at least Scotland offers extremely generous terms for any international business that moves there as a sweetener. We even have empty buildings going. The problem is more that why the hell would you:

1. Move outside the M25 and deal with creaking infrastructure.
2. Not just get your unicorn going on grant money and then immediately fuck off to the US for 4x the valuation and a much bigger marketplace.

You could move the needle on point 1 and successive governments have been trying to do it but we've not pulled it off yet and I don't see it happening when the country is broke and liable to fall into a debt crisis soon unless we gut spending and raise taxes. Although I'm not sure the US has either, their AI industry is fucked if they can't immediately start building China's level of electricity generation.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/06/tax-rises-budget-deficit-rachel-reeves-niesr

>>102688
Not him, I agree that your analogy is retarded and pretends there is a conspiracy instead of having an adult discussion about why the civil service works differently to the private sector on issues like risk and waste.

>>102689

>your analogy is retarded and pretends there is a conspiracy

How is it a conspiracy? It's just what happens when things get deeply rooted in That's Just How It's Always Been Done territory, and people don't want to change, combined with the rational self interest of their career position depending on it. Similarly how we have villages, towns, entire cities (if you want a rational answer as to why Bradford is so grim that isn't just "lol asians") where the physical bricks and tarmac of the place were already a bit past their sell by date in the 1970s. Once it all gets past a certain point, it's far too much effort for anyone to even consider going about uprooting and modernising everything.

Like I said, you are taking the face value of my tongue in cheek hyperbole and not the substance of what I was articulating.

>The UK jobs market has continued to cool as vacancies fell and the number of people on payrolls dropped, the latest official figures suggest.

>Job openings fell by 5.8% to 718,000 between May to July across nearly all industries, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It said there was evidence that some firms may not be recruiting new workers or replacing people who have left.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdjjp681p7o

>The Treasury is looking at ways to raise more money from inheritance tax amid growing pressure on the country’s finances ahead of the autumn budget, sources have told the Guardian.

>Officials have been tasked with examining whether tightening rules on the gifting of money and assets could be one way of addressing a gap between revenue and spending that is estimated to reach more than £40bn. Although no decisions have been taken, the government has been careful not to rule out tax rises later this year amid slowing economic growth, higher-than-hoped inflation and unemployment at a four-year high.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit

Reform are going to poll even higher.

>>102691

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2025/08/jeremy-corbyn-people-have-been-denied-an-alternative

Jezza's our only hope, once again.

AI won't let me generate "Corbyn v Savile WWE cage match" so you will have to use your locally hosted organic tissue based image generation algorithms instead.

>>102692

>>102693
Wow, someone else remembers We Are Klang. I'm not even sure We Are Klang do.

>>102694
Sex mate.

>>102694

I'm fairly sure I'm being Mandela effected, because in my timeline this show had Al Murray in it. I've no idea what the fuck Tasmaster is doing there.

>>102696
I think your elderly brain is just misremembering which bald man in a burgundy top was where.

>>102694

An entire generation wouldn't get the punchline because they're too young to remember the BNP, which makes me feel extraordinarily old. I wonder what Nick Griffin is up to these days.

>>102692

I look forward to the inevitable, bitter split of Your Party Whose Party? if they eventually get around to choosing some actual policies. I don't imagine it'll be particularly easy to write a manifesto that appeases lefties in Brighton and Urdu speakers in Bradford.

PS: Grok will generate any old shit. Elion Muck gets a semi every time someone offends a minority.

>>102694
They came to my university's comedy night in 2008. Normally, like most comedy nights, there would be three acts and a compere, but on this occasion, We Are Klang did the entire night on their own. And they fucking bombed. They were awful. It was a nightmare. So I remember that. But I'm happy to admit I couldn't remember the name of that comedy troupe that Greg Davies was in, partly because of the equally stupidly and surprisingly similarly-named indie band (?), I Am Kloot, who were probably around at the same time.

>>102698
There is an unmistakable degree of sexual, maybe even romantic, attraction between them.

How long do you think it will be before they realise Wikipedia and Archive.org host "NSFW", and "harmful" material?

>>102701

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr11qqvvwlo

>>102702
I can't face looking into this - I hope it's only limited to user accounts, not general access.
Fucking government are retarded.

