News of the day

[Yevrah]

There's no mystery to it. Nicotine is an incredibly addictive substance and with vaping, we've basically introduced a way for people to ingest it 24/7 without any of the hassle that comes with actual smoking - no fire involved, no lingering awful smell, nowhere you now can't do it and not being physically sick if you're doing it constantly. If it had been introduced this way in the first place I'm pretty sure 90%+ of the population would have been doing it. Marketeers might have struggled with how to make it look as cool as a Cowboy smoking a lit cigarette, but they'd have found a way around that.

It's back to Lewis' point really about us being useless at doing things. Ok, so we're banning the flavoured and disposable ones, but not until next year. It should be far sooner and I don't care that it plunges the businesses involved into bankruptcy. We've already proven it's bad, even if the long term health impact is still not completely clear.

[Ben]

The ONS data (via The Telegraph) shows that there are now more vapers than smokers but the total combined (vapers + smokers) is more than in 2012.

So it hasn't done the intended job because of course there was no regulation and it's resulted in a load of vaping kids who probably would never have smoked otherwise. I'm with Yev, ban them now and fuck the businesses profiting off this shit.

[Baz]

What’s annoying is there is loads of grant money available to run smoking cessation campaigns and programmes but it explicitly says it’s not to be used to discourage vaping. Authorities had to declare whether or not they were promoting vaping as means to quit smoking, and those who aren’t ended up with less money. I try not to get involved though cos ketamine is far more of a concern among yungens.

[Yevrah]

It’s public health England (or whatever body) being behind the curve again, as with Covid. First they wouldn’t recommend it when it was clearly a better option than smoking, then they did but by this time they were almost endorsing the legions of kids doing it who’d picked it up in the meantime.

[Spikey M]

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to the outright banning of all smoking, but it seems like a slippery slope. It's a short hop from there to booze, burgers and gambling. I'm not sure I want the government deciding what I can and can't do to that level.

[phonics]

I love smoking. It's probably the only habit I enjoy.

[Giggles]

Same here. I don't do it as much these days but I absolutely adore it.

[Giggles]

Ding dong. Though it's not like any of the rest of the cunts will be much better.

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[Don]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...coin-operation

£3.4bn

[Spikey M]

What a woman.

[John Arne]

Yeah, stuff like that is just genuinely impressive. Except the getting caught part.

[niko_cee]

As if anti-money laundering checks would stop her from being able to buy prime London property.

[Manc]

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rship-policies

Election on the rocks.

[Spikey M]

I can't stand the bloke, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I find it so bizarre, those people. Fucking 40% of the country is instinctively conservative, historically bloody difficult to beat in elections, and yet this is a moment when the other lot could and should win a 200 seat majority in a few months just by existing. If I was of the red persuasion and a public figure like Owen Jones I'd be getting myself right involved in the party, writing papers and trying to influence things. But no, it isn't some utopian socialist paradise of his dreams that he sees before him so he's washing his hands of it. It's somewhere between childishness and cowardice with hints of both, and until they stop being like this the Tories are always going to keep coming back.

[Yevrah]

Think you're being a bit harsh there Jim. Owen has, after all, won the argument.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68628989

I'd lol if Apple crumbles.

Obviously it wont and this shit will go nowhere but I can dream.

[Ian]

I see what you did there.

[Ben]

Android is a load of toss so they better get this ironed out.

[Boydy]

Android is a load of toss so they better get this ironed out.

I've only ever used Android so I don't have anything to compare to but in what ways?

[Spikey M]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68628989

I'd lol if Apple crumbles.

Obviously it wont and this shit will go nowhere but I can dream.

They'll just do some kind of stock split to get around it.

[CJay]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68628989

I'd lol if Apple crumbles.

Obviously it wont and this shit will go nowhere but I can dream.

Android is the dominant player in most smartphone markets. That the iPhone is seen as a status symbol in the land of the free is hardly Apple's fault.

