Forum: Author Hangout

Pretty much. That's how these apps work.

Nate White is on Quara and has written a lot. https://www.quora.com/profile/Nate-White-44

Quara

I don't bother with Quora - it seems to be mostly clickbait - although Google pushes it quite a lot.

AJ

Most of the internet is click-bait these days.

If that's true, it's a major failing on the original author to miss it out. Not liking dogs is throughly unBritish.

On a separate note, there's a song on Carly Pearce's new album called 'He don't like my dogs'. It's very good.

I think Marc Nobbs just wanted to post something about Trump.

If I'd wanted to post something about Trump, I'd have written something myself - it's not like there isn't plenty to write about.

I just thought it was very well written, in a very 'English' way, and wanted to share it. I'd have shared it even if it had been written about Biden, Carney, Macron or any British politician.

I don't know what makes it so British.

Neither do I.

It's full of AI tics, so I expect 'Nate White' hasn't claimed copyright.

AJ

It's full of AI tics, so I expect 'Nate White' hasn't claimed copyright.

It was written during Trump's first term, pre-2010, pre-AI chatbots.

You mean "pre 2020" (or 2021

Yeah, typo.

If it was pre-2010, it was not written during Trump's first term, which was 2017-2021, If it was written during Trump's first term, it wasn't pre 2010.

Typo and didn't read it back before hitting send. It was written during the first state visit after he pushed past QE2 to get in front of her. That generally went down quite badly over here.

It was written during Trump's first term, pre-2010, pre-AI chatbots.

The only date available to me on your link is August 2026.

I remain sceptical.

AJ

Here's the first link that pops up when I googled "Nate White on Trump". It's from 2024.

https://medium.com/@LadyEleanorA/nate-white-a-british-writer-penned-the-best-description-of-donald-trump-ive-ever-read-d4209d4903f8

There's a comment at the end that reads:

I downloaded Nate White's best description of the stable genius when it first appeared on April 24, 2020 at:
https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html?page=2#comments
Thanks for the reminder. (You should give Mr. White appropriate credit.)
----
Nate wrote this in April 2020. ChatGPT was released in November 2022. This was not written by AI.

https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html?page=2#comments

'Page temporarily unavailable'.

If that piece wasn't AI-generated, my best explanation for all those AI tics is that it's plagiarised from something written at least a century ago.

NB I haven't make the obvious request that someone, with a computer post-dating WWII, put the passage through an AI-detector because those em-dashes might unfairly skew the result.

AJ

Again, it's more how the Brits speak, as if you've talked with many Brits, you'd have a better feel for how they generally approach things, beyond the specific British spellings or turns of phrase.

It's partially why Monty Python was so bloody funny, as it was VERY British, and thus played very well here in the states as well.

You must watch a lot of Brit Box, or you're a BBC lover,

Britbox doesn't exist over here anymore, it was rolled into ITVX a couple of years ago. Still watch the BBC News out of habit, but not as much as I used to. Listen to the radio more these days.

This sounds like a caller to LBC on a rant, although it would likely to be against out PM on most shows with the exception of James O'Brien. It sounds like something you'd hear in a pub (not that I've been down the pub in about 15 years) or in a student bar, or in the canteen at work.

As someone who's been British for over 50 years, this is a very, very British piece of writing. That's why it resurfaced yesterday after such a long time.

As someone who's been British for over 50 years, this is a very, very British piece of writing

I don't see it. Where are the understatement, the irony, the self-deprecation, the Churchillian bite or, more recently, the Pythonesque absurdity?

The only thing vaguely British about it is the British name-dropping, but anyone could have written that.

AJ

Possibly due to the passive-aggressive tone, which is a very English thing to do.

Exactly this. It sound just like the sort of thing you'd hear on Mock the Week or HIGNFY.

The first paragraph is particularly brutal and you can almost hear Ian Hislop saying it word for word.

Possibly due to the passive-aggressive tone, which is a very English thing to do.

It doesn't look passive aggressive to me - the condemnation of Trump is very direct.

AJ

It doesn't look passive aggressive to me - the condemnation of Trump is very direct.

And right on target.

~ Jbb

"...did Trump fuck this guy's mother and not call her back or pay her off?"

Let's be honest, no one would be the least bit surprised if Trump had actually done this. He has form.

I mean, we can't exactly criticise over here; we elected Boris Johnson, a man of such low sexual morals that he was fucking his mistress while his wife was having chemotherapy.

Not 'during the same vague time period' - while she was in the actual hospital having the treatment. Horrible man.

I wonder if cheating is higher in politics because of the power these people hold and the arrogance they feel because of it.

It is, or used to be, a badge of honour in France. Men of power and influence were expected to have mistresses in addition to a wife. It was virtually a pre-requisite for becoming president (although draconian privacy laws meant that the situation couldn't be flaunted in the press).

AJ

And right on target.

For a liberal that hates everything that isn't liberal, it is.

You don't have to be liberal to find most if not all of that description right on target. Especially that the guy hates dogs and likes his meat cooked to shoe leather consistency.

And he's a fucking draft-dodger. (And yes, I'm a Vietnam veteran, even if thanks to the Army's infinite wisdom I spent my year mostly in an air-conditioned office.)

Even conservatives with principles (there are a few around, believe it or not) find that description accurate.

~ JBB

I would tend to argue that actual conservatives probably detest Trump at least as much as liberals. It's hard to imagine anyone who supported Reagan, for instance, also supporting Trump. I know there are a few out there who do, but it's hard to understand. Reagan and Trump are enormously different both on personality and on policy. And the gap between Trump and Goldwater is likely even wider.

(And yes, I'm a Vietnam veteran, even if thanks to the Army's infinite wisdom I spent my year mostly in an air-conditioned office.)

Didn't think there were many of us left. I "volunteered" to spend four years in the ASA (Army Security Agency, a branch of the NSA) as a cryptanalyst to avoid carrying an M-16 through rice paddies. The closest I got to Nam was Korea, where I met the woman who became my wife. Damn, this is turning into an autobiography; better quit here.

Absolutely true. No question.

I wonder how many lives in Vietnam I saved through my work.

~ JBB

You admitted to singing up to loophole the draft, the safest way to dodge the draft, dodge like so many others did who didn't have that option or willingly took deferments to stay out of combat. You're no better than any of them, you only think you are.

Good grief. As you said, "The truth is the hardest thing for people to face." That includes distinguishing between silliness and fact.

BTW, I didn't say anything about whether I volunteered or was drafted, only that I ended up in an air-conditioned office.

I posed a question. I didn't answer it, and I don't know the answer. But you're claiming every soldier in a non-combat role is somehow putting another soldier in danger, and I'm suggesting that those non-combat roles may contribute directly to the war effort and may save the lives of those in combat.

That's not really hard to understand, although I think the whole logic of your assertion is absurd.

I'm running through the sackcloth and ashes faster than I expected since we'll obviously have to add in all those who died while I was an undergraduate with a student deferment. I'll have to do a return trip to Costco.

I still took Margaret to the Junior Prom. That's the truth.

~ JBB

You inserted yourself into the answer by using "I'm" in your answer, making it appear as if you were the subject of the question

I am the subject of the question, it referred to me and my work, but I don't know the answer. Referring to whether the work I did saved lives or not

In my comment about draft dodgers I said I was a Vietnam veteran but I did not say whether I had volunteered or was drafted.

You may be confusing me with dark night who said he had volunteered and went to Korea instead of Vietnam and came back with a wife.

~ JBB

You are absolutely correct that I did answer that question, and I agree with your basic answer, that there is a difference between a draft dodger and one who volunteered or something other than the combat arms.

The rest of your assertion, i.e., that a volunteer for a non-combat position thereby ensures that someone else was going to have to risk his life is absurd logic for the reasons I've outlined.

~ JBB

Oh, dear. Going through sackcloth and ashes like crazy here.

I'll leave you to it and enjoy my memories of taking Margaret to the Junior Prom.

~ JBB

He was a gun fanatic, marksman, and instructor at a local rifle/pistol range. He was also a new CPA. Guess which talent the army decided to use. He spent his time in Nam as a PayMaster in Occasionally air conditioned buildings or tents

That's a universal military thing.

I have civilian trade qualifications and the years doing them, that supersede the military equivalent by a ridiculous margin, yet I was never allowed to do those aforesaid tasks in the military for various 'reasons' the main one often cited was that I hadn't done the 'military equivalent' training, even though I had the knowledge and experience to 'train the trainer' and the other often cited one was "it's not your (military) trade to do that task". Which was technically true, so all I could do, was sit on the sidelines, watch, and wince a lot.... At least until the 'adults' left the vicinity to go back to the OM where upon those actually in charge normally told me to get off my arse and "go bail those idiots out..."

