THIS is what I think is unpatriotic, unethical and should be stopped. He`s using loopholes that are well known and easily available amongst his type. NOT to the majority of us normal employees, some of whom NEED a few loopholes. These are the arseholes that blame refugeees and the poor and then steal from the us by not paying their share, which they could easily afford without dtriment to themsleves or the business that makes it all for them.The loopholes need closing -globally!!
FACT CHECK: Billionaire & Co-owner of Manchester United Sir Jim Ratcliffe paid £0 in tax in the financial year of 2024/2025; meanwhile immigrants in the UK contributed a whopping £17,000,000,000, more than Jim Ratcliffe’s entire net worth which is £12.76 Billion.
Yesterday in an interview with Sky News Jim Ratcliffe said Britain has been “colonised” by immigrants, suggesting there are too many and that Nigel Farage is a “smart guy”.
Mr Ratcliffe’s comments last night were also factually incorrect, he claimed that the UK population in 2020 was 58 million and that the population in 2026 is well above 70 million, a 12 million increase.
However, the actual population in the UK in 2020 was 68 million and the correct population as of Feb 2026 rests at 69.6 million according to UN data. An increase of only 1.6 million people compared to the 12 million Ratcliffe claimed.
The Billioniare who has imposed massive cuts across Old Trafford and laid thousands of staff off, also failed to account for the 300,000-500,000 births in the UK each year.
Krista L @KristaLonsdale
East Barnet
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First-an environmentalist because there is no Plan(et) B. Second -a gardener.Third-cat lover, Fourth -lover of unusual genres of music.
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Facebook Carrick Ryan Anthropologists have long since thought they understood why Eurasia, and Europe in particular, developed faster than the rest of the world. But less is understood about why, decades after the end of colonialism, the colonised aren't anywhere close to catching up. This lack of understanding is fuelling a significant amount of the "great replacement" style racism which has become disturbingly normalised. So let's unpack it. Obviously, a lot is said about the continued exploitation of developing nations by Western powers through unfair trade practices and political interference. This undeniably is a factor, but its influence is often overstated, and they do donate more than $250 billion in official development aid every year, and that's on top of more than $25 billion in humanitarian aid. Yes, there are plenty of examples of western governments, or more commonly western corporations, engaging unethically and exploitatively, but for the most part, the richest nations on earth consistently demonstrate sincere attempts to help poorer nations escape poverty, even if only to ensure a more stable neighbourhood (and to limit the flow of refugees). Some of the narrative portraying the West as a malevolent force is understandably embraced because it provides a palatable rebuttal to the racist deductions of the far right which point to the continued failure of the post-colonial world to attain prosperity and stability as evidence of their inherent inferiority.But it's propagation fuels resentment against the very institutions that are crucial to the fight against it. The most reasonable explanation for the persistent gap in living conditions between the richest and poorest countries is simple - development takes time. The advantages the Eurasian continent had in food security enabled civilisations to form that were capable of developing significantly more advanced technology. By the time this technology allowed Europeans to "discover" the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and South East Asia, the "West" was centuries ahead in the sophistication of its society. Not because the people were smarter, but because geography and the availability of food plants& anaimals that were easily domesticated meant generations upon generations obtained highly developed education in increasingly specific fields. Colonialism brought the industrial revolution to the world, but it did so almost exclusively for the benefit of the colonisers. The British brought railways to the world, but they didn't train the local population to be engineers, administrators, or even train drivers. The locals were usually out in the sun laying the track. When the keys of these modern states were handed to native populations, there were rarely more than a fraction that had been provided the education needed to understand how a modern state functioned. Expecting entire populations to transform from being a subjugated workforce, excluded from authority and responsibility, to being tasked with administering modern nations containing millions of people within around 50 years is ludicrous. Just think of the amount of specialised experts you need to run a power grid, to build and maintain a road system, to run a health system, and most importantly, to run an education system. It takes generations to build that workforce, and billions in strategic investment, and that's before we even consider the fact that almost all available academic literature is likely to be written in a foreign language. 