[Lofty]

I find it so bizarre, those people. Fucking 40% of the country is instinctively conservative, historically bloody difficult to beat in elections, and yet this is a moment when the other lot could and should win a 200 seat majority in a few months just by existing. If I was of the red persuasion and a public figure like Owen Jones I'd be getting myself right involved in the party, writing papers and trying to influence things. But no, it isn't some utopian socialist paradise of his dreams that he sees before him so he's washing his hands of it. It's somewhere between childishness and cowardice with hints of both, and until they stop being like this the Tories are always going to keep coming back.

You will see all the perma gobshites will pivot this way soon enough if Labour win as their entire brand is slagging the government off and you can't do that if it's your 'team' dropping the bollocks.

[Don]

How dare he not champion a genocide-supporting collection of scumbags with no redeemable qualities.

[Lofty]

It could be the second coming of Jesus and Mohammed rolled into one poised to win the next election they would still all flounce because they need the money the simp supporters all give them for 'the important work they do' firing off tweets calling politicians cuntwombles and shitpuffins all day.

[Ben]

Shitpuffins.

[Boydy]

It could be the second coming of Jesus and Mohammed rolled into one poised to win the next election they would still all flounce because they need the money the simp supporters all give them for 'the important work they do' firing off tweets calling politicians cuntwombles and shitpuffins all day.

Those sort of compound swears are the preserve of "sensible centrists". Know your twitter subcultures.

[Spikey M]

Lib Dem Ben in the mud.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The cuntwomble brigade are the ones with cartoon avatars of themselves and self-diagnosed mental health issues. Owen Jones is of (though not entirely beloved of) proper left twitter, many of whom, unlike the cuntwombles, have actual jobs and lives, but are just as fucking useless when it comes to never wanting to compromise on anything ever.

[Lewis]

There is a whole section of freaks that is going to have a difficult time with a Labour government. The left don't want them, so it's no use trying to criticise them from that perspective, and they won't want to burn their bridges with anybody of any influence. James O'Brien might as well get his HGV licence.

[Jimmy Floyd]

They've got five years of 'To be fair to Starmer...' and '14 years of corruption and failure' to get through first, and after that we'll probably be at war with Norway or something anyway so it won't matter.

The ones I'll have my eye on are a) the Spectator establishment types and b) the nut fringe right, whatever they cook up should be more interesting than anything happening on the centre or left.

[Boydy]

Why would anyone on the Labour left help the people who actively undermined the leader of the party when he was from the left? And then promised to do a lot of the same things that guy has proposed to win the leadership election but has since gone back and all those promises and offers nothing instead?

Fuck them.

[Yevrah]

Why would anyone on the Labour left help the people who actively undermined the leader of the party when he was from the left? And then promised to do a lot of the same things that guy has proposed to win the leadership election but has since gone back and all those promises and offers nothing instead?

Because it's better than having a Tory government. It's staggering that this is such a difficult concept for some people on the left to grasp.

[Lewis]

Only if you think that there is any substantial difference between the current Conservative and Labour parties, which there isn't, which is why half the Conservative vote will stay at home.

[Shindig]

They need to start caring about winning. Principles can wait until the day after the election.

[phonics]

Because it's better than having a Tory government. It's staggering that this is such a difficult concept for some people on the left to grasp.

How so? If you believe that Tory spending policies are the key factor of why you and your community is struggling and has been for your entire voting life, how does a Labour party offering the exact same policies 'but competent' offer you anything. This current Labour agenda is literally 'the last 15 years but with a new coat of paint'.

Labour will win and win heavily but it won't be people voting for Labour, it'll just be Tories not voting.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Until you accept that the totality of left views (because they can't bring themselves to divorce, say, addressing wealth inquality from also fucking loving Vladimir Putin and wanting unisex toilets everywhere) will never sum to more than about 15% of the British vote, you can't bring yourself to compromise to get the most favourable possible democratic government into power.

[Lewis]

David Cameron said the same sort of shite, and, fourteen years later, what has the 'instinctively conservative' half of the country had to show for it other than Brexit, which, lest we forget, the Conservative Party fought all the way until it nearly destroyed them?