You may be confusing me with dark night who said he had volunteered and went to Korea instead of Vietnam and came back with a wife.

OK, this is getting insulting. Let me clarify my experience. I HATED what we were doing in Vietnam and the friends I had lost, but when I got my draft notice, I showed up for my pre-induction physical and mental exams. As I was waiting to see what happened next, someone came into the room and called my name and told me the ASA recruiter wanted to see me. I followed him, even though at the time I had no idea what ASA was.

I got a very quick recruitment pitch from a lieutenant who told me that because I had two college degrees (Associates, but still) and scored high on the IQ test, I was the "kind of person" he was looking for. The key to his pitch was that "using your brain is better than wading in through a rice paddy." The only catch was that it was a four-year enlistment instead of the standard two-year hitch draftees were looking forward to. I had decide right then, so I took what I considered the safer alternative. Besides, the whole pitch to my vanity was effective.

The Army trained me to be a cryptanalyst, a word I didn't even know how to spell at the time, and through the luck of the draw, and the fact that by this time things were winding down in Nam, I was sent to Korea.

One more point: the actions of intercept operators, traffic analysts, and cryptanalysts have long been important parts of intelligence efforts, helping to frame strategies and save lives.

Sounds good to me.

I was pulled out of Basic one day along with a few others and invited to apply for the White House Communications Agency. I lost interest when the speaker said we're gonna find out if you ever smoked pot and we're gonna send you to jail, and I said the hell with it. He was probably bullshitting, but why take the chance?

~ JBB

went to Korea instead of Vietnam and came back with a wife

So not all bad then.... Maybe... 😂

I was a drill sergeant at Fort Polk, Louisiana. My cousin was drafted, and against all odds he showed up at the training company across the street from mine.

I thought 'cannon fodder' but again, bucking the odds, he ended up going to train as a small equipment repairman. Ended up in Korea.

He was probably a virgin (big, dumb Mama's country boy stereotype) but with the price of nookie running $3 a shot (I left Korea a year after he got there) he fell in 'love'.

He called his mom to tell her he was bringing home a wife and trying to figure where they we going to stay. She told him "You can stay in MY room because as soon as that whore crosses my threshold I'm slitting my own throat.

This was in 1971. Vietnam was still a thing. I did a tour in Korea instead - entirely the luck of the draw. Out of a roster of sixty graduates, four did NOT go to 'Nam - three 'L's' and an 'M'.

Yay Mom!

As for the draw, in my class of 35, 28 went to Seoul and I was one of the lucky seven who went to Vietnam. It was 1971.

~ JBB

It takes a particulary self-aware person to see their envisioned leader as he really is.

I think that also applies to seeing their envisioned country as it really is.

At least Trump cared enough to point out that the UK is losing its freedom of speech, is losing its culture, and is throwing away the benefits of Brexit by buying restrictive rules from the EU.

AJ

They would be speaking German today if not for my father and his generation saving them during WW2.

Oh, dear. There's always one. Such a lazy response.

I did wonder how long it would take for the personal attacks from sock puppets would take once I stopped responding. It's as predictable as the sun rising, it really is.

So, to address your excellent, substantial point...

Dude, no one's forcing you to read it. Click on something else. And besides, it's not like you're paying for my efforts with the two experiments I'm conducting, is it?

They would be speaking German today if not for my father and his generation saving them during WW2.

Based on what?

It's an interesting opinion, and one - thankfully- we will never know the actual answer to.

As a 'Brit' my first opinion to your statement is simply "Fuck off". But it's an interesting thought experiment.

Did we need the food shipments from America? Undoubtedly. Would we have survived without them? Possibly, but it would have been unpleasant. Germany's favourite tactic was the Blitzkrieg, which has one, ever so slight flaw. Water. And what is the UK surrounded by?

They would have needed boats. Lots of boats. And boats -especially heavily laden ones- are very easy to sink.

Crossing the Channel would have been very unpleasant for the Germans. And costly.

Britain was preparing for the worst, and one thing about us Brits, is that we are very, very, argumentative. Germany would have needed to have fought for Britain one street at a time. The German death toll would have been horrendous. For example, look to the current Ukraine war. Or indeed the Vietnam war (Yeah? How well did that go for you Americans?) or indeed Afghanistan. Statistically, those invaded have home advantage.

But you forget FOF, the reason as to why the USA joined. Germany had no intention of stopping. At France or in Blighty. We were simply another domino on the obstructive path to them being the master race. Once the UK was subsumed by the German Borg, and they had taken control of our technology and manufacturing industry, the good old US of A would have been next, and by that point, Ze Germans would have had 'Ze Bomb'.

That would not have gone down well for you Americans now, would it?

So yeah, you 'saved us' in the same way we saved you from living in a nuclear wasteland. The American troops- Black and white- knew this, knew that if Ze Germans were not stopped, then the battle would be on American soil next, with all the unpleasantness that would entail.

So yes, all those American troops gave their lives to stop us speaking German, because they knew they were also stopping their children and grandchildren from also speaking German. Well, the white blue eyed ones anyway. The rest of you would would have been ethnically cleansed in the most time and cost efficient manner possible.

Your statement, other than being rather foolish, was also extremely disrespectful to all the US citizens (For many of those who lost their lives were civilian sailors on the convoys) who gave their lives so that A: You didn't only speak German and B: That you have the freedom to be a bit of an arse on the internet.

You spent far longer on this than I was prepared to do... But this is a tremendous response. 👏👏

A little-known battle held on June 6, 1944 proved that an attack force can make it across the English Channel

You answered your own question. Germany didn't think the Allied forces were a threat, didn't think they would have the balls to attack across the Channel. A costly mistake.

However, you can't use one example as the rule.

You also pointed out (rightly) that the UK had nowhere to retreat to. I'm sure you have heard the phrase "A cornered animal is a dangerous animal". If given the choice, both animal and Human will flee rather than fight. If they can't flee, then 'Fuck-it' mode engages. The nations of Europe retreated from Germany, because they could- there was nothing physically stopping them. Very few individuals actually want to die, so retreat will always be the 'sensible' option. After all, you can retreat to fight another day. Apparently.

It was the plan to fight the Germans every step of their way through the UK. Would the UK populace of the time have done so? Would they have sacrificed themselves en masse to kill as many Germans as possible? Would Germany actually have survived the loss of so many of its young men, or would it subsequently suffer a population collapse? Its victory over Britain Pyrrhic in nature. Lots of questions we will never know the actual answers to.

Germany didn't know that the Allied forces were coming, but had the situation been the other way around, that would not have been the case. Think Taiwan vs China over the Formosa Strait.

Had Germany fought the UK (Without American assistance), then it would have been a slow attritional war, much like the Eastern front against Russia. Would Russia have taken that reprieve to improve both the training and the equipment of its forces? Had Germany focused its might on Britain instead of Russia, would we all now be speaking Russian?

In hindsight, I think Germany had a difficult choice in whether to go East or West, but I suspect there was no choice. Either decision was going to result in the same inevitable German outcome, though I suspect that a Russian win would have resulted in the complete obliteration of what had once been called Germany.

To paraphrase a certain 1983 film;

'War is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.'

Had Germany fought the UK (Without American assistance), then it would have been a slow attritional war, much like the Eastern front against Russia.

Unlikely. Once they had achieved landfall, Germany would have used the blitzkrieg tactics that worked so well in Western Europe, with none of the drawbacks of long supply lines they encountered in Eastern Europe.

AJ

Maybe.

UK ground conditions are not really suited for the fast tank warfare Germany had built its doctrine around. Too many rivers, too many tree's and far too many hills. Also, the UK is (even in the 1940's) too urban for effective tank warfare.

As for supply lines, not so sure. The Channel would always have been an Achilles heel and partisan sabotage would most likely have rendered local manufacturing extremely difficult, if not impossible, requiring either continual Channel shipping or air freight. Both of which would have been easily disrupted.

A problem that would only get worse the further North they travelled.

Russia found this out the hard way in Afghanistan, forcing them to ditch land-based tanks in favour of a more air-oriented tank in Hind sight...

Operating tanks in the UK would require an extensive infantry screen, which most likely would have meant a substantial sniper contingent in response by partisan forces. Stalingrad, but on the scale of a Country, rather than a city.