65% of Canadians have some kind of tertiary education, in Niger it's less than 1%. Think about the ramifications for how their government functions, how successful industry can be when competing against a global market, and think about how the education level of one generation impacts the prosperity of the next. Compared to the average child born into a wealthy country, the opportunity to fulfil one's potential is staggeringly minuscule. Babies don't get the nutrition they need, they don't receive expert medical care since birth, they don't get a complete education from adequately educated teachers, they don't have the same access to knowledge and government programs, they don't have parents with the privilege of understanding and implementing developmental goals, and they don't have an efficient system of identifying naturally gifted children to allow them to reach their collective potential. On an individual level, these variables do not necessarily condemn a child to struggle, we hear amazing stories of these obstacles being overcome from time to time, but when applied to the overwhelming majority of children in a country, the struggle is endemic, and socially suffocating. It's not that the minds of children in developing nations aren't just as capable as those in the West, we can always see a small fraction that are afforded the opportunity to receive a comparable education to the average Westerner, through privilege, patronage, or charity, and they succeed. But in a cruel twist, many of those that do become highly educated are understandably inclined to use that education as a means to get themselves and everyone they love out of a their impoverished and unstable country, thus inducing a persistent and punishing brain drain to wealthier countries. So they're not just unable to educate enough of their population, but the smartest people they do educate tend to leave (just as I think any of us would do in the same position if we're honest). Compounding these inescapable consequences of poverty is the ubiquity of political instability which deprives so many of opportunity. As brilliantly articulated in the seminal work "Why Nations Fail", the strength of democracy and related institutions are among the biggest determiner of prosperity. Yet, most of the post-colonial world rely on a "shared national identity" that was invented by colonial administrators, are beset by ethnic tension that was usually intentionally inflamed by colonisers, and have no long-standing cultural relationship with, or trust in, democracy. Think about how much easier it is to keep the peace when peace means prosperity, not oppression. If alienation and lack of opportunity attracts voters to populists selling grievance in the West, imagine how strong that political pull would be if the poverty was intolerable and the historical grievance was justified? As a result, developing countries are far more likely to be led by charlatans and warlords promising radical change rather than incremental advances, and governments become riddled with corruption, a cyclical curse of poverty. Does this mean the developing world is condemned to destitution? No. Progress is being made. The number of people living under extreme poverty has dropped by 25% (and that's not including China). Life expectancy in low-income countries has risen by more than 20 years since 1960. The global under-5 mortality rate has fallen by nearly 60% since 1990, with the steepest declines in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Adult literacy in the developed world has improved from 56% in 1970 to 80% today. Deaths from famines have fallen by more than 90% It is going to take time, and a lot more investment, but we mustn't give up. Anyone with a conscience must feel the moral compulsion to aspire for a world where as few humans as possible are subjected to the intolerable hardships we now see within the slums of the "third world". We need to accept that we may not absolve ourselves of this shame during our lifetime, but the commitments we make now will determine the world future generations inhabit. ...and I think we all agree that we can do better than this one. (Image: regions via their Human Development Index score, a composite measure that ranks countries based on life expectancy (health), years of schooling (education), and income per person, capturing overall human wellbeing rather than economic output alone.) -
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Several times on SL this shutting people out has been belittled by people. That`s why I`m putting this story here. It`s a true one. For years, Pat did everything right. The 84-year-old grandmother paid her energy bills the same way she always had — in person, at the Post Office, on time, every time. No missed payments. She understood her responsibilities. Then British Gas went paperless.Everything moved online — to a world Pat couldn't access, because she doesn't have the internet. She told them. She called British Gas and explained that she had no way to pay online. She asked — repeatedly — for paper bills to be sent to her home. She was promised, again and again, that it would be sorted.It never was. Without paper bills Pat couldn't pay. And without payment, the debt began to climb. Not because she refused to pay, but because no one gave her a way to. And then the letters came. Not the paper bills she had been begging for. Solicitors' letters. Warnings about penalties. Threatening language delivered to the door of a grandmother whose only offence was not having Wi-Fi. Pat described the experience in two words: sleepless nights. This is what digital exclusion looks like. It doesn't announce itself with drama. It creeps in quietly — a system update here, a policy change there — and suddenly millions of elderly people, people with disabilities, people in rural areas without reliable broadband, find themselves locked out of basic services they've used their entire lives. The Office for National Statistics estimates that over two million adults in the UK have never used the internet. They didn't choose to be left behind. The system chose to leave them. Pat's story only changed because it reached the media. ITV News Meridian covered her case, and suddenly British Gas found the solution that had apparently been impossible for months: they apologized, promised to provide her with paper bills going forward, and offered a goodwill gesture to resolve the issue. The company stated that most of its millions of customers prefer paperless billing. But Pat had been asking for exactly that, and no one listened until a camera showed up. That's the part of this story that should keep all of us awake at night. Not just that it happened to Pat . But that it's happening right now to thousands of people just like her — people too proud or too exhausted or too afraid to call a news station. People who are being quietly crushed by systems that were never designed with them in mind. It took a news crew to remind a billion-pound corporation that an 84-year-old woman deserved a piece of paper in her letterbox — that's not a customer service failure.That's a moral one. They cut my Parent`s out in a similar way when paper reciepts for your shopping were stopped Mum had no way to check her delivered order was correct. De-skilling people and blocking them out of the system. -
