James105

Fascinating to see Labour having to implement policies they would be screaming about had it been the Tories that implemented them. First they took away the Winter fuel allowance, then they went for the farmers with inheritance tax, then they slashed the the foreign aid budget, then they hit the disabled by reducing their benefits. If it wasn't for the 40% increase in illegal migrant crossings (Labour's one area of growth) and the tax on education for private schools I'd be wondering if the Tories or reform had somehow wangled their way into government. Now they are talking about using the UK's own natural resources rather than importing coal or whatever from China? Even more fascinating is watching the Labour shills contort themselves into supporting these policies.

This article is about vaping not the perfectly legal and far more poisonous from of ingesting nicotine which is cigarettes. Banning vapes means more cigarette smokers which means more second hand toxic cigarette smoke. Quite surprised you would be in favor of this crackdown based on your anecdotes, especially as this is a policy designed to get more people buying cigarettes from the government owned tobacco companies.

I doubt it. I presume they have done the maths and worked out that even with taxing vapes they will not make as much money as they do with the far more poisonous cigarette sales. If cigarettes were not a government monopoly vapes would already be legal. People have been so gaslit over this that they even claim they prefer to inhale second hand cigarette smoke to vapes. Crazy. Luckily for the government there are plenty of stupid people out there that will believe whatever their propaganda tells them to believe and will happily use the snitching app to snitch on their neighbors. If this crackdown works and people are forced to go back to cigarettes (due to the highly addictive nature of nicotine) then due to the nature of Thailand (and most bars/restaurants allowing people to smoke freely) then we are all going to be inhaling a lot more secondhand stinky cigarette smoke in future. Great.

This is a single month. Growth isn't based on a single month. Next month the real anti-growth measures kick in when additional taxes kick in and the recession will follow shortly after.

The only growth Labour will achieve is growth in China where they are buying solar panels from and growth in carbon emissions due to importing them into the UK all the way from China.

Your link is out of date. You will no doubt be disappointed but the financial times also reported the valuation. I didn't post it as it is behind a paywall and mistakenly thought posting a link from an Elon Musk hating lefty comic like the Guardian would be sufficient but the denial seems to be quite strong here. Kind of weird as Musk is simply trying to help the US and remove some of the corrupt waste. Unless you are a beneficiary of this corruption I'm not sure why you would have a problem with what he is doing.

Except Twitter hasn't been a money loser so I'd say it's an excellent gauge at his ability to cut staff, save money and generate a profit. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price "Value of Elon Musk’s X ‘rebounds to $44bn purchase price" Perhaps the richest man on the planet knows a thing or two about business that you do not?

Why indeed? Considering how much power Islam has over the government, police and judiciary at just 7-10% or so, one can only imagine how much control they will have when they reach 20-30% of the population. Since Labour was able to get into power with a landslide victory with just 20% of the electorate voting for them it does not take Nostradamus to predict the demise of the UK into an Islamic controlled state will occur much sooner than expected. I have pretty much given up on my home country taking the radical action needed to prevent this inevitability.

So you want Musk to be accountable for money that is not being wasted? That makes no sense. Why would you want to reinstate people in jobs that are not needed? Why wouldn't these people seek work in the private sector and actually be a contributor rather than a drain? Nothing you state here makes any sense. He fired 80% of employees at Twitter. Not one of those people were needed as time has proven despite all the armchair tech experts telling him that it would fail without them. He has a proven track record of cutting waste.

You sound angry. What specifically has Elon Musk done to upset you or are you just jumping on a bandwagon as you like jumping on bandwagons? What government wastage would you like to be reinstated that Musk has removed?

People are angry as he is stopping the government wasting taxpayers money? Thats really quite insane. What are they angry about specifically? What specific action has he taken that has made people angry? Are they recipients of some of this theft of taxpayers money and now will have to find another grift?

It's a challenge for anyone stupid enough to think that you can raise taxes and have growth. It's a shame that Labour had someone who lied about being an economist rather than an actual economist in their ranks to point out the blatantly obvious.

This is what happens when you recruit DEI morons on £90k+ per year in DEI manager roles, they scrabble around trying to find controversial policies as they are probably aware that nobody would notice if they didn't turn up to work for a month/year/decade as it is not a real job.