Air superiority would have been paramount to success, but one has to hypothetically wonder what those defenders would have come up with given the correct 'motivation'. After all, when you consider what the UK (And Allies) came up with at extremely short notice with limited resources, like RDF and the magnetron, and given the relative population size of the UK and its manufacturing base in relation to everyone else in 1939 (UK being about 48 million compared to 131 million in the USA, and 80 million in Germany) the UK was certainly technologically punching above its weight.

Given the scarcity of resources, a full attack on the UK would no doubt have focussed defensive attention on the main weak spot, the Channel. I wonder what all those brilliant minds would have come up with in relation to one-person submarines and underwater warfare in general. The Channel could well have been a 'no-go' area even to this day, in an alternate timeline.

Of course, the elephant in the room isn't the taking of ground; it's the keeping of it. One of the things history teaches, is that no matter how much you can grab, it's all pointless unless you can hold onto it. The Romans once controlled most of the known World, as did the British. Look at them both now. England is struggling to keep Scotland onside, let alone retain control of more distant 'colonies' like the Falklands or Gibraltar. And Rome is now reduced to the very boot it once held on the neck of the rest of the world.

Had Germany controlled the UK, there is a very strong possibility it would have lost it again once Hitler died and there was a regime change in Germany. The only way Germany could have held ground for any length of time, would have been to massacre every defeated country's population and replace it with Germans. A tactic they had already started.

I'm actually expecting Russia to disintegrate once Putin dies (naturally or otherwise) and many parts of Russia to become independent states. Ironically, in Ukraine, I think Putin has achieved the one thing he set out to avoid.

I agree that the Brits would not just lay down but fight not to mention when has a Scot or Irishman turned away from a fight.

I think most Brits these days are just keyboard warriors. Put a gun in their hands and they wouldn't know what to do with it. Besides, they're all excused because they have designer depression, designer ADHD, designer anxiety, designer tennis elbow etc, all self-diagnosed using tiktok videos.

AJ

I'm looking forward to the call-up exercise next year, which is happening because there are currently not enough people in the UK military at the moment.

Given that I was borderline insubordinate in the military, totally insubordinate in the reserves ("'cos, like, what the fuck are you going to do? Send me home?" or my favourites "Nope. Not doing that.", "Good luck with that." and "Aye, right..."), the level of can'tbe-arseditis is going to be stratospheric.

If called up (and I really hope they do) it's going to be "What? Can't hear you. Are you going to issue me with hearing aides?", "No, I'm, not going on that run until you replace my knees and hips"

It's going to be a brilliant clusterfuck organised by people with no understanding of the world beyond their small desk. But it looks good as a press release...

You can respond to one line of theirs, ignore the rest as they attempt to make themselves appear smart, and keep them talking forever.

Kibbitzing from the sidelines: pot, meet kettle.

You can respond to one line of theirs, ignore the rest as they attempt to make themselves appear smart, and keep them talking forever.

It's a lack of emotional control.

you failed again to control yourself.

Just like last time, having to announce your actions of "ignoring me" while not ignoring me despite me informing you how much power actually being able to ignore a simple statement gives you.

Your best move would have been to ignore that comment, thereby telling everyone in this forum that that response was beneath you, but you didn't ignore it, so it's not beneath you, and you find there's some kind of nobility in addressing everything said to you, even when you shouldn't. That is the result of a fragile ego.

Thanks for laugh.

Sounds like someone is still bitter about that Revolutionary War that happened way back when.

Correct.

Culloden pisses me off to this day. But if you mean America, then actually, I don't give a flying fuck about America. But then, Americans always believe everything is about them. Which would make them narcissistic by default, now that I think about it.

You sure sound convincing.

🤷

Like I said, narcissistic.

I'm not convinced you can reliably ascertain a person's true opinion via typed words alone. All you are doing, is overlaying your own bias and insecurities over the vacuum.

Don't be a narcissist and believe that your opinion is the only opinion that is true.

Please explain why you consider me to be a narcissist, as I believe you have no comprehension as to what it actually means. Also, since you are at it, please show your workings as to why you think that my "opinion is the only opinion that is true".

I look forward to your response, as I do like a good laugh.

Please explain why you consider me to be a narcissist

Do you grow daffodils in your garden? You're a narcissist (as am I).

AJ

Do you grow daffodils in your garden?

My garden is where things go to die.

My garden is where things go to die.

"So, Mr Pixy, do you expect me to grow tall and strong and supply you with lots of beautiful flowers?"

"No, Mr Plant, I expect you to die. Mwahaha."

AJ

Pretty much....

That fact that you can't understand it and you need it spelled out to you as if you were a child gives me a good laugh.

I find it amusing that you repeat almost everything I say, avoid answering questions directed at yourself, and try to turn my own words back upon me in.... Actually, I honestly don't know what you are trying to do.

It's like you think that you are trolling, but you don't actually know how to do it, like you have a deep-seated anger inside you that you don't know how to release. I mean, how can anyone be blinded by stupidity, stupidity in the fact that you believe everything because you need to believe everything because it helps you hate someone?

But then, I suppose people can rationalise and justify anything, but they aren't always right.

🤷

And you did it again.... 😂 You really are not very good at this, are you?

Anyway, it's rather obvious that you have nothing constructive, nor interesting to say on the original topic and all you are doing is veering the subject away in a direction that will get the thread locked. So I shall leave you to dwell upon your own words. Again.

Sounds like someone is still bitter about that Revolutionary War that happened way back when.

The American Revolution has almost no impact on the UK general populace today. Most people here couldn't even tell you what year it happened. All those 250-year celebrations this year? Most people in Britain didn't know it was an anniversary until we saw it on the news.

This might be shocking, but the 'revolutionary war' is about as significant to most British people as the Hundred Years' War. No one thinks about it. It's not taught in our schools. It has no impact on our modern life.

At all.

Even at the time, Britain was more concerned with the possibility of revolution spreading to the West Indies or India than with losing the 13 colonies. Was that a mistake in hindsight? Maybe. But at the time? 🤷‍♀️

Also, the only reason Britain 'lost' that war was because the French and the Spanish got involved. You don't hear them using that as a flex against the Americans, do you? Ever heard a Frenchman say, "You'd still be drinking tea and eating crumpets if it wasn't for us!"

Want to know why not? Because using the actions of people that happened before you were born is a pretty poor 'flex' for today.

This is yet another lazy response from someone who believes thinking is something other people do.

The American Revolution has almost no impact on the UK general populace today. Most people here couldn't even tell you what year it happened.

PBS has a television channel on the UK's free terrestrial Freeview service. It frequently has programs on 'the Civil War' - there's one tonight on the massacre of black union soldiers. Presumably they must think there's a market for British interest in the American Civil War.

AJ

PBS has a television channel on the UK's free terrestrial Freeview service.

I didn't even know this existed. I'd love to see what their viewing figures are. Bet it's not up there with Coronation Street. (Actually, I don't know how many people watch Corrie these days either.)

I'd love to see what their viewing figures are.

I've looked it up. About 2,000,000 tune in at some point during any given month. Individual shows get somewhere between 10,000 - 30,000 viewers.

For context, there are in the order of 200,000 US Citizens living in the UK.

just like they lost their entire empire and just like they're losing the UK today, unless Reform wins, God willing, right?

Joy. Another lazy Fox News based opinion from someone living thousands of miles away. Pathetic.

The problem with people like you is that you post something deliberately provocative, and if you get no response, you think you've made a killer point and won the argument, but you do do get a response, you've successfully "riled them up" with a killer point and won the argument.

When what you're actually doing is parroting propaganda from your corporate overlords who know that keeping you angry about the small stuff is the best way to keep themselves rich.

Come visit the UK. Seriously. Come see London or The Cotswolds or The Lakes. It's wonderful. You'd enjoy it. And you'd finally realise that Fox Snooze and the rest of that cabal are lying to you and have been for years.

The problem with people like you is that you post something deliberately provocative, and if you get no response, you think you've made a killer point and won the argument, but if you do get a response, you've successfully "riled them up" with a killer point and won the argument.

This. So much this.

I noticed that they try to emulate responses to their trolling attempts upon other replies, to their own posts. That sort of response does tend to imply a derth of original thought and critical thinking. So I returned the gesture, and 'Whoosh!' 🛫 it went so far above their head that commercial airliners had to take evasive action.

Translation: Marc Nobbs doesn't know how to answer that with a dignified response, so he attempts to dismiss it with smoke and mirrors so he doesn't have to do any actual thinking.

And so he proves my point, any response means you think you won. No response means you think you won.

