General Politics Thread

​

I'm a guy but I can totally sympathize with your predicament RadFemHedonist. Any type of discrimination should not be permitted-in an ideal world that would be true, but alas we don't live in one.
 
I was all primed and ready to launch a salvo against these proposed freedom hating laws and the kind of horrible culture we’re creating but I now find I’m too late, because Johnathan Pie has beat me to it, and has done so in such a comprehensive manner there is literally nothing left for me to add.


I know I’ve not been so keen on the sharing of third party opinions on here but I’d be more than happy to argue any of the points in this video (not that I imagine anyone will take me up on that offer since this thread seems totally dead as far as actual debate is concerned) because my sync rate with Pie today is 100%.

Oh and also, for all the good it will do: Petition: Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest.
 
Last edited:
I never really think petitions do much since the govt. usually just go ahead and do whatever they like anyway (since they can just ignore the undemocratic, utterly useless waste of money and colossal gravy train for politicians’ mates that is the House of Lords) but if it gets to 100k they’ll have to at least attempt to justify themselves before they do.
 

What the actual, ever loving f...

Mind telling me WHICH countries British Citizens who don’t like this country can freely move to, Lia? Oh that’s right, NONE now, thanks to your own government. Unless of course you’re a millionaire or a member of the Royal Family.

Part of me wants the government to continue down the authoritarian dictatorship path so we become so oppressed I can legitimately claim asylum somewhere.

Edit: Well now that I think of it there is Ireland I suppose, as we still have the common travel area. Fun fact for anybody who wants their European citizenship back, if you go live in Ireland for four years you can have it. I was one generation too late to have Irish citizenship passed on by birth, sadly.
 
Last edited:
The government is actually purposely trying to terrify everybody over these vaccines now, right? I mean like, deliberately and explicitly evoking “mark of the beast” stuff to create maximum distrust for some as yet unknown reason? I can’t think of any other reason for their actions, except perhaps utter, utter incompetence and tone-deafness.
 
Just seen the news out a guy with a knife who got shot running to the police outside the Capitol building
Nothing much yet but a police officer has died unfortunately
These loonies though no exact reason yet but every time I see something like this i think of Trump extremist supporters
Completely mad conspiracy theorists who are living on another planet
Like their ‘saviour’ Trump who didn’t save lives when the pandemic took control
Seen him enough times on YouTube with his hundreds of lies....
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Human cells grown in monkey embryos spark ethical debate

Scientists confirm they have made "chimera" embryos from long-tailed macaques and humans.
www.bbc.co.uk

All this moral blathering about the "ethics" of creating human/monkey embryos "open[ing] Pandora's box to chimeras"... You know what, GOOD. I hope it does. We should open every Pandora's box the minute we find the key, or the crowbar. They should have let them be born as far as I'm concerned and we should make more, and more interesting combinations. If humanity can improve itself via self-directed evolution into chimeras who can directly interface with technology (there's another tiresome "ethics" issue) we should do it. If it's "unethical" to create chimeras then is it not equally unethical to create more humans? We don't know what problems either might be born with or whether they'll enjoy or appreciate life.

Imagine if some future successor species to humanity could scale sheer walls with their hands, see in the dark, be impervious to physical harm due to their sturdy carapaces, survive in the vacuum of space and live forever on a single biscuit a year. Imagine if we could upload the entirety of the internet into their brains upon hatching, fully formed, from their cocoons. At that point perhaps we could even create consciousness first, then ASK it what physical form it wanted to take, if any.

Don’t scientists dream any more? Why are we so attached to the flawed, slow to learn, quick to decay form we take now? Unless of course the final concept I've described there is what we already are, and what people think of as “souls” are beings from outside the universe that use us as amnesiac avatars for recreational purposes (like in that one episode of Red Dwarf) and they don’t want to lose their favourite MMORPG. If this is my last post here, you know I got too close to the truth and the admins forced my character into a swimming pool and deleted the ladder.
 
So many sci-fi references in there. Do we go down the Planet of the Apes route or Ghost in the Shell route. A bit of The Matrix although allowing the consciousness choose it's form would be a freer version.