>>102702
In fairness, this was absolute bollocks:
>It argued the rules were logically flawed and too broad, meaning a policy intended to impose extra rules on large social media companies would instead apply to Wikipedia.

It "imposes extra rules" on, among other things, sites with lots of user-generated content. It seems hard to argue that "the free encyclopedia [sic] that anyone can edit" somehow wouldn't fall under this heading.

>>102698
It's very easy to write such a manifesto: The 2017 or 2019 Labour manifesto.
The supposedly deeply ideological hard-left are in-fact desperate for something to believe in. You can get away with a fairly moderate program if you frame it as the start of something different to the status quo and don't spend all your time on a witch hunt against them.
Hell, looking to Scotland you can see how long people remained loyal to Sturgeon even as she (quietly) pivoted right because she talked left.

>Rachel Reeves is preparing to strip back environmental protections in an effort to boost the economy by speeding up infrastructure projects.

>The chancellor is considering reforms that would make it far harder for concerns about nature to stop development, which she insists is crucial to restoring growth and improving living standards. The Treasury has begun preparing for another planning reform bill and is thinking about tearing up key parts of European environmental rules that developers say are making it harder to build key projects.

>Labour ministers have repeatedly insisted that their current planning overhaul will not come at the expense of nature, promising a “win-win” system where developers will pay to offset environmental damage. But Reeves is understood to believe that the government must go significantly further, after expressing frustration that the interests of “bats and newts” are being allowed to stymie critical infrastructure.

>She has tasked officials with looking at much more contentious reforms, which are likely to provoke a furious backlash from environmentalists and cause unease for some Labour MPs. A smaller, UK-only list of protected species is being planned, which would place less weight on wildlife — including types of newt — that is rare elsewhere in Europe but more common in Britain.

>Developers would also no longer have to prove that projects would have no impact on protected natural sites, under plans that would abolish the “precautionary principle” enshrined in European rules. Instead, a new test would look at risks and benefits of potential projects. Further curbs to judicial review are also being considered by Reeves to stop key projects being delayed by legal challenges from environmentalists.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-strip-back-environmental-protections-planning-projects-xjxn02crs

Can Labour stop being utter shits for five minutes, please?

>>102709
"Bats and newts" dangerously reductive bollocks.

>>102709

I wouldn't even mind that much, if they ever actually delivered on the other half of these neoliberal ghoul Faustian deals, where they thrown a pretty unambiguously morally good thing under the bus in exchange for economic benefits. How many badgers would I allow to be sacrificed if it meant HS2 actually made it to Leeds? Few thousand, give or take. You can pave over the Lake District if my electricity goes back to what it was in the before times.

But the economic benefits never come through either do they. It's just shit on top of shit.

Tory MPs complain party attack ad on asylum hotels ‘makes us look silly’

Conservative MPs have expressed frustration at their party’s “piss-poor” messaging over hotels housing people seeking asylum. Leaked WhatsApp messages show members are concerned that the party’s leadership is attacking Keir Starmer’s government for policies introduced by the Conservatives.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/18/tory-mps-complain-party-messaging-asylum-hotels

I'm struggling to remember a time the opposition were this ineffective and useless.

UK 30-Year Inflation-Linked Yields Hit Highest Since 1998

The yield on long-dated inflation-linked bonds surpassed the highs seen during the gilt-market meltdown three years ago, the latest unwanted market milestone for the UK government.

The rate on 30-year linkers — often known as the real yield — rose to 2.56%, the most since 1998. That surpassed a high recorded in September 2022, when former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s economic plans triggered a fire-sale dynamic among leveraged pension fund strategies. Yields on conventional gilts also rose.

The rise in borrowing costs, which lacked a clear catalyst Monday, heaps further pressure on Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves ahead of an autumn budget where she is already under pressure to find savings. That may prove politically difficult, given the government had to U-turn on welfare reforms last month after rebellion among lawmakers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-18/uk-30-year-inflation-linked-yields-hit-highest-since-1998-meh7xg6f

>>102709
>the interests of “bats and newts” are being allowed to stymie critical infrastructure
We used to get a shitload of bats in my neighbourhood - probably due to a (at the time) 15 foot overgrown Buddleia. I certainly miss hearing them on the edge of my audition.