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I commented on another post on this Loop that whole families are often screwed up and that it was hard to tell what`s genetic and therefore passed down, what`s learned and what`s the direct harm caused by crushing poverty and/or nasty experiences such as war or abuse. I had heard that it`s not just intelligence levels and physical and personality traits that can be inherited but that trauma can somehow be passed on via genes. It`s relevant to arguements and discussions we have on SL IMHO! So I looked for and found an article about it. It`s called epigenetics ...... https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics -
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Musk has repeatedly described the UK as a police state while using his own platform to amplify misinformation and incendiary rhetoric. That is not a defence of free speech. It is reckless posturing from someone who appears to confuse accountability with oppression. Now moving on to that other bastion of integrity Nigel Farage. He endlessly recycles the claim that Britain is silencing dissent while enjoying wall to wall media access, protests, political platforms and paid speaking tours. A man who can say almost anything on national television is not being silenced. He is being challenged and he does not like it. The UK is currently having serious and necessary debates about protest policing public order and the balance between rights and safety. That is what democracies do. They argue in public. They scrutinise power. They adjust the law. None of that equates to the absence of freedom. -
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Every time someone calls me a lefttard/loony leftie or sneers about socialism, I like to ask them what they’re doing this weekend. And tell them this: you didn’t invent the weekend.. you inherited it. And it wasn’t gifted by benevolent bosses or enlightened markets, it was won, inch by bloody inch, by organised workers, unions, reformers, and yes, the broad left. For most of history, people worked six days a week. Long and brutal days too. Sunday off wasn’t “leisure”, it was church and collapse. During the Industrial Revolution, people worked until they were exhausted, maimed, or dead, children included. This was the free market in its natural habitat. The weekend didn’t appear because capitalism suddenly grew a conscience, it appeared because people fought back, they organised and struck. They demanded shorter hours because human beings were breaking. Employers eventually conceded a Saturday half-day, not out of kindness, but because unrest and exhaustion were bad for profits and social stability. The two-day weekend only really solidified in the early 20th century, after decades of pressure from labour movements. Even then, it was justified in cynical terms: rested workers are more productive, and people with free time spend money. Fine. We’ll take the deal. So when someone spends Saturday morning in bed, Saturday afternoon watching football, and Sunday pretending Monday isn’t coming, then turns around and mocks woke libs, they are enjoying the proceeds of struggles they neither understand nor respect. The weekend, the 40-hour week, sick pay, safety standards, paid holidays, child labour laws, all the boring things that quietly make life tolerable, none of these came from the right.. they came from people the right mocked, resisted, attacked, and still derides. If you enjoy your days off, you are living inside a left-wing victory. You don’t have to like it, but you might want to stop insulting the people whose shoulders you’re standing on. History has receipts, and they’re not signed by billionaires. -
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Reform want to basically do away with the NHS as we have come to know it. But it'll be fine, because what they propose works in Europe. And they *love* Europe. Someone commented today on their experience with the French Healthcare system. What they described is completely normal for a Bismarck-style healthcare system. It is excellent care, often faster, often very humane, but it is not free at the point of use in the way people in the UK instinctively understand that phrase. It is paid for through a mix of compulsory social contributions and what is, in practice, near-mandatory top-up insurance. If you don’t pay into both layers, you are exposed. End of story. The killer detail here isn’t “France is better than the NHS” (often true), it’s the personal price tag. Nearly €900 a month in health-related costs, on a decent pension. And this is not some exotic edge case.. it’s the structural reality. Crucially, the private “mutuelle” isn’t optional in any meaningful sense. It exists precisely because the state system deliberately doesn’t cover everything. That’s the design. This is where Reform UK Ltd's assurances to their voters becomes dishonest. A lot of people hear “French system” and imagine NHS care plus nicer waiting rooms and better cheese. What they don’t imagine is writing a four-figure cheque every month in retirement, regardless of how often they get sick, just to stand still. They especially don’t imagine that cost being flat-rated for insurance, not income-linked, so it hits ordinary retirees far harder than the wealthy. And that’s before you even touch dentistry, optics, excess specialist fees, or the postcode lottery for GPs that somehow never gets mentioned in the Reform manifesto. Sure, you absolutely can have a system like France. It delivers many things the NHS currently struggles to. But it requires a population that accepts higher, visible, personal healthcare costs as normal. Britain has