Facts are, every response you've made has been a lazy stereotype. There's a subreddit called "Shit Americans say" where people laugh at the stupid shit Americans say. Every response you've given here would qualify. Genuinely.

"You'd be speaking German..." Lazy stereotype.

"You're upset about the American revolution...." Lazy stereotype.

"You're losing your county..." Lazy stereotype.

It's genuinely hilarious that you think these points are either substantial or land. They are exactly the type of points most Brits roll their eyes at, sigh and mutter, "not again".

You appear to believe the version of Britain you are presented with by Right Wing media in the US is accurate. It isn't. It's wildly inaccurate. How do I know? I live here. I see what the country is like every day.

Almost certainly what will happen now is that you or someone else will come back and say my lived experience is worth less than reporting from people overseas that haven't actually been here. I'll get told I live in a bubble. I'll get told I don't know what I'm talking about because... reasons. Fox news. Trump says so. The frog-faced fascist says so. And on and on....

My reply wasn't smoke and mirrors. It was what I saw in front of me. A troll against whom you can't argue because any argument I make is automatically invalid because I made it. It's pathetic, but not the least bit surprising. It's a story as old as the Internet itself. Older even.

I didn't give your answer a dignified response, as you put it, because it didn't warrant one. Instead, I invited you to actually visit the place you're criticising and see it for yourself.

But what would be the point of you doing that? You wouldn't believe what you saw anyway. The Party commanded you not to trust the evidence of your own eyes and ears. And you don't.

The problem is your responses, much like the other guy's responses in here, are nothing more than attempts to save face with weak attempts at deflection.

Save face? Do you think you've humiliated me or something?

What am I deflecting from? You've said nothing of any substance worth deflecting.

You don't need to watch fox news to parrot their propaganda. Just like GB News ends up with its talking points all over social media so it seeps into people's brain by osmosis.

As for being long winded... I'm a writer. What do you expect? Efficiency over verbosity? Sorry, pal, wrong website.

As for being long winded... I'm a writer. What do you expect? Efficiency over verbosity? Sorry, pal, wrong website.

😂

You know Marc, someone once wrote,

Your best move would have been to ignore that comment, thereby telling everyone in this forum that that response was beneath you, but you didn't ignore it, so it's not beneath you, and you find there's some kind of nobility in addressing everything said to you, even when you shouldn't. That is the result of a fragile ego.

And yet, that same someone refuses to abide by their own words. Seems driven to respond to questions, even though they countenanced against doing that very same thing, giving the reason as being the result of a very fragile ego. 🤔

I think it's now very obvious as to what that 'individual' is up to.

It appears that we have a bridge and an inhabitant to go with it. Best leave him to it. After all, how does that saying go, "Don't argue with idiots online, as they will only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'? Or something...

You appear to believe the version of Britain you are presented with by Right Wing media in the US is accurate. It isn't. It's wildly inaccurate. How do I know? I live here. I see what the country is like every day.

I'm looking forward to the result of the Piddington Referendum.

AJ

I'm looking forward to the result of the Piddington Referendum.

The result was a landslide in favour of Piddington seceding from the UK.

However, as we now know, thanks to a whistleblower, of the 1,250 male asylum seekers being dumped into a village of less than 400, 12.5 of them are genuinely afraid to return to their home country (although not France, the safe country they passed through). The rest are gay Christians who were having an illicit affair with the president's daughter.

AJ

The result was a landslide in favour of Piddington seceding from the UK.

There are fewer people live in Piddington than attend the average UK Secondary school by a factor of between 3 and 4. It's hardly representative of the whole population. It's representative of mostly retired upper middle class people who are worried the value of their extortionatly expensive houses might come down a tiny fraction.

But, honestly, I'd say let them set up the Kingdom of Piddington. Of course, they'd need to appoint a King and they'd have to set up border posts, an Inland revenue service, police force and Health service, amongst other essentials, and getting their Ocado deliveries would incur import taxes, but at least they get to pick their own colour passport. Maybe Green.

It's representative of mostly retired upper middle class people who are worried the value of their extortionatly expensive houses might come down a tiny fraction.

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/southeastengland/admin/cherwell/E04008073__piddington/

Having no dog in this fight, that link seems to suggest that the two of you are having an agreement.

This whole Piddington situation is hilarious, and a prime example of right-wing media fuelled Nimbyism.
The billionaire owners of various parts of the British media have gaslit a section of the population into believing that asylum seekers need to be held securely, rather than entering the general population, while their asylum claim is assessed. Note that the facility here is for people claiming asylum, not 'illegal immigrants'. They are people who claim they cannot return to their own country because they fear for their lives. Britain (and all other countries) has an obligation under international law to assess the claims before 'sending them back'. Those assessments take time, and people need to be accommodated somewhere in the meantime.
The media complain if they are kept in hotels converted for the purpose. You don't need to imagine the outcry if a shanty town of tents were allowed to spring up on the south coast, so the Government said, "How about we put them in a disused former army barracks?"
"Great!" said the media. "Barbed wire fences. Secure gated access. 24/7 CCTV. Guards. Sounds perfect."
"Excellent," said the Government. "There's one in Oxfordshire."
The response?
"No! Not THAT ONE! It's too close to where I live!"
Nimbyism - Please deal with the problem, but deal with it far away from me. The problem, of course, is that everywhere is both far away from someone and right next to someone else. You can't have it both ways.

Absolutely not.

It's a tiny rural village with virtually nothing. It's certainly not like the picture postcard properties in the better publicised areas of the cotswolds. The people who live in Piddingtom have mainly lived there all their lives, although with the decline of farming in the UK, there's not a lot of work so younger people have to move out. It's far from an ideal place for people to move to on retirement.

There's absolutely nothing for young men to do in the village. Although the illegals will be able to come and go freely while their having their 99% bogus 'asylum' claims processed, the government will probably have to lay on buses for them to go to eg Bicester.

Less than 400 people saddled with 1,250 non English-speaking misogynist neighbours who have proved they're ready to break laws to get what they want. It's absolutely insane. They should be accommodated in large cities where their presence wouldn't be so transformative, where there's a police presence, where they would have ready access to mosques, moslem clothing, halal food etc.

AJ

It's far from an ideal place for people to move to on retirement.

Oh, I agree; the people of Piddington are almost destitute. It's a village of abject poverty. Not worried about their property values at all.

Thame Road, Piddington, Oxfordshire OX25, Guide Price, £1,950,000
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/89178840#/?channel=RES_BUY

Thame Road, Piddington , Oxfordshire. Guide Price, £1,300,000
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/88170069#/?channel=RES_BUY

They should be accommodated in large cities where their presence wouldn't be so transformative, where there's a police presence, where they would have ready access to mosques, moslem clothing, halal food etc.

Except when that happens, councillors' wives go on Twitter and call for the hotels they are staying in to be set alight.

Except when that happens, councillors' wives go on Twitter and call for the hotels they are staying in to be set alight.

Lucy Connolly's jail sentence was one of the great injustices of two-tier Starmer's reign, in which right-wing protesters were treated more harshly that left-wing protesters.

But that is irrelevant to the point I made.

AJ

She wrote

"Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it."

And then pled Guilty to the charges

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lucy-Connolly-v-The-King.pdf

I don't agree with what she said and I'm not defending it. I'm defending the principle that the law should apply equally to all, something that has gone down the drain under recent governments - yes, the Tories were guilty too.

She said 'for all I care'. It was passive, she wasn't actually encouraging anyone to go and do it. Her lawyer allegedly bodged her defence - she should have pleaded not guilty - and she got wrongly convicted.

On the other hand, actively encouraging the extermination of all Jews 'from the river to the sea' got a free pass under two-tier Starmer, until too many pointed out the unfairness.

AJ

I'm defending the principle that the law should apply equally to all,

Agreed. So why has no one been charged with this clear assault that took place at the Reform UK conference.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1w7zto0/female_protestor_assaulted_by_audience_members_at/

Because she refused to press charges?

She suffered no physical harm so was it more serious than those audience members who beat up a bunch of Just Stop Oil protestors for interrupting a performance?

AJ

Because she refused to press charges?

She doesn't decide to press charges, the CPS does based on evidence supplied by the police.

She was hit with a cane and had her hair pulled. That's assault. You don't need to suffer physical harm for a crime to have been committed. Not under UK law.

I typed in a reply to this but it's gone missing. Oh well!

AJ

It was passive, she wasn't actually encouraging anyone to go and do it. Her lawyer allegedly bodged her defence - she should have pleaded not guilty - and she got wrongly convicted.

I linked to the court's appeal document in my post. The appeal judges disagreed with your assertion.

