Kier Starmer steps down for seemingly no reason in particular, then Burnham gets nominated by a handful of MP’s, stands unopposed and thus unelected by the party membership, and magically becomes PM with hardly anyone really having a say in it all.

The difference is America isn’t renowned for its weapons grade hacking software.

A more appropriate example from you would’ve been Signal, which was initially funded by the CIA. However Signal is far more trustworthy than Matrix.

Matrix is nice and all, up until you learn it was born out of Israel.

Secure messaging platforms require trust.

There were also reports of it happening here, among people arrested before the start of the demonstration.

In Germany on New Year’s eve they literally have a fog of war all across the streets.

You touched on the reason England sucks with it: enforcement. We set the punishment excessively high, in a bid for “deterrence”, and then don’t actually enforce it (because if we did the level and amount of people being punished would be extreme).

The severity of the punishment is meaningless if you don’t think you’ll get caught.

Neoliberalism serves business. That’s literally the type of liberalism referenced in your link, which was combined with social democratic philosophy to form the third way.

That’s the thing, no one picked Andy Burnham to be Prime Minister, except the handful of MP’s who nominated him. He didn’t run an election as leader of the party, and because no one stood against him he wasn’t even elected by the party.

Having a direct democracy would be more fair.

Why do we need representatives to travel to Westminster to have their say on our behalf?

Brexit didn’t actually go through until after the 2019 election. During which Boris Johnson campaigned and made many promises about Brexit, eg it was “oven ready” and absolutely would not be a hard Brexit. They claimed to have had better trade deals ready.

There were plenty of promises made. Boris was even put on trial in 2019 for his 2016 Brexit campaign lies, where he only got off on a technicality because the Brexit campaign wasn’t technically part of his ministerial duties. Everything since the 2019 election was, though, yet he was never charged again - even when he was caught lying to the queen.

Buses are currently subsidised, with a £3 cap. However this is typically across cities and such, not cross country, which can cost more. It’s also per bus, and I imagine in a 2 hour journey you’d be taking at least 2 buses. A lot of buses these days will upgrade you to a day ticket when you take your 3rd ticket, if you pay by contactless and tap on/tap off.

Coaches are a different thing (big RV type buses, rather than city buses which are more accessible and have standing area), and they’re typically an alternative to trains, and only handle city to city routes. They aren’t capped afaik. When you get a rail replacement bus, usually it’s a coach, except for short distance replacement services.

The sneaky thing is that, even though bus fares are capped at £3, bus companies could well be putting their prices up massively behind the scenes, paid for by the taxpayer. They’re certainly going to be demanding more to cover the rising price of fuel. Instead of this price being up front to the public with ticket price increases, it’s now a backroom negotiation between the bus company and the government.

Fuck this makes my blood boil lol

The link didn’t help me much, but thank you for prompting me to find it elsewhere.

You may not of seen

This is exactly the issue with how they’re dealing with this. Social media sites aren’t just harmful to children, they’re harmful to everyone. Instead of regulating against the people who access them, the government should be regulating the social media sites themselves - specifically their intentionally gamed algorithms.

The BBC has asked three of the UK’s biggest banks whether they would have a process for assisting with social media requests for age verification if it did become an official measure.

What a fucking dumbass comment here by the BBC. Using card transactions for age verification was literally written into the law!! The law only vaguely defined facial recognition and ID scanning, because the technology didn’t really exist yet, but explicitly mentions card transactions.

Hell, I’m convinced that was the main reason behind the law. MasterCard and VISA want more businesses to authenticate transactions, at a time when they’re increasingly choosing not to to save money on their fee.

Felt this way about lemm.ee :(

I couldn’t get past the first sentence before I drowned in hyperbole.

I’m sure Laura Kuenssberg’s salary could save them a few bob.

You think words can be dehumanizing but not actions?

No, I think dehumanisation is a verb, it’s something someone does to another person. It’s something you’re doing, but you justify it when it’s something your victim also does. But that makes you no better than them - you’re both engaging in dehumanisation. The act is abhorrent no matter the excuse. And yet, you defend it, because you think your feelings are exceptional.

More to the point, they’re generally beloved by children and parents, and almost everyone really.