USArsenal I got foisted with a stepdad when I was 14. Mum didn't actually marry him till I'd just turned 22 but, whether I wanted him or not (mostly not, but he's alright really), he was part of my upbringing.
Obviously, I don't know the specific family situation here, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable for her to say this. Especially if there's an attack line - as happens here - that childless people (
) somehow care less about the future than people with kids.
The truth involves nuance and detail, something modern society has no time for. I’m staggered by how many people will have uncompromising views with no research to back it up except for a TikToc they saw.
Tapping into greed, hate and fear is a far simpler method of getting people on your side, especially in the age of social media algorithms.
Well, being part of your upbringing does not equal being raised by. I know it seems like semantics, but its not. I have a stepmother, and she has been in my life since i was 13, but i still wouldn't say she raised me, i would say that she was/is a part of my life (and i have a completely fantastic relationship with her).
As for their family dynamic, the 'kids' lived with their biological mother, so I would really say that she did not raise them. Im not going to attack anything, but i think she over-stated her involvement with those kids. Just my opinion.
USArsenal Well, being part of your upbringing does not equal being raised by. I know it seems like semantics, but its not
I dunno, it seems like it might be semantics to me, but maybe I'd feel differently if I'd had a stepmother and not a stepfather. Regardless, I'd still say it doesn't seem like the most egregious claim to have made, but...
USArsenal As for their family dynamic, the 'kids' lived with their biological mother, so I would really say that she did not raise them. Im not going to attack anything, but i think she over-stated her involvement with those kids. Just my opinion.
If this is true, then, yeah, I tend to agree with you.
the childless women thing is a red herring, just like so many other pieces of trash they've thrown into the waters to just distract people and create a permission structure for people to vote for the bigoted racist.
RocktheCasbah As for Starmer and his approval ratings - he's had 3 months in office. I don't think anyone over here expects him to magically sort everything out in that time. I wish the BBC, in particular, had been a bit more attentive to our previous governments and their failures.
The problem for Starmer is he is being held up to the same standards as wanted to hold the previous government to. You can't call the previous government corrupt then the moment you get into office you take tens of thousands of clothes, glasses, tickets and god knows what else. He's finding out the hard way it is a lot easier being in opposition than in government.
RocktheCasbah have you read "I Alone Can Fix It"?
It's a horror story. And its subject is Trump's final year in office. You might feel differently once you've read it.
I'll take a look.
JazzG clearly, having painted himself as whiter than white, Starmer has put himself in a bit of a predicament with the clothes and the glasses (personally I couldn't care less about the box at Arsenal and the flat).
However, there is still a world of difference between this and the wide scale corruption and lying of the Johnson era - and the way everyone in the parliamentary party was forced to line up and tell lies, defending lies & things they knew to be wrong, gaslighting the nation every single day.
And that's just talking about what the Tories became once Johnson was in Number 10, let's not forget how he got there - selling the country down the river for his own personal ambition.
Coombs The left also has to give up on trying to replicate mythical 20th-century ideas about direct action, labour organizing, and protest.
Agreed. The left's crisis is about means not ends. Discussion of the ends has become entropic, and frankly unethical without power. That's what exhausts people about "identity politics" and other highly polarised discourses I reckon: you're wasting your time listening to the endless proliferation of judgements from people who offer no way of making things decisively better.
Honestly I don't think people really care about the cloths any more than they cared about Sunak taking helicopters everywhere, I don't even think the COVID parties were terminal for Johnson. At worst they're straws on a camel.
What people care about is policy, things that will materially change things on the ground. Improve the NHS, Prisons and invest in public services/infrastructure and people will notice given time.
goon Honestly I don't think people really care about the cloths any more than they cared about Sunak taking helicopters everywhere
Jazz seems to. But yeah, I agree - the job is to improve the services which will improve everyone's lives. That's kinda what my place of employment pushes for every single day.
Qwiss
where is the irony? i wasn't keeping up with labour and torey. the most i knew about starmer is that he's a gooner. and i honestly couldn't tell you one thing about irish politics .. well without googling i know your leader has an interesting title, i can't spell it but it sounds like teeshack. i remember obama saying it at a st patrick's event.
and i certainly wasn't dogwhistling "incompetence".
Meatwad and i certainly wasn't dogwhistling "incompetence".
This is a justified complaint. Don't be coming 'round flippantly calling Kamala incompetent, especially in the context of this race (pun intended), as well as the state of leadership the world over. I disagree with many of her policies, but calling her incompetent is a bit rich.
However, I certainly don't think anyone in the US can tell anyone else to mind their business with a straight face. That's just the pot calling the kettle black (pun not intended).
Burnwinter indeed. Don't get me wrong, I am still deeply interested, and even committed, to the brilliant analyses of modern problems by great thinkers. Practice works differently from analysis, though. What once worked probably won't work again precisely because it once worked. Folks also seem to have a hard time accepting that great analysis doesn't necessarily lead to effective practice. I'm not even sure that the ends proposed by many liberatory ideologies are actually good ideas, which would mean that we've got inadequate means for achieving potentially outdated ends (i.e., workers owning the means of production, etc.). The analysis of the problem remains cogent, but I'm finding it easy to discard most of the rest, including ideology itself.