The principal ground of appeal, ground 1, was substantially based on a version of events
put forward by the applicant which we have rejected

Here, we of course have every sympathy with the applicant over the death of her son,
and we can understand why she remains angry about the circumstances of his death.
We can therefore accept that the shocking events in Southport had an impact on her
which went beyond that felt by many others. But as the judge rightly said, she did not
post a message of support and sympathy to the victims of the Southport attack and the
bereaved. Nor, we would add, did she post a message of hostility confined to the
perpetrator of the Southport attack. She chose instead to incite serious violence against
large numbers of persons. The applicant's personal history cannot significantly reduce
her culpability for that serious offence.

On the other hand, actively encouraging the extermination of all Jews 'from the river to the sea' got a free pass under two-tier Starmer.

890 people arrested at Palestine Action protest

How many of those got jail time?

AJ

According to this post on the Crown Prosecution Service website, 138 people had been charged by 5th September 2025.

Since 'Not Guilty' pleas were entered, all cases require a full trial (I think we can agree that people who plead not guilty should be tried before we lock them up), and due to the massive backlog caused by 14 years of Tory Government underfunding (a government I'm ashamed to admit I voted for in 2010 - colossal error on my part), none of the case have come to court yet so there have been no convictions (at least, I can't find evidence of any).

I'd be fascinated to see it, since I have absolute confidence that you're not being incredibly racist and reductive.

I'm sure the Home Office would welcome seeing that evidence too. It would certainly speed up rejecting all those 'bogus' claims and deporting them all.

I'm sure the Home Office would welcome seeing that evidence too. It would certainly speed up rejecting all those 'bogus' claims and deporting them all.

The pro-migrant attitude of the Home Office means deportations are very few and far between. Their unofficial go-slow means that many illegals' cases will be on hold for so long that the government grants them leave to stay just to get the numbers of outstanding claims down.

It doesn't actually bother to check whether the illegals are really gay Christians in fear of their lives because they had affairs with the president's daughter. It doesn't even matter that the spiv lawyers couldn't even be bothered to put the right subject name in the cut-and-paste asylum claim.

AJ

"many illegals' cases will be on hold for so long that the government grants them leave to stay just to get the numbers of outstanding claims down."

Sorry, this is just not true.

From this page:

The term "immigration amnesty" typically refers to a policy or scheme where individuals who are residing in the UK without lawful immigration status are granted the opportunity to regularise their stay. The UK does not operate a formal or regular amnesty programme...

And:

"Private Life Applications: You may be eligible to apply if: You've lived continuously in the UK for at least 20 years, or You're a child under 18 who has lived in the UK for at least 7 years, and it would be unreasonable to expect you to leave
Human Rights Applications: If removal from the UK would breach your human rights—such as a right to family or private life—you may have grounds to remain legally.
Discretionary Leave or Exceptional Circumstances: In rare cases, the Home Office may grant leave outside of the immigration rules if compelling and compassionate grounds exist.

More information on the backlog on the system here. From that Page:

"Official immigration statistics show that at the end of June 2026, there were 32,401 asylum applications awaiting an initial decision—a 62% decrease since the end of June 2024 (shortly before Labour formed a government)"

So the current government is doing a better job of dealing with the backlog than the previous one. Funny that.

You also said:

The pro-migrant attitude of the Home Office means deportations are very few and far between.

From this page that tracks the actual departures:

Around 38,000 people without the right to be in the UK were recorded leaving in 2025 – 9% more than in 2024, and the highest number since 2016. Almost a third of all returns in 2025, or 12,000 departures, were independent returns, where a person leaves of their own accord and where the government does not actively participate. Returns involving the Home Office reached 26,000 in 2025, 27% higher than the year before. Among these returns with government involvement, the majority were voluntary. Enforced returns increased by 21% in 2025 to around 10,000.

For context, the IFS reports:

In 2023, there were 67,337 asylum applications

So, yes, there are more applications than deportations, but that only shows that most applications are genuine asylum cases.

I think many of the departures are simply people who had outstayed a work or student visa.

The Tories encouraged a flood of workers from the Indian subcontinent. Labour wasn't so enamoured with them so they are pruning the numbers by not renewing visas. They were here legally (initially), unlike the illegals going the asylum tourism route.

AJ

... and then boasting on how good they are at reducing the number of immigrants.

This morning I read on social media several anecdotes about how the doctors/nurses/care-workers who couldn't get their visas renewed had had to leave the country (ie voluntary deportation) leaving posts unfilled. Andy Burnham's father recently died of Alzheimer's so he has a bee in his bonnet about reforming the care system, totally oblivious to the fact that his government is contributing to the care system's problems. I wonder how he's going to tackle the staffing problems - train up some of the Neets?

AJ

I think many of the departures are simply people who had outstayed a work or student visa.

This could be true, but my point (with evidence) was that "deportations are very few and far between" isn't true.

"Enforced returns increased by 21% in 2025 to around 10,000" can't really be described as "few and far between" in any reasonable sense.

But this thread left "reasonable" behind a long time ago. Once someone has decided they are right, no amount of evidence they are presented with will convince them otherwise.

So the current government is doing a better job of dealing with the backlog than the previous one. Funny that.

Since Home Office civil servants spend an average of a week on each asylum claim as opposed to the target of under a day, the government has recruited 'temporary' staff who rubber-stamping vast numbers of bogus gay Christian having affair with President's daughter claims to fiddle the figures.

The whistleblower exposed the fact that only about 1% of asylum claims are genuine.

AJ

I'd be fascinated to see it, since I have absolute confidence that you're not being incredibly racist and reductive.

The 'racist' accusation has completely lost its power. You leftists overused it. It doesn't work anymore.

Every society, every group of people, has the right to choose whether some other people join them or not.

In the leftist view, every country in the world has the right to be as racist as they want, except Western countries. Those Western countries must accept their own destruction with open arms.

Japan doesn't allow immigration? That's fine.

China doesn't allow immigration? That's fine.

India doesn't allow immigration? That's fine. (although who wants to go there to live?)

The US doesn't allow unrestricted immigration? That's so fucking racist.

The UK doesn't allow unrestricted immigration? That's so fucking racist.

Italy doesn't allow unrestricted immigration? That's so fucking racist.

Any white country doesn't allow unrestricted immigration? That's so fucking racist.

In the leftist view, everybody is allowed in-group preference except white people.

FU.

In the leftist view, everybody is allowed in-group preference except white people.

I have to admit it's disturbing when unescorted women of certain cultures cross the road, or if that's not feasible, stop and turn their backs to me as I pass, because I'm white.

AJ

I was mostly replying to the 'retirees vwith expensive housing' part, which is entirely consistent with the link.

I completely understand the 'aging population with nothing to do there' argument, but that doesn't change the propensity of retirees with expensive homes to act to preserve that value.

And quick googling showed that the average housing value was well above the average UK house value.

that doesn't change the propensity of retirees with expensive homes to act to preserve that value.

And I accept that's a concern amongst the inhabitants of Piddington.

Most of the housing belongs to families who have lived there for a very long time, and the values of their properties have benefited from the rosy idyllic view of country living plus the Covid 'green space' premium. A significant number of them are likely to be hit by Andy Burnham's prospective 'mansion tax', despite the owners being being income poor.

However the migrant camp is relatively short term, after which the effect on property values should be reversed. But in the meantime, there's the problem of what 1,250 fit men, mostly of fighting age, are going to do all day. It's bad enough where I live, with men of that age of all ethnicities getting up to trouble.

AJ

Less than 400 people saddled with 1,250 non-English-speaking misogynist neighbours

Nitpicking, but misogyny is the hatred of women. The immigrants usually love women.

who have proved they're ready to break laws to get what they want. It's absolutely insane.

It's absolutely insane only from the point of view of the people living in the area.

I'll explain why this shit is happening and who's fault it is.

It's the fault of the British people, specifically British women.

See, this whole thing is about demographics. The British and all of the modern advanced world countries are simply not having enough children. That's the whole reason for this shit. Not enough children.

In any country where there aren't enough children and there is a banking system reliant on mortgages to prop up its profits, money people don't want to risk their investments going down and losing value and losing money.

Not enough children means that when the old die, there is nobody to replace them really, especially buy their expensive houses. Those houses drop in value, may become dilapidated due to the house maybe remaining empty for a while, like in Japan. So the banks and any institution that relies on the value of these houses remaining stable or better yet going up (like the city hall/council needing taxes) all have a vested interest in bringing any people they can get to boost the number of occupants and preventing the value of all properties from falling.