never consented to that.. quite the opposite. The NHS was built precisely to remove that anxiety. Which is why people like Nigel Farage leaning on “they do it in Europe” is so slippery. He gets to imply continental outcomes without ever admitting continental contributions. The bill is always left offstage, like a magician palming the coin. So yes, my contributer's account is eye-opening, and frankly invaluable. Not because it says “France bad” or “NHS good”, but because it punctures the fantasy that you can quietly slide into a mixed insurance model without the public noticing the cost. People would notice. Very quickly. And many, especially Reform voters I suspect, would not be able to afford it. Also, and importantly, The National Health Service consistently runs with freakishly low administrative costs of roughly 1.5–2 percent of total health spending. That figure includes commissioning, billing, management, HR, procurement, the lot. It’s low because the NHS is a single-payer, tax-funded system. No billing departments arguing with insurers, no parallel claims bureaucracy, no marketing and no profit extraction. One big pipe, money in, care out. Depending on how narrowly you count it, France’s pure public insurance admin sits around 5-7 percent. But that’s only half the picture because when you include the mandatory private complementary insurers, claims processing, billing overhead in clinics, and the bureaucracy required to make all those moving parts talk to each other, most serious health-economics analyses put total administrative overhead in the 8–12 percent range. (Many put it higher.) That still makes France more efficient than the US, which is a bureaucratic bonfire north of 25 percent. But it is nowhere near NHS efficiency. The UK made the opposite historical trade-off. The NHS squeezes admin to the bone so money goes to care, not paperwork. That’s why it delivers universal coverage at lower per-capita cost than almost any comparable country. It’s also why it collapses so dramatically when underfunded.. there’s no slack. No insurance buffer, no spare bureaucracy to hide behind. And let's be clear, the reason the French Health service may be better in some areas that the UK, is that the NHS has been cronically underfunded for decades. If we’re going to talk about reform (small R), it has to start with telling the truth about trade-offs, not selling imported dreams with the receipt hidden in the lining. Reform UK manifestos shift tone and detail depending on audience and electoral pressure. The consistent pattern though is that explicit commitments get fuzzier the closer you look. That’s not an accident. It allows supporters to reassure themselves that “nothing radical is planned” while keeping the ideological door wide open. However, I have always been an advocate of "follow the money". Several prominent donors and backers associated with Reform have backgrounds in private healthcare, insurance or outsourcing. That does not require a conspiracy. It’s just incentives doing what incentives always do. People that bankroll movements tend to want something in return. And Nigel Farage himself has been remarkably consistent over the years about this one thing, even when his party branding mutates like a fruit fly. He has repeatedly argued that the National Health Service model is “unsustainable” and that the UK should move toward an insurance-based or mixed funding system “like France” or “like Germany.” He often frames this as “free at the point of use,” but that phrase becomes extremely elastic once you introduce compulsory insurance, co-payments, and top-ups. Technically free, in the same way a car is free if you ignore the purchase price, fuel, insurance, MOT, and repairs. But, let's be honest, even if Reform UK Ltd. ended up in government, the NHS would not vanish overnight. What would happen, based on Farage’s own long-standing comments and the “continental model” dog-whistle, is a gradual shift: more charging, more insurance, more “choice”, more things quietly pushed outside the core state offer. Think erosion, not explosion. So I would advise anyone planning to vote Reform to also start planning to put an increasingly sizeable chunk of cash aside each month to cover their health costs. I would advise everyone else to fight for what we have with every breath in your body to keep Farage away from our National Health Service. Vote for whoever is most likely to keep a Reform UK Ltd. candidate from getting a seat. Once the NHS is gone, it is NEVER coming back. -
Posted in: Anything Friendly Helpful or Interesting
COVID was not “just a lung infection.” SARS-CoV-2 has an unusual ability to disrupt core regulatory systems in the body. In some people, those systems never fully reset or repair after the infection, even if the initial illness was mild. Clinically, this shows up as dysfunction across six root mechanisms (people have different combinations and severity of each). It’s not single cause,so there is no single treatment. As soon as you realize this, you will be ready to get better the right way. 1. Dysautonomia COVID can disrupt the autonomic nervous system, which controls heart rate, blood pressure, temperature regulation, breathing patterns, and gut motility. This explains palpitations, POTS, dizziness, heat intolerance, GI slowing, and adrenaline surges. 2. Mitochondrial dysfunction The virus and the downstream inflammatory response can impair cellular energy production. This is why exertion feels disproportionately exhausting and why post-exertional crashes occur. The body’s energy “battery” does not recharge normally. 3. Endothelial dysfunction and microvascular injury COVID inflames and destabilizes the lining of blood vessels. Impaired microcirculation means oxygen and nutrients are not delivered efficiently to the brain, nerves, muscles, and organs, contributing to brain fog, shortness of breath, pain, and exercise intolerance. 4. Hormone imbalance COVID can disrupt the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal and gonadal axes, affecting cortisol, thyroid hormones, sex hormones, melatonin, and insulin signaling. Hormone instability worsens fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety-like symptoms, temperature intolerance, weight changes, and poor stress tolerance. 