Might need to pull some of these comments out and put them in UK politics thread, before the Americans start shouting at me again 
RocktheCasbah clearly, having painted himself as whiter than white, Starmer has put himself in a bit of a predicament with the clothes and the glasses (personally I couldn't care less about the box at Arsenal and the flat).
However, there is still a world of difference between this and the wide scale corruption and lying of the Johnson era - and the way everyone in the parliamentary party was forced to line up and tell lies, defending lies & things they knew to be wrong, gaslighting the nation every single day.
And that's just talking about what the Tories became once Johnson was in Number 10, let's not forget how he got there - selling the country down the river for his own personal ambition.
The problem for Starmer is one of his themes for his election was his integrity and within weeks of taking office he showed he isn't much different to others when it comes to taking freebies. Now we can argue about the amounts and whether he was as corrupt as the last guy but he is not the honest whiter than white politician that he claimed to be. I mean what makes anyone think he won't do other dodgy shit? It was one of his most effective tools calling out the Tories on their corruption but he has also shown he's happy to turn a blind eye when it comes to him.
You say the ticket thing isn't important but would you have given Boris Johnson the same leeway when it came to taking gifts? It's a £175k per year box not some £50 ticket. Look it is not the end of the world, not like he is selling state secrets and if he wants to live like that fair enough. But he is a hypocrite for calling out others and you can't then complain that the media are holding him to account for that.
I don't disagree with your comments about Johnson but am not sure why you are comparing them? Boris and his antics are also one of the reasons he is no longer PM, no longer an MP and his party took one of their worst beatings in like 100 years. The other reasons goon highlighted. This guy went from being nailed on 2 or even 3 term PM to political wilderness. If your incompetent at your job the voters will punish you for it.
goon I don't even think the COVID parties were terminal for Johnson.
I actually think they were the begging of the end for him. During Covid a lot of people had to make big sacrifices and we were told they were for the good of the country and when the leader gets caught fucking having parties I think he was a dead man walking.
goon What people care about is policy, things that will materially change things on the ground. Improve the NHS, Prisons and invest in public services/infrastructure and people will notice given time.
Agreed and for that you need a strong economy and secondly will need Labour to be strong on planning laws. Planning law overhaul imo would turn the economy and country around. Housing, Business, infrastructure & even prisons all have been handicapped by current planning laws. If the planning laws don't work then the environmental regulations are the next tool of choice for the NIMBYs. If Labour can defeat the NIMBYs they'll have a great chance at turnings things around. They have the numbers and I hope they have the political will to do it.
I do actually also think Wes Streeting is one of the best members in the cabinet. I don't know if his ideas will work for the NHS but they seem to make sense and probably a lot of thought has gone into them.
RocktheCasbah Jazz seems to
I think people do care about this stuff but obviously if his policies turn the country around people will look past that. Clearly doesn't bother you but it does bother others, Considering his majority it won't make much difference but recent events have definitely had a knock on his reputation. Again polling right now is irrelevant in a way but it all shows his favourability among voters is massively down.
Gazza M in trumps case, your first paragraph will become nakedly obvious the second he takes office. he's a pro shit talker and rabble rouser, but his governance was dogshit in his first term, and will have less guardrails the second go round
I agree Trump does talk a lot of shit. But like I said about Starmer, it doesn't matter what people think of him right now because if he delivers his promises people will look past that. Same applies for Trump.
@Meatwad If you understood what it's like not to be from the States, you'd also understand why people who aren't from the States have opinions about the United States elections.
For example: Australia had a stupid deal to spend USD 300 billion on some nuclear submarines which were to be made in France. A few years ago the US diplomatic corps got to Australia's then leadership and convinced it to switch rails to something called AUKUS: a trilateral Australia-UK-US defence treaty under which the nuclear submarines would now be principally manufactured in the United States for 400 billion.
The parameters of the AUKUS deal are kinda absurd, like most US MIC deals: it's quite blatant the whole thing's wrapped up in a way that allows particular members of Senate and Congress to feather their own nests. Basically Australia transfers an enormous amount of state revenue to the United States—enough money to double the state funding of our education system for a decade—in return for some imaginary submarines.
The AUKUS deal caused a major diplomatic incident with France which was only patched up relatively recently. But now we hear what I could've already told you back when AUKUS was announced—the United States will not actually manufacture said submarines, or if it does, they will never be delivered to Australian control.
That's a stock standard example of how the United States treats its nominal allies.
This kind of thing should make it clear that, whatever your politics on the above, the operations of the United States empire have a vast material significance to the place I live. It is totally normal for people here to have opinions about the States including its elections, and we're going to keep doing it whether United States citizens like it or not.