Also, old people make for a very sluggish economy. Most of them have already established their lives and bought everything they need other than food. I know from myself that since I turned 40, my personal expenses outside of food and fuel are negligible; I buy shoes every few years and not monthly like my growing children. Most of my expenses are on my kids, the next generation.

So, these people in that little village can only blame themselves for not having enough kids, and usually it's the women that control how many kids are had in a household. Every man I know wants kids, three or more. It's always the woman that cuts that number down to less than three, if any she's willing to have.

I'm sure that all levels of the British government would prefer to bring in white people as similar to the native British population as possible to avoid problems, but all white people everywhere are not having enough kids so their preference will never work, so they bring anybody they can get, and that often gets a negative reaction from the natives.

As to why they don't restrict them to cities, it's to avoid having these established communities and their valuable houses go into disrepair until new residents come in if ever.

So, I suggest you advocate for policies that raise the fertility rate in British women, if you don't want undesirable people replacing you. And no, monetary incentives never worked for any government.

You basically need to find way to MAKE women need men and want to appease men by giving them children. Anything else would never work, and in any society where women don't need men, women won't put up with men and women won't have enough children.

Demographics are destiny.

Nitpicking, but misogyny is the hatred of women.

The irony of this statement, given the content of the rest of the post, is quite, quite remarkable.

Nitpicking, but misogyny is the hatred of women.

The irony of this statement, given the content of the rest of the post, is quite, quite remarkable.

What's ironic about it?

Are you implying that I hate women?

If you are, then you should know that I don't. You don't have to hate women to state facts that involve them. You just have to be realistic and factual.

You know, misogyny is another of those words leftists also use to try to control speech, just like 'racist', and it has become just as overused that it lost any power it may have had at some point.

Say anything true and factual about the nature of women, and the misogyny ad hominem are launched.

What do you consider hateful in anything I said?

That women have to need men to have children? It's a fact and it's not hateful. That generally women control the number of children? That's not hateful, just a fact. Just because you don't like it and have been propagandized by feminism to not accept/allow any criticism or even factual statements about the nature of women, doesn't mean it's not true or is hateful.

So, engage with my arguments and drop the personal attacks because they don't work.

If you can discuss the subject, awesome, I love a good discussion, but if you can't without personal attacks, then you don't have to participate, nobody is forcing you.

What's ironic about it?

You make this statement:

misogyny is the hatred of women

Then follow up with these statements:

It's the fault of the British people, specifically British women.

and

You basically need to find way to MAKE women need men and want to appease men by giving them children.

Both of which many people would view as misogynistic. I certainly do. You may not agree with that assessment, but that's how many people would see it. In the first, you blame a systemic problem on women as a whole group, and in the second, you suggest that women as a group should be forced to behave in a particular way in order to 'appease men'.

You may not think you hate women, and I'm sure there are women you love dearly, but both of these statements are misogynistic and reveal an unpleasant attitude towards women as a group.

You know, misogyny is another of those words leftists also use to try to control speech, just like 'racist', and it has become just as overused that it lost any power it may have had at some point.

This is an argument used by people who want to make hateful statements about groups of people and not be called out on it. If a term is overused, it's because the behaviour it describes occurs too often.

To be clear, you are free to make any statements you wish. I have no desire to curtail anyone's free speech. But if I see a hateful statement, I will call it out as hateful.

Your statements here were, in my opinion (which is worth exactly what you paid for it), hateful.

Oh, and:

I love a good discussion, but if you can't without personal attacks, then you don't have to participate, nobody is forcing you.

I didn't make a personal attack. I commented on the content of your post. Those are not the same thing. I do not know you well enough (or, indeed, at all) to attack you personally.

I didn't make a personal attack. I commented on the content of your post. Those are not the same thing. I do not know you well enough (or, indeed, at all) to attack you personally.

You didn't engage once with my arguments. Your reply is all about how you and others view my opinion and its validity and appropriateness. But nothing about the facts that I laid out. Your whole post is nothing but a personal attack and how my opinions are wrong as if I'm not allowed to have those opinions/facts.

Do you deny that women generally control the number of children in a relationship?

Do you somehow believe that men can force women in general or even their own women specifically in the west to have children they don't want?

Do you deny that when women work and they don't need men's protection (taken care by the government) and provisions (they work and provide for themselves or by the government through welfare), that marriage numbers plummet to start with, and of those who marry the rate of divorce is high and the number of offspring is low?

Engage with the argument, and not with my right to say these things.

You didn't engage once with my arguments.

And you didn't respond to any of the detailed explanations I gave you in response to your question.

See how that works? We can go back and forth all day, if you like, not engaging with anything the other has said.

Do you refute that the two statements I picked out could be interpreted as misogynistic? If so, please explain why. And to be clear, "Because they are true" is not an explanation. You need to explain why blaming an entire group of people based on one particular characteristic (in this case, their gender) is a valid argument. You also need to explain how forcing an entire segment of the population to behave in a particular way based on a single characteristic is valid.

Before you do that, let me ask: when violence against women is discussed, have you ever used the phrase "Not all men"?

Because I agree that blaming all men for a problem based purely on the fact that they are men is an invalid argument. Just like blaming all women for a problem based on them being women is an invalid argument.

This is the reason I haven't engaged with any of your arguments. I reject the premise on which they are based.

So we're clear:

Your reply is all about how you and others view my opinion and its validity and appropriateness.

and:

Your whole post is nothing but a personal attack

Are contradictions. Commenting on an opinion is not a comment on the person expressing that opinion. I can dismiss your opinions without attacking you personally. I have not called you names, nor put any labels on you personally. I have stated, with reasons, why I think two statements you made could be interpreted as misogynistic.

It is entirely possible for a person to repeat a misogynistic statement without realising it can be seen that way by others, and without being misogynistic in day-to-day life.

I do not think you are a bigot. I do not know you. I have dismissed your argument on the basis of its content. I cannot help if you feel personally attacked by that, but that is not my intention.

Further, you said:

and how my opinions are wrong as if I'm not allowed to have those opinions/facts.

Which I can only assume means you did not read what I wrote, so I will quote it again:

To be clear, you are free to make any statements you wish. I have no desire to curtail anyone's free speech. But if I see a hateful statement, I will call it out as hateful.

You are free to hold your opinions. I am free not to engage with them. Those statements to do contridict each other.

Also, opinions and facts are different things.

But since you will ignore everything I've said here and say "you didn't engage" and just repeat your questions...

Do you deny that women generally control the number of children in a relationship?

In my experience, this is a false statement. My wife and I discussed how many children we wanted to have. It was a pleasant discussion. We reached an agreement and stuck to it. Other people that I know (colleguges, friends etc) had similar discussions. I personally know of no couples where the 'woman' has controlled the number of children they had. That is my personal experience. I have no data nor seen any research to support or refute your statement. If you do have research I would be happy to read it.

Do you somehow believe that men can force women in general or even their own women specifically in the west to have children they don't want?

I have no direct experience of this. But there are certainly relationships that exist on the basis of coercive control, so I would suggest that in such an abusive relationship, some women are forceably impregnated. If a man can drug his wife and 'share' her with multiple men (as in the recent cases in France and here in the UK), then I'm sure there are men capable of forcing impregnation on a woman too.

Is this the 'general' situation. No. Of course not. Because forcing someone to do something against their will is, I think we can agree, wrong on multiple levels.

Do you deny that when women work and they don't need men's protection (taken care by the government) and provisions (they work and provide for themselves or by the government through welfare), that marriage numbers plummet to start with, and of those who marry the rate of divorce is high and the number of offspring is low?

Again, this is not something I've looked in to. I'd be happy to read any substansive, peer-reviewed research you can supply.

I look forward to you supplying the links to the research that back up your opinions.

I don't have the time to reply to each post, so see here:

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t14772/the-most-brutally-british#po226548

I don't have the time to reply to each post, see here:

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t14772/the-most-brutally-british#po226548

Nitpicking, but misogyny is the hatred of women. The immigrants usually love women.

I wouldn't use 'love', but yes, 'mysogynist' is probably overused in describing treating women as inferior and property.

AJ

See here:

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t14772/the-most-brutally-british#po226548

Birth rate is a global problem. Outside of Africa (where only one tiny country is below the replacement birth rate), there are only a handful of nations with above-replacement birthrates. Nearly all of those outside of Africa are projected to fall below replacement by 2040.