Having browsed a handful of conservation activist sites I've learned that some people erect bat nesting boxes to stall housing builds in areas they deem unsuitable-for-development, in the obvious hope they become inhabited. As laudable as it is, it's clearly abuse of the law.

If such a "pay to offset environmental damage" system actually works effectively then I'd consider that a net bonus for Britain, that is with a majority of funds paid into building wildlife habitation according to the categorisation of individual sites, not beurocratic management like you see how many charities allocate their funds.
Doing so would open up an entire industry of environmental assessors, like health and safety did, alongside potentially supporting traditional crafters.
That's not to mention the involvement of environmental/carbon credits that are said to be a factor in future economies.

It might be quite nice for certain counties to become known for their bee conservation or what have you. It could be a tourist spot, not to mention tangent industries like the benefits to farming, etc.
Check out this short documentary;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h6K_cS0m_w


>>102712
A few thousands sounds tollerably high though I don't know the national population. It'd surely eradicate badger activity in the effected counties. But there's no reason logistics infrastructure can't incorporate nature in its design.

>>102709
I'm certainly not that fussed about the rare creatures that often block planning permission, but: it's not like we've run out of places to build things that don't have creatures in. This country is full of derelict shops and office blocks. Change the planning rules so you can build things there instead. I'm not seeing anywhere near enough building on industrial wasteground to persuade me that we'll see more construction projects if only we stopped kowtowing to starlings and voles.

>>102720

The owner of a semi-derelict retail park near me wants to redevelop the whole site, but it's been held up for years because of a colony of bats in an old substation building nearby. The developers have agreed not to touch the substation, but the planning department want guarantees that the bats won't be disturbed by noise from traffic or construction.

It is remarkably common for people to report seeing a single newt or vole on the land opposite their house as soon as someone applies for planning permission - it doesn't really matter if it's a lie, because the necessary surveys and precautions can add years and tens of thousands of pounds to a project cost.

In the vast majority of cases, concerns about wildlife are completely spurious and are just a means for NIMBYs to delay and drive up costs. It's almost never a question of someone applying for permission to tarmac over some pristine habitat, but instead someone arguing that the old flag heap might hypothetically be within the foraging or migratory range of a protected species, or that the noise from construction vehicles travelling to and from the site might disturb some woodland four miles up the road.

>>102724
If this is true, you have to wonder why the government don't say it instead of newt-bashing. If Rachel Reeves was bashing middle-class NIMBYs acting in bad faith I'd have no objections. Instead she's trying to start an internecine conflict between lizards even though it's obvious that between her and the newts, the newts will win sympathy every time.
You could say that Labour needs middle class NIMBYs to win elections so it should be nice to them, but Morgan McSweeney the prole whisperer has repeatedly reassured us that Labour doesn't need the middle class at all, just red wall Labour>Reform swing voters. The line on anyone who'd so much as pretend to be an environmentalist is: "fuck off, we're better off without you."

I'm guessing it's another of our cargo cults in public life, a phrase repeated over and over long after it was clever. Someone'll have mentioned newts in 1992 and, like the TAX BOMBSHELL rolled out at every election since, it's rolled out again and again in the hopes John Frum (Huntingdon) will come back and give us all some cargo.

I'd rather have more bats and newts than people here tbh.

>>102734
Yeah I feel the same. Would rather have some bats than some "critical infrastructure" that will serve economical interests which will make the country look and feel even shitter.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/streeting-labour-starmer-Savile-b2812316.html

Mark my words. He's gunning for PM, and this is the start of him laying down the groundwork. I expect Starmer to face a leadership challenge before long if polling doesn't improve, and this pudgy smug phone shop assistant manager cunt is going to be the one who puts himself at the front of the race.

>>102738
You might not like him, but the next Conservative leader is going to be Chris Philp, and I don't think Jimmy Savile actually wants to be Prime Minister so they'll be putting forward some firebrand YouTuber instead as well. I'm currently jobless; perhaps I should spend my redundancy payment on a self-righteously indignant blog and paying offensively ignorant talking heads to repeat my points on daytime TV. I'll at least make it onto the TV debates at this rate.