5. Mast cell activation and histamine excess COVID can trigger abnormal mast cell behavior, leading to histamine intolerance, flushing, rashes, GI symptoms, tachycardia, air hunger, and exaggerated responses to foods, medications, heat, or stress. 6. Gut dysbiosis and barrier dysfunction Changes in the gut microbiome and intestinal barrier perpetuate inflammation, immune signaling, nutrient malabsorption, and neurologic symptoms through the gut–brain axis. This is why: • Routine labs and imaging are often “normal” • Symptoms worsen with exertion, stress, heat, or illness • Previously healthy, high-functioning people are often affected • One-size-fits-all treatments fail Long COVID is not anxiety, not deconditioning, and not “just CFS”. It is a post-viral multi-system disorder, driven by different combinations of these six mechanisms in different people. -
Posted in: Save The Planet
.....& then falling short. IT`S BEEN HAPPENING FOR A LONGTIME. Thatcher’s inquiring mind demanded a scientific briefing about the dangers of the hole in the ozone layer, and subsequently on another even greater potential catastrophe, climate change! In November 1989, Margaret Thatcher addressed the United Nations about the threat of climate change!!! Thatcher and other European leaders warned that the world was headed for disaster if it did not cut down on the use of fossil fuels. It was clear from the beginning that Thatcher’s understanding of the science clashed with her ideology. Curbing the free market was not going to happen. Instead, she did what all politicians do – diverted attention by creating something else. In this case, it was the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, to study the subject better. BUT...The centre is now one of our world-renowned institutions. -
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PLEASE NOTE....The program cost less than existing welfare bureaucracy while producing vastly better outcomes. Sweden's universal basic income trial succeeded completely, but capitalist systems fear workforce control loss Sweden's 3-year universal basic income experiment provided $1,800 monthly to 5,000 citizens with zero strings attached—no work requirements, no means testing, no bureaucratic monitoring. Results demolished conservative predictions: employment actually increased 12% as people used income security to start businesses, pursue education, or escape abusive jobs for better opportunities. Mental health hospitalizations dropped 34%, crime fell 41%, and children's educational performance improved dramatically. The program cost less than existing welfare bureaucracy while producing vastly better outcomes. The economics worked because UBI eliminated poverty traps where welfare recipients lose benefits by working, creating rational incentives to stay unemployed. With guaranteed income, every dollar earned adds to total income instead of replacing lost benefits, making work always advantageous. People took entrepreneurial risks impossible when missing one paycheck means homelessness. Students could focus on education instead of survival jobs. Parents could afford childcare enabling employment. The freedom from desperation unleashed productivity that economic anxiety suppresses, with GDP growing 2.8% in UBI regions versus 1.9% in control areas. However, corporate interests view UBI as existential threat to labor control. Employers benefit from desperate workers who accept low wages, poor conditions, and abusive treatment because refusing means starvation and homelessness. UBI gives workers power to say no, forcing companies to offer decent wages and conditions to attract employees who no longer face survival coercion. Leaked corporate lobbying documents reveal executives writing that "worker financial independence undermines leverage essential to labor cost optimization"—admitting that poverty is a feature, not bug, maintaining cheap, compliant workforces. American workers remain trapped in coercive employment: Sweden proves UBI increases employment while improving wellbeing, yet US business lobbies fight it desperately because economic desperation is how capitalism extracts maximum labor at minimum cost. When workers can refuse exploitative jobs without starving, power dynamics shift toward labor—exactly what corporations fear. UBI isn't unaffordable or unworkable—it's threatening to those profiting from current desperation-based system. The technology of money distribution is trivial; the political will to empower workers versus employers is what's actually lacking. -
Posted in: Anything Friendly Helpful or Interesting
The Netherlands has been steadily closing prisons for more than a decade as crime rates have fallen and sentencing policies have shifted. Since around 2009, the country has shut down at least 19 facilities - now more than 20 - because there simply weren’t enough inmates to keep them full. A mix of factors contributed to the decline, including lower crime rates, shorter prison sentences, alternative punishments, and a strong focus on rehabilitation and reintegration rather than long-term incarceration. The result is a rare situation in which a modern country has more prison capacity than prisoners, leading to closures, staff retraining, and even renting out unused cells to other nations on occasion. A little more detail on those factors... Effective Rehabilitation Programs: The Netherlands has focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment, leading to programs that help offenders reintegrate into society, reducing recidivism rates. Alternative Sentencing: The use of alternatives to incarceration, such as community service, probation, and electronic monitoring, has become more common, allowing individuals to serve their sentences without being incarcerated. Social Policies: Broader social policies aimed at addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty and education, may also contribute to lower incarceration rates. -