Yes, there's a reasonable case that 'we have too many people.' The problem, as it always is, is that deflation is bad, and deflation in this area is very bad. Who provides nursing care for an aging population when there are few kids? In most countries, immigrants. Who provides care for the aging population in the countries those immigrants come from? Often, no one.

The countries with the worst birthrate problems (Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan, etc) have been trying for years to increase birthrate. They have yet to find anything that works. Britain's problems are minor by comparison (though still bad).

If you can figure out a way to make people want to have more kids, a lot of countries will be thrilled. In the meantime, you're much better off figuring out some other means of solving the problem, because declining birthrates seems to be a very hard problem to solve.

Birth rate is a global problem. Outside of Africa (where only one tiny country is below the replacement birth rate), there are only a handful of nations with above-replacement birthrates. Nearly all of those outside of Africa are projected to fall below replacement by 2040.

Yes, there's a reasonable case that 'we have too many people.' The problem, as it always is, is that deflation is bad, and deflation in this area is very bad. Who provides nursing care for an aging population when there are few kids? In most countries, immigrants. Who provides care for the aging population in the countries those immigrants come from? Often, no one.

The countries with the worst birthrate problems (Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan, etc) have been trying for years to increase birthrate. They have yet to find anything that works. Britain's problems are minor by comparison (though still bad).

If you can figure out a way to make people want to have more kids, a lot of countries will be thrilled. In the meantime, you're much better off figuring out some other means of solving the problem, because declining birthrates seems to be a very hard problem to solve.

I quoted the whole thing because the whole thing is exactly what I'm saying. I'm discussing the issue on an intellectual level, but everybody seems not to be able to do that, and labels me as a misogynist.

(For anybody other than Grey Wolf reading this, try not to let your personal feelings of support for women affect your comprehension. Yes, hard, I know.)

No country has managed to solve the fertility problem. Their only solution to the problem that I stated before and you clearly understood has been importing more people to prop up the declining/aging population.

Having children in modern societies is a luxury. In farming societies, everybody wanted more kids because kids meant more working hands, meaning families with lots of children prospered. So children were a benefit and easily justified.

In modern life, children are not a benefit to their immediate parents. They're a responsibility and an economic load, plus time and opportunity cost. So every family fulfils its biological need for children with two kids or often just one and can't justify more because more children would cost more and keep the family in the baby/toddlers stage for much longer, which takes its toll on them (women AND men).

Add in feminism and women's empowerment, where women live just like men, grow up, get educated, get a job, establish a life all on their own. Good for women. But modern societies where this is possible haven't existed long enough to modify the female brain not to want somebody better than themselves to complement their lives and build a family with.

I understand them. Why would you want to put up with another human if you don't have to? If that human doesn't enhance your life in one way or another, then your life is better without them. So any woman would want a man that out-earns her so that her lifestyle doesn't get affected much when she has to stop working to have children. But when the average woman now out-earns the average man of the same age due to various policies implemented by governments in modern countries, then finding a man that out-earns you becomes rare, leading to the drop in marriage and children. So a drop in fertility.

I understand all this. I was merely explaining that people in all levels of power, from city councils to the king in the UK, face an unsolvable problem. If you define the problem as keeping the country running well AND keeping everybody happy, then it's impossible in a declining society.

So their only option is to ignore everybody's happiness and import foreigners that boost the numbers, but upset the people who have lived their whole lives surrounded by their own kind. Many think of this as demographic replacement (conspiracy) and that it's done on purpose because people in power hate white people and they seek to replace them. Meanwhile, people in power have no other choice.

So far, the holdout against this solution has been Japan, and their numbers are dwindling, their economy has been stagnant, and their debt has become huge for a country that is running normally (no wars or other upheaval) and used to be an economic powerhouse.

Personally, if I were a dictator with absolute power, the solution is doable, but of course, it would label me as a misogynist. My simple, but horribly misogynistic, solution is this:

No woman is allowed into university or the job market until she has enough children. Three children would free the woman from my misogynystic rules. 4 children or more would free her from taxes also. And for the nitpickers, if the woman is barren and can't have kids, then yes, she would be exempt, and we would have to have a mechanism that minimizes cheating.

This way, women would be forced (yes, terrible word), for a period of their lives, to find men to marry and put up with. Men wouldn't have competition in the job market in their early life and would be able to have families and children.

But I'm no dictator, and this would have all the women up in arms with the support of all the simps. So it's impossible to implement in a modern society.

So the unfortunate reality is, modernity seems to be an evolutionary dead end. It probably leads to depopulation and decline.

What happens in 30 years when all the fertility of Africa isn't enough to prop up the numbers of the rest of the world?

So you can make the argument without framing it in deliberately provocative language. Good.

Had you made this post originally instead of beginning your first post by blaming all women for a problem that is much more nuanced and complex, we would have been able to have a discussion. Instead, you reacted angrily to being called out on the provocative language.

I've just woken up, so I need a few hours to read this properly and organise my thoughts. I'll come back later in the day.

So you can make the argument without framing it in deliberately provocative language. Good.

The reason I blame women is that they are the party that changed their role in society.

With feminism, which started before modern technology in the 1800s, women stopped doing their roles in society and adopted the men's role. They became the men's rivals instead of their partners in this life. They sought the power to terminate the life of their own kids and all kinds of really anti-society powers and behaviours. Watch what's happening in the US at the moment with the Lindsey Clancy craze. Abortion is not enough now. Not all women, but enough are pushing for child murder acceptance. Watch the American news to see what they're trying to do to the man that wanted to hold that monster responsible.

In Canada, feminists pushed for negligible sentences for women murdering their own children if the child is under 1 year old. Go on, check it for yourself. The maximum is five years in prison, I believe, but it's rare for a woman to get the maximum sentence; most get away with probation. Probation for killing your own baby!

Now tell me what happens to a man that kills his own baby? Probation?

The men are still mostly performing the same role; although they're really failing due to feminism.

Misandry is so accepted in society that when thousands of women online say that they hate men nobody bats an eye; they're often celebrated and elevated and given even bigger soapboxes to spread their views.

You're an author, and from your name I would assume you're a man. Go research about the publishing business right now. Can a man (especially white) get a book published in the traditional publishing channel? No, self-publishing online doesn't count.

It's a lopsided society, and that doesn't survive.

I don't hate women. I love women on the individual level. But yes, I admit it, I hate what women have become as a group. Does that make me a misogynist? Maybe; clearly you and @Julka would call me one.

I would call myself a humanist as I want all humanity to prosper and become better. Women, as a group, at the moment, are working against humanity, and I consider that very bad.

There are a lot of consequences for what women have become. Extremely low fertility is the most dire of them.

Now you can call me whatever you wish. I don't care.

Edite to Add:

Women don't usually start wars.

You are fully brainwashed. That statement can't be more wrong.

Go research about the publishing business right now. Can a man (especially white) get a book published in the traditional publishing channel?

Devil's Advocate here. The majority of those who read (fiction) are female, so it actually makes sense to prioritise female writers over male writers, because men lack the hormones and worldview to write in a style, and on topics, that are of interest to a mostly female user base.

It's not whatever 'ism' you wish to label as the reason, it's just sound economics and business acumen. Produce the content the consumer wishes to, err... consume.

It's not whatever 'ism' you wish to label as the reason, it's just sound economics and business acumen. Produce the content the consumer wishes to, err... consume.

Errr.... it's weird that now men, and especially white ones, are suddenly unable to produce what the market wants.

Go research it. It's not about white men not producing popular contents. You're rejected before they read your manuscript. You're not judged by what you're producing...

Errr.... it's weird that now men, and especially white ones, are suddenly unable to produce what the market wants.

History shows that women had to be men in order to get published. What has changed, rather than reading taste, is that publishers now have good data on who is reading what. This is data that was never available to publishers of old.

Publishers simply pivoted to where the money is. The majority of male writers simply don't provide the content the majority of readers wish to consume. It just so happens that the majority of readers happen to be female, so naturally there is going to be a disparity.

History shows that women had to be men in order to get published.

This is the reason that Harry Potter was written by J.K. Rowling and not Joanne Rowling.

History shows that women had to be men in order to get published.

That may have been true.

This is the reason that Harry Potter was written by J.K. Rowling and not Joanne Rowling.

But the J.K. Rowling thing is not true. Before I read one of the books or seen one of the movies, I recall quite clearly part of the publicity for the first book was how this unknown woman (I'm not sure if they said also a single mom) would sit in a coffee shop and work on her notes and manuscripts hoping against hope to make it.

So J.K. Rowling being a woman was front and centre and was never hidden, on the contrary, flaunted widely everywhere.