The mention of chimeras reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist, although not quite the same "technology"

Human dog hybrid anyone?
43b735a391df74e0e839818279ae1465.png

😞😞😞
 
D1tchd1gger said:
Do we go down the Planet of the Apes route or Ghost in the Shell route. A bit of The Matrix although allowing the consciousness choose it's form would be a freer version.
Click to expand...
Why not all three? Let’s just, y’know, DO stuff and see what happens. And I refuse to believe so many people genuinely care about ethics when as a species we already treat not only animals the way we do but also other humans. It’s just fear. Fear of future humans being different from us, when every single generation already is. It’s just a form of social conservatism in my eyes.
 
ayase said:
It’s just fear. Fear of future humans being different from us, when every single generation already is.
Click to expand...
Is it really? Normally people fear the unknown and the risk of things going wrong/out of control. At least that's what seems to be the main reason for objections to things like GMO, AI or virology. But with genetic research, being it chimeras or eugenics in general, a whole array of different 'problems' pop up. The entire abortion debate being one of them, but also the discussion when something is a human as opposed to an animal.

From a scientific point of view I find it truly fascinating and would definitely not object to taking these experiments further. It's practically a given that it will happen, although likely in a country where ethics are less an obstacle. Personally I'm more interested in the medical applications and don't really see the need to invent a "successor to humans". Perhaps a bit selfish, but why would we want "better humans" in the future?

That being said, it's fun to think about a future where this would be common place. What will happen with sports? What if the means to apply eugenics is reserved for a select few? How could this be used in warfare? Perhaps a generation will be made immune to a certain condition/virus and the rest of the world is attacked with it? If lifespans differ, how will that impact work/salaries/pensions, etc...? Will discrimination on chimeric/eugenics be allowed and under which conditions? Would they be allowed to procreate and/or only with ones that are 'compatible'?

All this and more is probably best explored in fiction, and preferable a comedy. Just imagine a family taking a holiday with their chimeric son or daughter. They didn't do their research and have to rebook the the ticket at the airport, as first generation chimera's are classified as pets where they are going.
 
Really sorry @IdiomaticLynx, I totally forgot about this post and meant to reply ages ago, but now I’ve come back to post something else I will finally respond.
IdiomaticLynx said:
Personally I'm more interested in the medical applications and don't really see the need to invent a "successor to humans". Perhaps a bit selfish, but why would we want "better humans" in the future?
Click to expand...
Isn’t that the whole point of evolution, procreation and progress? If we don’t want the next generation to be and have it better, why even birth them in the first place? I know the powers that be have managed to convince an awful lot of people that the purpose of (unsustainable) population growth is to feed the economic machine with more workers and consumers, but I at least hope most people still want their children to be better off than they are, otherwise having them becomes an actual act of cruelty. I don’t really see improving humanity via technology and genetic engineering as any different to providing education or eradicating smallpox.

——-

On to today’s topic, and how utterly clueless NuNewLabour remain about how people in their former heartlands think. Their answer to losing impoverished, working class, brexit voting Hartlepool is to... accelerate faster and further away from the left so they appeal only to cosmopolitan centrists. Best of luck with that, Sir Keir, Knight of the Establishment. Because it’s going so well at the moment you’re still managing to lose to the most obviously, visibly corrupt, incompetent and uncaring government this country has seen probably since the 19th Century.

And looking at these results, it seems like Labour could well be on course to perform WORSE than they did under Corbyn, you remember, the guy they pinned all the blame on for losing last time? Excuse me while I take a good, long sip of schadenfreude, laugh, then cry.
 
As someone who no longer even lives in the north I'm at a loss to understand what they actually stand for in the capital, either. I just voted for Sadiq because I like him as a person but the party itself feels utterly irrelevant to my life. In my area they get a lot of free votes from people like me who just want to pick a choice that might actually beat the Conservatives and local far right rabble-rousers rather than because they're actually peddling any interesting ideas of their own.

It's annoying because my mother (northern too, though supposedly a remainer) has inexplicably pivoted into becoming a hardcore Boris fanatic via peer pressure recently and it's hard to discourage her when everyone in the current political landscape seems so thoroughly wet.