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpzynky88o.amp?fbclid=IwY2xjawN1bABleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBic1p2cjg4QjExQ0lnbGE4AR79zv-3Qby5wWEW014sg4PBdR5Y_cr1GBP-FDu4ralODkdlYq4UkdZlME0cHQ_aem_PMiO4ThQ6MqKssU4FwvPvA I should think so too. But I bet that`s the energy supply companies paying to write off that debt. Pity it isn`t Shell, BP, Chevron ect because they are the ones making the most money.And they get grants and tax-consessions too. Extraction and refining companies rake a lot more in than Ovo and Octopus and E.on ect. -
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Posted in: Anything Friendly Helpful or Interesting
An article in a local free magazine(surprisingly).... " You don`t need to look far beyond your bank app to know there is a housing crisis. You may be spending some eye-watering proportion of your income on rent or mortgage repayments, or, if you`re lucky, you`re looking at your account swell with rent payments you`re collecting. Homelessness is everywhere, and local authorities are buckling under the pressure of a statutory duty to house their people while their income is squeezed. What is the proposed solution? "Build, baby, build!" The Labour government has undertaken to build 1.5 million homes over five years. As if the problem were amenable to one of those benign, O-Level market mechanisms of supply/demand. "I mean," Alf Garnett might holler, "It stands to reason, innit?" Well, it don`t Alf. Sorry! One startling fact is that Britain has a massive housing surplus! At least we have a higher ratio of bedrooms to population than ever before. A housing shortage is not exactly our problem. So why have the costs gone up so high and why so much homelessness? You might agree with Nick Bano " that the problem is the dismantling of post-war rent controls and council housing alongside the creation of `assured shorthold tenancies`, which together with housing benefit have ratcheted up rents and transferred wealth from the public purse to private landlords at jaw-dropping rates. (Housing benefit accounts for more than £23 billion a year- dwarfing the budget of most government departments.Or you might agree with Gary Stevenson that the problem can be attributed to our society`s accelerating inequality that transfers wealth from the many to the few who have nothing to spend it on (having already filled their bellies and wardrobes and more) besides buying assets - shares, gold, and housing, inflating their prices. Either way, it`s clear that building more houses alone will not solve the problem. The regime that encourages landlordism means that more housing gives more opportunities to `rinse` renters and offers the rich more opportunities to invest for guaranteed returns. Who else benefits? The developers. All these powerful interests make their voices heard in the lugholes of power. And thus, ladies and gentlemen, we out here in the suburbs are facing plans to plant incongruous, high-rise, high-density blocks on top of tube stations, in town centres, and on Green Belt, which threaten to alter forever the environs of our communal lives. It will, make no mistake, also alter the way we feel, and the way we interact with each other in our public places. The dislocation this represents is not measurable and not easily overcome. What to do? People are mobilising. A meeting to discuss the North Finchley plans took place last night where more than double the number expected showed up (I estimate 100 people came) to protest this wanton despoliation of our communities. I know it`s a rear-guard action but, until the next election, resistance is the only means left to us to prevent the misguided abominations being enacted in our neighbourhoods. " author AM Poppy -
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From a FB post by Paul Eisenstein I’ve seldom seen anyone so succinctly identify what Trump’s appeal is to so many Americans. His niece summed up the fact that he hasn’t a single redeeming human value. Here Robert Lee White nails the fact that this is precisely why he won two elections and, the worse his rule the more his appeal to millions of Americans. I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and this second time in 2024 given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is. I no longer do. I actually think he won, for that precise reason. Because he had fucked-up parts to mirror the fucked-up parts of millions of voters. If you are a racist, you found your guy. If you are a misogynist, you found your guy. If all you care about is money, you found your guy. If you have an emotionally armored heart, you found your guy. If you make fun of disabled people, you found your guy. If you hate intelligent people, you found your guy. If you are a rapist, you found your guy. If you like golden showers with Russian sex-workers, you found your guy. If you have not done a stitch of work on your emotional issues, you found your guy. If you are a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you are a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you don’t pay people for their honest work, you found your guy. If you are a hustler and a conman, you found your guy. If you mock people’s physical appearances, you found your guy. If you long for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you are dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you are unconscionable in all your economic dealings, you found your guy. If you lie day and night, you found your guy. If you have never eaten green vegetables, you found your guy. If you are a white supremacist, you found your guy. If you have a hole in your ego so big that not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you are a sociopath, and care not one iota about other humans, you found your guy. If you... If he only had two of these issues, he never would have won. It was the fact that he had hundreds of them, that made him the winner. Because millions of humans are toxic. So they could relate to him, in one form or another. It's never been about trump. It's always been about the people who finally have their twisted feelings about others validated. trump has given "those people" permission to disparage and hate their fellow human beings. Trump is only symptomatic of a much larger issue of a collective toxicity. If there is a single sentence that characterizes trump it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? -