There is a whopping great space between supposedly unelectable throwback socialism and just letting Doreen Lawrence design a new cover for the existing Conservative Party programme, and that is where the Labour Party could be if it wanted to actually do anything different. Especially now, when people will vote for literally any old shit to bring a change of government about. They could be making all sorts of not even that mental spending commitments and still piss it; but they won't, because they are quite happy with most of what the Conservative Party has done over the past decade.

The problem they will have is that, whilst New Labour could sit in and govern like the out-going Conservative government for four years because they inherited a booming economy and a country that worked, the next Labour government will walk into a rotting shit show and double-down on everything making it such. How do you fight any subsequent election on that?

[phonics]

Until you accept that the totality of left views (because they can't bring themselves to divorce, say, addressing wealth inquality from also fucking loving Vladimir Putin and wanting unisex toilets everywhere) will never sum to more than about 15% of the British vote, you can't bring yourself to compromise to get the most favourable possible democratic government into power.

This is just bollocks and you know it. I don't know how you've gone from 'Government stopped caring about people, vast swathes of the county have been left behind etc' like a week ago to this nonsense.

[Ben]

Only if you think that there is any substantial difference between the current Conservative and Labour parties, which there isn't, which is why half the Conservative vote will stay at home.

I think a lot of people will just be satisfied with not having rampant corruption waved in their faces for a bit.

[Lewis]

I'm sure you aren't fifteen.

[Dquincy]

UK inflation falls to 3.4% in February.

Thank you Tories, you're the best.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The problem they will have is that, whilst New Labour could sit in and govern like the out-going Conservative government for four years because they inherited a booming economy and a country that worked, the next Labour government will walk into a rotting shit show and double-down on everything making it such. How do you fight any subsequent election on that?

Probably because Starmer will be quite different to what he says he's going to be, and is being like this to win. He is a snake after all. I still think he'll have a run at going back into Europe.

There is nothing in his personal history to suggest a Tory in a red tie, other than the fact that he picked up the party after the 2019 disaster and needed to make it win again. Doing it this way he wins but he doesn't over-promise. It's just good politics. I think he's a twat but it's good politics.

[Lewis]

He is a 'Tory in a red tie' insofar as the Conservative Party have done more 'left-wing' things over the last decade than Ed Miliband was proposing to, and he agrees with ninety-five per cent of it. The only things he will do differently is sub-contract even more government out to various cunt 'stakeholders', except he won't have to pretend to be against it like Conservative politicians do.

[7om]

The problem they will have is that, whilst New Labour could sit in and govern like the out-going Conservative government for four years because they inherited a booming economy and a country that worked, the next Labour government will walk into a rotting shit show and double-down on everything making it such. How do you fight any subsequent election on that?

Genuine question: why is that?

[Lewis]

If you take all of the things the country is failing on - to name a few: planning, energy, universities, devolution, transport crime, immigration, taxation - all of their instincts are either exactly the same as the Conservative Party (whose instincts are terrible largely as a result of wishing to avoid getting into confrontations with the Labour Party and/or vested interests), or, in the case of things like crime and devolution, even worse. It will be government by Oxfam and the ten worst universities in the country.

[John Arne]

Interesting.

[phonics]

At the end of the day we had a decade and a half where investing was cheap and did the opposite. In 2008 you round up the bankers and summarily execute/arrest them so every country east of France isn't running a money laundering operation in the capital, in 2012 commit to building microchip and EV manufacturing in the north instead of a slightly faster train and a really good excel file for the NHS and you'd still be able to make the fake COVID money work and you'd be running the world.

[phonics]

If anything wasn’t a perfect summmary of what we’re talking about Keirs also said the St George’s flag on the England kit is too woke.

[Don]

This flag discourse is sensational. I hope it's some absolute don at Nike towers knowing how easy it would be to activate the gammonati like this. You could take a dump into these people's open mouths and they'd not get as triggered as they do when they sniff out such an opportunity to vent.