R
 
Our Tees Valley mayor (who will likely be handily re-elected*) is one of the few Tories I can find anything good to say about, though mainly because being a mayor rather than an MP he actually has the power to get things done. And to be fair to him, he has. He’s secured a lot of investment in the area which is bringing jobs, and has bought back our local airport (and renamed it to “Teesside Airport” from the hated “Durham Tees Valley” - It is nowhere near Durham) which was being run into the ground by its former owners who just saw it as a nice bit of real estate that would probably make them a tidy sum as (yet another) sprawling housing estate. I mean, this is a Tory, taking local infrastructure into public ownership for public benefit, which is more than the Labour council he replaced ever did, so I don’t begrudge anyone voting for him.

THAT is the vote-winning strategy in poorer communities: Investment, investment, investment. Tell the people you’ll make them and their areas better off, ACTUALLY DO IT and they’ll vote for you. The New Labour legacy is that they promised that and then DIDN’T do it, and people remember that. When they look at Starmer (and indeed most of the anti-Brexit, anti-Corbyn PLP) they just see another Blair, another well spoken guy in a suit who will over-promise and under-deliver who doesn’t actually care about them, so his whole “rebuilding trust” schtick is not going to wash with working class northerners unless he radically changes his approach.

*Edit: He was, with a 73% share of the vote.
 
Last edited:
Yeah I voted for Sadiq too in the end because I think he seems like a decent person and like he's trying (despite being unable to do much thanks to having funding starved from him by the Government trying to make him look bad), but I really struggled to bring myself to do it as I didn't want to give support or encouragement to the Labour party in its current form.

To be honest, seeing that Labour's pitiful and hilarious (though predictable) response to doing so woefully is "we'll take this on the chin, no excuses whatsoever from us this time. But it's all Jeremy Corbyn's fault even though he hasn't been leader for over a year and we've done nothing at all in that time except tell you we are nothing like him. We promise to become more right wing." has made me wish I actually did vote for Shaun Bailey the conservative candidate for mayor, just because I think nothing short of defeat in London will actually cause these fools in Labour to do any self reflection. To be honest I just want Labour wiped off the map for good at this point, it seems like it's beyond the point of no return, stuck in a vicious cycle of shifting increasingly rightwards and getting diminishing results and blaming it on Corbyn for the rest of time.
 
Wales is still Labour the Tories only won one of their target seats so it can be done. Maybe we just hate the Tories more in Wales. And Rhodri Morgan made it clear there was clear red water between new labour and Wales so we don’t have free schools or slightly private hospitals and the welsh government education postgrad loan of £17,650 allowed me to study the one in England won’t. I do think the English Labour Party need to learn from welsh labour as yes we did just say a steady as you go but we have succeeded and somehow prevented more places falling unlike in England that seemed to repeat 2019.
I think Labour needs to go more liberal and try and destroy the lib Dems and greens and hopefully pick up some old labour as well as I do think Keir has been crap I though he would be more exciting and he’s just voted for the brexit deal which somehow ended up pissing both sides off he should pick a side, try and make labour win a new type of coalition or try and flirt with the right wing people and lose the young liberal elite. Yes I’m now counted as young liberal elite but my mother wasn’t and neither was my father it was the new labour push for education and the welsh governments support that I even got it you shouldn’t be ashamed people go to university you should say we provided those platforms and you can still be part of the Labour Party as yes the “new” working class isn’t where my parents and grandparents came from.
 
A long standing and highly effective strategy of the Conservative Party at all levels has been to allocate money to those that they want to vote Conservative and cuts to those who they either think will not or think will do so regardless.

In the past, the North (being in the "not" category) suffered. Now the Tories want the North more than anything so flood it with money. And the voters there respond accordingly.

Other parties do it as well to a certain extent, but not to anywhere near the same scale or extent, and mainly purely on the basis that their voters are inevitably those that stand to benefit from their policies. Most other parties care about things like fairness. The Tories don't care about fairness, only about winning.
 
Back
Top