Posted in: I.T. Non-Techie help, information and tips
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Posted in: I.T. Non-Techie help, information and tips
Didn`t used to have a problem but recently I can`t view when post on SL. The link works and I briefly see the video is there but it`s interupted by a pop-up(clearly Tik-Tok produced not an advert) obscuring the video & asking my interests. Play along and you just get to the next page of the pop-up asking you to sign up or login. No way I can see to get past it.Any ideas? -
Posted in: Anything Friendly Helpful or Interesting
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Posted in: Anything !
Britain is facing a demographic crisis that cannot be wished away. Birth rates have fallen to their lowest levels on record, with women in England and Wales now having on average just 1.41 children. In Scotland the figure is even lower at 1.25. To maintain a stable population, the so-called “replacement rate” is 2.1. Britain has been below that threshold for more than fifty years. The only reason our population is not in steep decline is immigration. More women living here, including those born abroad, means more children are being born, offsetting the historic fall in fertility among British-born mothers. Last year, more than a third of all babies born in England and Wales had mothers who were born outside the UK. In Luton, the town with the highest fertility rate in the country, that figure is seven in ten. Without immigration, Britain’s population would already be shrinking. This is not just a question of numbers, it is about the future of our economy and society. Fewer young people means fewer workers to support an ageing population. Pensioners live longer, draw more from the state, and rely heavily on the NHS, yet there are fewer people of working age to pay the taxes that sustain them. Demographic experts warn that the burden on today’s workforce will only increase unless we replenish the population with new generations. Other countries are showing what happens when immigration is embraced rather than feared. Spain’s recent economic success is being driven in large part by a progressive immigration policy. Migrants there have helped to reverse demographic decline, filled labour shortages, and powered GDP growth. According to the Bank of Spain, immigration contributed to around a quarter of the growth in GDP per capita between 2022 and 2024. Since 2019, migrants have filled about 70 percent of new jobs created. They are working in key sectors like tourism, construction and care, boosting demand, creating employment, and funding welfare systems. Combined with investments in green energy and labour market reforms, immigration has turned Spain from a transit country into one of Europe’s economic success stories. It is a model Britain would do well to study. That is where immigration matters most. Refugees and migrants who come to Britain are often young, fit and ready to work. Many go on to become doctors, nurses and care workers, filling shortages in vital services like the NHS. Others contribute to industries facing a serious lack of workers, from hospitality and construction to logistics and agriculture. Their children grow up as part of our communities, and they are the ones who will keep our economy alive as the native birth rate continues to fall. The truth is that immigration is not a burden, it is a necessity. It sustains our population, strengthens our workforce, and ensures that Britain does not age into decline. Those who attack refugees and migrants as a threat to this country have it backwards. Without them, Britain will not have the workers, the carers or the taxpayers needed to look after its own people. Immigration is not just about compassion, though that is reason enough. It is about securing Britain’s future. It is about recognising that this country has always been renewed by those who arrive here seeking a better life. To turn our backs on that now would not only betray our values, it would undermine the very foundations of our economy. Britain needs immigration, and it needs refugees, because they are part of the solution to the challenges we face today. -
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A fascinating study from MIT in 1972 predicted societal collapse by 2040, and new analysis shows we are still on track. In our current system design, which is self-terminating, this totally makes sense. MIT researchers published 'The Limits to Growth' utilizing the World3 computer model. The model predicted that ongoing unchecked economic and extraction driven markets would likely lead to a collapse of industrial civilization in this century. Recent validation of that original model by Gaya Herrington, a director at KPMG, whose 2020 study found that modern real-world data closely align with the book’s “business-as-usual” trajectory. According to her findings, if current trends continue without major systemic change, global economic decline could begin within this decade and possibly result in societal collapse around 2040. A more recent recalibrations of the World3 model reaffirm this trajectory, reinforcing the urgency of reconsidering our growth-oriented systems. Since 2009, we have been calling for a focus on total system re-design with our work. For years, this was ridiculed. But here we are 16 years later, and more and more people are realizing what truly needs to be done. To us, that is changing the conversation from making change entirely through our existing systems, to thinking in greater complexity about what is truly driving the results we currently have. It's not one political party or another, it's not Trump or Biden/Harris, it's the system design itself. -
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Posted in: Anything !
