Grey Goose

Mucky Duck

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

This supposes Britain didn't exist before 1945.

It plants the idea that nothing before 1945 mattered, and only things built after 1945 are worth preserving.

In the overwhelming majority of cases the precise opposite is true.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Volkswagen aims to axe up to 100,000 jobs in a “profound” strategic shift to counter trade tariffs, stagnating markets and, above all, fierce competition from China.
It will cut one in six of its 660,000 jobs worldwide and production at four German factories — the largest restructure in automotive industry history.
China is out to do to Europe’s car industry what it’s already done to its solar panel industry — destroy it.
Judging from the pathetic response of the EU so far to this threat (the UK is equally pathetic) it’s likely to succeed.
China also aims to dominate batteries, wind power machinery, machine tools, Pharma and chips — with its mercantilist ‘industrial policy of everything’.
China 2.0 poses a far bigger threat to European industry than China 1.0 over 20 years ago. Some forecasts predict over 50% of what’s left of Europe’s manufacturing base will be gone in a decade.

[David Frost @DavidGHFrost]

Theresa May's abject "negotiation" with Barnier nearly brought down the British constitution, almost destroyed the Conservative Party, and certainly wrecked her own premiership.

But now it's just "friendship" and "respect". It's all just a game and we can all move on.

When you're asked why people don't trust the British governing class - well, here's an example of why.

[Miriam Cates @miriam_cates]

No one has ‘paid into’ the state pension. NI payments are spent by the government of the day, not put into a pot with your name on. Using these terms just perpetuates the myth that the state pension is a contributory scheme. It isn’t. It’s a non-means tested universal benefit paid for by current taxpayers.

[Alexander @alexanderrX_]

london housing has two paths. social housing or your parents gifting you a £300k deposit for a 2 bed in clapham. there is no in between. the middle class doesn’t own property here it just pays someone else’s mortgage

[Grey Goose @GreyGooseGG]

@Mr_Andrew_Fox Further to what you've said, it's worth remembering that the police are reluctant to enter potentially violent confrontations with some groups, but not others. With demographic trends as they are, some parts of the country will be subject to different rules and laws than others.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

“Highly likely to lead to violence and serious disorder” are the key words, here. Their position is that if UKIP marched in Tower Hamlets, the locals would likely react violently, so the march is banned.

As with the Aston Villa game in Birmingham, there is one very unfortunate logical conclusion: minority groups can affect decision-making by threatening violence.

Therefore the next logical conclusion is that if the Jewish community had wanted Palestinian marches banned near synagogues or in heavily Jewish areas, the correct answer was not patient, good faith engagement (as this often did not work), but instead to threaten violence against the Palestinian protesters.

This is an absolutely insane state of affairs.

[Kostas Moros @MorosKostas]

Europe's fancy welfare states that keep their populations docile can only exist thanks to the American military. If our implicit support vanished, they'd have to militarize aggressively, and their massive government spending on free shit would vanish.

They can't be "done with us" because they are utterly dependent on us.

[John A. Douglas @J0hnADouglas]

The only thing I don’t understand is why an entire generation of girls saw Umbridge and then grew up to vote for politicians exactly like her.

[Grey Goose @GreyGooseGG]

@elonmuskTN 27

[Tom Canham 🏳️‍🌈 @tcanham459]

I'm 34.

Not only am I unlikely to be able to access the state pension before the age of 70, in all likelihood the legally required private pensions through my employment will likely means test me out of the state pension any way through taxation.

So, I don't care.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

I voted Remain. I was annoyingly relentless about this at the time. But I’m actually not much of a fan of the EU and prefer a Norway / Switzerland model of EEA / EFTA to protect free trade but without the political restrictions of the EU. But I’m so over blaming everything on Brexit.

The main reason that there are huge problems within the economy / inflation / cost of living is not because of Brexit, it’s because of shutting down large parts of the economy for 2 years due to the Covid restrictions. The collateral damages were enormous in the UK and also in many other countries. But hardly anyone wants to admit this. And some people just blame everything (disingenuously so) on Brexit. They refuse to point the finger elsewhere.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

Looking at all the Charlie Kirk videos, I am left to conclude that America has better politics than us. They actually have vibrant political debate, whereas in Britain politicians are shielded from debate. You hardly ever see political opponents directly engaging with each other and you hardly ever see a British politicians pressed with hard questions. They never have to explain their world view. They're just given a platform to emote and assert things without serious cross-examination.

This is a lot to do with the way the media is siloed but also the depressingly low calibre of journalists. As such, politicians get to waft around without being challenged. We have a very poor debating culture in Britain.

I think this is very much a legacy effect of television having been a very tightly regulated monopoly, where Sky and BBC (two politically identical entities) control most of what viewers see. This is not remedied by GB News which is a right wing celebrity love-in that largely generates online media slop. Consequently, we have horrendously under-informed political debate that never gets below the surface of an issue. We are actually starved of edifying political discourse.

[Geoff Norcott @GeoffNorcott]

Imagine leaving X because it was too ‘toxic’ only to end up celebrating a man’s murder on a different platform.

[Angela Rayner @AngelaRayner]

Thanks to those who keep pointing out the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion, I tend to concentrate on tax evasion

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

Every day now on UK media —BBC Newsnight, Radio 4, etc—there are Boomer Has Beens who presided over the total collapse of our country and are now trying to police today’s debate. Sorry, but get out of our way and let us fix this utter mess you are leaving behind.

[LindyMan @PaulSkallas]

Marriage used to be the entry point into adult life. One of the first steps.

Today marriage has become the culmination of adulthood, the final step after a long run of individual experiences. People are expected to first build careers, live alone, travel, date for years, and only then settle into marriage.

Marriage went from foundation to trophy. It is no longer the stabilizing base that anchored young people early, but an almost luxury milestone once life is already sorted out.

Which is precisely why it’s rarer now.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Britain has been in decline for decades, but the speed of the decline since the Covid era is visible. Streets are dirty; high street shops, pubs and restaurant closures everywhere; transport infrastructures are a mess; the cost of living essentials like energy, food, fuel and water have rocketed, petty surveillance cameras and fines everywhere; public services are a mess; highest tax burden in decades; national assets being destroyed and then sold off to foreign corporations.

You can feel it in the national psyche as well. Almost everyone I speak to feels downtrodden and fed up with so many things not working properly or costing too much.

It’s actually heartbreaking to see a country that is surrounded by so many natural assets and should be functioning well reduced to so many aspects that are rotting from within. And yet we have a bunch of politicians who are running our country into the ground and still the vast majority of people are grudgingly accepting this. The state of the country completely unacceptable and it’s time for everyone to do something about it. Find your cause. Set up campaigns. Get involved in local activism. Coordinate and partner with communities of people. Whatever it takes.

Ultimately, it’s up to all of us to actually try and do something about this. Because apathy is like a slow sleeping pill in society that enables bad governments to do very bad things.

[Poppy Coburn @kafkaswife]

Why are young people so angry? Perhaps a better question to ask is why older people are so complacent. Me in the Telegraph:

[Charlie Peters @CDP1882]

Muhbeen Hussain, who led a Muslim community boycott of South Yorkshire police after the Rotherham grooming abuse scandal, has been awarded an MBE for “services to integration” and “cohesion”.

https://t.co/NVt321quUs