How many more do you want to die to prevent the inevitable redrawing of lines on a map which was always going to be the result of a bigger country invading a smaller country that is not a part of NATO? Another 100? 1000? A million? I presume that so long as its not yourself or close family members doing the dying then an unlimited number of deaths is okay with you?

Do you have links to back that claim up? I agree its not equal as when was the last time you saw a black grandmother sentenced to 31 months in jail for making an offensive social media post? To save you the searching this has never happened. But seems to happen to white people on a regular basis. 2 tier justice and 2 Tier policing are commonplace in the UK and this merely puts it into writing. You are aware its racist to treat people differently based on the colour of their skin? This is exactly what you are supporting here. Racism.

Lines 5 and 6 in the OP. Under the new rules, magistrates and judges will be required to consider pre-sentence reports for offenders from "ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority communities."

This is as unsurprising as it is outrageous. This is what happens when racists like Lammy get into power, they tend to do racist things. The UK's well of tolerance, and it was a very big deep well, must be all dried up by now.

Not sure that is entirely accurate. Russia were allies in WW2. In fact, if not for the Russians then the Nazis would have won.

My country is part of NATO so there is no possibility of that happening. So whenever a bigger country invades a smaller country its the job of the lucky west to keep funding the smaller country to ensure they last as long as possible and their "lucky" frontline soldiers who are the recipients of the weapons from this funding get to die for as long as possible? For what? Until when? They run out of soldiers? Then what? Send western soldiers to do the same? As I understood Russia want the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine in the east. Is their stated goal Kiev and full takeover of Ukraine, regime change and onwards to the west, perhaps even the US of A? It's entirely possible I missed that part if so, but I presume this is the imagined Putin goal of the armchair warmongers who wish to see this war continue.

The point I was trying to make is that this has nothing to do with the west. Ukraine are not part of NATO so do not get the protection of NATO. This continued funding of this war has cost many tens (hundreds) of thousands of lives. Ukraine would have been overrun and surrendered on about day 3 or 4 and maybe dozens or maybe even hundreds would have been killed if foolish enough to fight and not just give up. The end result is that some lines would be redrawn on a map as has happened hundreds if not thousands of times throughout history as a bigger force claims some territory. After 3 years and many tens or hundreds of thousands killed, the same end result will occur. The continued lie that has been perpetuated is that Ukraine are the only thing stopping Putin from going full Hitler and will next try to conquer western Europe to justify the continued money laundering funding. This is a lie that has no basis in reality. The sooner this pointless charade is stopped the better and if not for Trump nobody would even be talking about the possibility of it ending.

Are countries that had a coup as recently as 2014 to overthrow a president considered "Democratic" now? Since 2014 -2022 there has been a civil war on the eastern part of Ukraine resulting in 14,000 deaths before Russia got involved. Did anybody care then? Nope. Before Russia got involved people were being killed. After Russia got involved people were being killed. The only involvement the west should have had is to sit down at a table with both sides, maybe bang some heads together and settle it with some kind of monitored democratic vote on this by the people who live in the contested areas.

An excellent method to increase death and injury is to keep the war going by funding Ukraine with just enough to keep Russia entrenched. The war is now closer to coming to an end than it has been since it started 3 years ago. There was no end in sight until recently. What has changed to make it this way do you think? For those of us who despise this war and think it is the most pointless waste of money and lives imaginable, Trump becoming president as a "good" thing as it is the first time someone has genuinely expressed a desire to bring it to an end.

Oh dear, that's another group of cast iron Labour supporters about to experience voter regret. Still, should keep the Guardian columnists busy for the next month or two opining about how if only the hard working wealthy could be taxed more on their hard earned gains then people who could but don't work can continue to enjoy their benefits lifestyles without the burden or inconvenience of work interrupting their TV schedule.

Perhaps if they were able to employ better cyber security people by paying them at least as much as whatever the Head of (regional) DEI at the NHS gets, then maybe they would have a better chance at not allowing criminals to operate so freely.

Yes Putin must be stopped otherwise European countries could face the following nightmare scenario... Maybe Putin isn't the problem Europe should be worried about and it's all just a big distraction so you ignore the very real dangers from an invasion that has already happened...