Dale Vince(From his FB page) Labour’s 1.5m new home target is vital but we don’t need new planning laws to achieve it. Bats and newts are not the blockers - property developers are. There are 1.4m homes consented and waiting to be built in Britain right now - why?. Property developers operate like the oil and gas cartel OPEC - which restricts supply to keep the global price of fossil fuels high - exactly the same is happening in house building. We need to end it. Here’s how - charge local authority rates on land with permission for new homes - as if those homes have been built. This will impose a significant cost on land banking (which is currently free) - and incentivise building. What’s the point of tearing up environmental protections, to consent more homes that developers can simply add to their land bank. The rules we need to change are ones that will get more homes built - not consented. Planning rules are fine (1.4m homes consented says so) we need changes that will oblige building. Make the developers build or pay. And they will surely build. Dale Vince https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/04/labour-mps-poised-to-rebel-over-planning-bill-amid-concerns-for-nature?fbclid=IwY2xjawKznWRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFOamdwOEgzNFRoTHFOUHBlAR4Qhwk268KUyskj41klkabaaM7BEr5SPrPldSWQnYSBBnIE135kkjfFfontjA_aem_AWi0K2JN6_Nbf017mTDwhw -
Posted in: Save The Planet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyr1qr9796o?at_campaign=crm&at_medium=emails&at_campaign_type=owned&at_objective=conversion&at_ptr_name=salesforce&at_ptr_type=media&at_creation=[87759_PANUK_DIV_22_NEW_PoliticsEssential230_RET_COHORT]-20250530-[bbcnews_willanyonemissacouncilfloodcommittee_newsengland] -
Posted in: Anything Friendly Helpful or Interesting
Most of you can ignore this. But do comment if you have any ideas!! I joined the group and may have even replied to 1-2 posts initially. But now it will neither let me comment nor even react. It says I must join first, despite there being an option on the left in case I want to leave the group.🙄 We are trying to work our what`s going on. To that end I`m seeing if I can submit a post -
Posted in: Save The Planet
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/activate-climate-silent-majority-support-supercharge-action?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other Quotes from the article.. 1)The global average of those willing to contribute 1% of their income was 69%. 2) People in China, the world’s biggest polluter, were among the most concerned, with 97% saying its government should do more to fight climate and evenb in the US it`s as high as 74% 3)Politicians suffer from serious misperceptions. In the US, almost 80% of congressional staffers underestimated people’s support for limits on carbon emissions. 4)Perception gaps can have real consequences – they could mean that climate policies are not as ambitious as the public sentiment. 5)Substantial evidence exists that correcting mistaken beliefs about the views of others can change people’s views on many subjects, from opinions on immigrants to environmental topics. This is because people are instinctively drawn to majority views and are more likely to do something if they think others are doing it too. -
Posted in: Save The Planet
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-04-20/renewables-rollout-making-uk-electricity-supply-more-british-analysis-finds?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ17yxleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFOamdwOEgzNFRoTHFOUHBlAR4akA2OQitW84rqzNtqalFnfxLqeLyrEctNFamLmn6W-nFEX0eXHtxorCHsaQ_aem_vKnwSy9oubG8Y9WrDwaSDg Useful article when climate deniers and "we can`t afford to be green"ers on here and elsewhere start whingeing. -
Posted in: Anything !
I confess to not having seen any news yesterday but has anyone seen this on any news? Maybe finallly the Americans are starting to coimplain about Trump`s actions. Maybe those rumblings I`ve mentioned on a coupla posts are turning into something? I bloody hope so. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz79ewg193ro -
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He didn`t invent Tesla ,he bought it. He didn`t invent SpaceX, he bought it. He didn`t invent Starlink he bought it. Obvs he didn`t invent X, he bought Twitter. Looks like he bought Trump too. I dunno why but I always thought he invented at least some of this? And he was born into a wealthy family so he didn`t even have to be clever to do that. -
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Posted in: Carers and Caring
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Posted in: Anything !
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Posted in: Anything !
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