To quote from this article:

The author previously said she decided against including Joanne – her real name – because the publisher feared an audience of young boys would not want to read books by a woman.

Her 'story' as a struggling single mom wasn't part of the publicity of the books until well after they had become popular - around the publication of PoA or GoF.

You've done well if you remember "quite clearly" the publicity for the first book in 1997, given that the initial print run was about 500 hardback copies, more than half of which went to local libraries, and about 5000 paperback copies. [LINK]

That may have been true.

How things change. Now men have to become women in order to get published, particularly older, white men.

I've never known her as anything but a woman but Wikipedia (spit!) supports you.

Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, her birth name was Joanne Rowling with no middle name, nicknamed Jo. Staff at Bloomsbury Publishing suggested that she use two initials rather than her full name, as they believed young boys – their target audience – would not want to read a book written by a woman. She chose K as the second initial, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Rowling, and because of the ease of pronunciation of the two consecutive letters. Following her 2001 remarriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business.

She also uses the pen name Robert Galbraith for her Cormoran Strike novels. She has also allegedly used the pseudonum Newt Scamander but I have no idea what it was used for.

AJ

Errr.... it's weird that now men, and especially white ones, are suddenly unable to produce what the market wants.

I'm looking at the Amazon best seller list right now.

#1 is by Charles Spencer, a white man.
#4 is by Richard Osman, a white man.
#6 is by Nick Butterworth, a white man.
#8 is by Andrew Huberman, a white man.
#9 is by Xand van Tulleken, a white man.
#14 is by Christian Craighead, a white man.

White men are perfectly capable of producing what the market wants.

Maybe; clearly you and @Julka would call me one.

Again, I have repeatedly said I have not applied a label to you. I have commented on your statements. I do not know you well enough to apply a label, and I remain completely capable of separating the argument from the person making it. I don't know why you aren't.

You are fully brainwashed. That statement can't be more wrong.

Who started the wars in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Hell, let's go all the way back, who started WW1 and WW2?

You are fully brainwashed. That statement can't be more wrong.

Who started the wars in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Hell, let's go all the way back, who started WW1 and WW2?

Strawman much? Did I say that women started ALL the wars.

I disputed your statement that women don't wars. (Which is a common feminist trope.) "If women ruled there would be no wars" is commonly spewed by feminists.

Quick search:

18th–19th centuries

Catherine the Great. Russia's first Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) was declared by the Ottomans after Russian troops chased Polish rebels onto Ottoman soil, but Catherine's Polish meddling and southern ambitions created the crisis. She later annexed Crimea (1783); the Ottomans declared the second war (1787–1792). She also drove the partitions of Poland. This is the clearest case of a female sovereign running a multi-decade expansion program.

Empress Dowager Cixi. On 21 June 1900 she issued an imperial decree that was a de facto declaration of war on eleven foreign powers during the Boxer crisis. The Boxers were already attacking foreigners; she chose to back them and turn the uprising into a state war. It ended in disaster.

20th century (the two names that come up most)

Indira Gandhi and the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. India had trained and armed the Mukti Bahini and absorbed ~10 million refugees after Pakistan's crackdown in East Pakistan. On 3 December Pakistan launched preemptive air strikes. Gandhi then declared war. She chose the timing, the intervention, and the war aims (an independent Bangladesh). Pakistan fired the first official shots of the two-week war; India had been shaping the conflict for months.

Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War (1982). Argentina invaded first. Thatcher rejected a negotiated climb-down and sent a task force 8,000 miles to retake the islands. That was a choice to fight rather than cede sovereignty.

Since the start of this you've been regurgitating feminist talking points.

You get that you're doing exactly what you're accusing me of, right?

I disputed your statement that women don't wars.

I didn't say women never start wars. I said:

Women don't usually start wars.

Usually.

then:

Did I say that women started ALL the wars.

No, you didn't. And I didn't say that you did either. I also didn't say:

"If women ruled there would be no wars"

That's you putting words into my mouth. I didn't say women never start wars. But you did say:

You are fully brainwashed. That statement can't be more wrong.

So let's see shall we?

According to the Correlates of War (COW) dataset there were 49 inter-state wars between 1929 and 2003. Of those, zero were initiated by a country whose political leader was a woman.

Yes, I know you quoted both Indira Gandhi and Thatcher above, but while Gandhi was indeed PM in 1971, the war was started by Pakistan on 3rd December. You even acknowledge this in your search. You also acknowledge that Thatcher responded to Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. (I hate that you are making me defend anything that woman did).

Even so, if we treat these as two as "started by women", that's still 2 out of 49. That's about 4%. Meaning about 96% of those wars were not started by women.

So, yes, women don't usually start wars is a valid statement.

One final thing. you said:

Since the start of this you've been regurgitating feminist talking points.

Which is ironic given you started this by "regurgitating anti-feminist talking points." Once again, you are doing exactly what you accuse me of.

So, yes, women don't usually start wars is a valid statement.

Which in turn, is a little misleading, as the majority of leaders are men. This is an important distinction, as it skews the data set. In fact, you could actually say "Women don't usually start wars in the way women don't usually get testicular cancer."

Which in turn, is a little misleading, as the majority of leaders are men. This is an important distinction, as it skews the data set.

A perfectly valid and important point. We cannot know if women would start as many wars as men if they were leaders of countries as often as men are. We can only make statements based on the data in front of us.

Perhaps we should encourage more populations to elect female leaders to see whether it really leads to fewer wars. This is the only way we'll ever know.

women don't usually get testicular cancer."

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that the number of women with this type of cancer is negligible. Close to zero, in fact.

(Someone is now going to Google "women with bollock cancer" and give me a list, aren't they?)

Which is ironic given you started this by "regurgitating anti-feminist talking points."

I have never ever hidden the fact that I'm a staunch antifeminist. So well done you.

I also note that you continually accuse me of not engaging with your points, but you took a post of approx 800 words and responded to the last five, ignoring every point I made about other explainations for the low fertility rate. Again, you're doing what you accuse others of doing. You also didn't respond to any of my answers to your questions. I still await the links to research that backs up your opinions.

Even my comment about wars was at the end of an important point about conflating different kinds of immigration not being helpful when discussing issues, and you ignored the point I was making to accuse me of something I clearly hadn't done.

I suspect (but obviously have no proof) that you didn't read the whole post, dismissing it as 'feminist' and so not worthy of your attention.

On a separate note, legal immigration caused by the need to supplement a population due to falling fertility rate is a completely separate issue from the irregular migration (typically called the "small boats crisis" in the UK) of people fleeing political persecution and war zones. Conflating the two is not helpful. The first is only really a problem if you have an internal hierarchy of humanity, where you believe that people of some races or from some cultures are inherently superior to others for whatever reason.

The second is usually the result of political decisions made my men who hold power. Women don't usually start wars.

Even my comment about wars was at the end of an important point about conflating different kinds of immigration not being helpful when discussing issues, and you ignored the point I was making to accuse me of something I clearly hadn't done.

I didn't think this is worth addressing considering that I said in my original post that those in government 'they bring anybody they can get' (I said it twice).

They allow the boats (which are financed by NGOs backed by the government itself) for the same reason that in the US they didn't clamp down hard on illegal border crossings.

The legal channel can't bring enough people to handle the problem, so they allow illegals in, whichever way they come in. The legal channel can bring in enough people but that would be political suicide for government people, so they pretend that they are helpless in the face of desperate people fleeing war and whatever, meanwhile they're all economic migrants coming in to feed at the welfare trough.

You classify it as different, but it's the same thing with the same purpose and same end goal.

Did I address your point now?

They allow the boats (which are financed by NGOs backed by the government itself) for the same reason that in the US they didn't clamp down hard on illegal border crossings.

You have evidence for this you can share I assume? Evidence that explains why small boat crossings have fallen by 47% this year compared to last.

Did I address your point now?

It addressed it, but I'd prefer some actual evidence for your claims.

Any comments on the other points I have made? There have been quite a few over several posts.

Here's my substantial response to your post, as promised:

I quoted the whole thing because the whole thing is exactly what I'm saying. I'm discussing the issue on an intellectual level, but everybody seems not to be able to do that, and labels me as a misogynist.

As I said in my first response to this, if you want people to engage on an intellectual level, then don't start your post with deliberately provocative language. Even now, you insist on suggesting I called you a misogynist, when I have stated, quite clearly, that I haven't done that. I have not labelled you. As I have said repeatedly, I do not know you well enough to give you a label. You appear to be offended that I've pointed out the problem I have with some of the phrases you have used. That's not my problem. I can separate the argument from the person making it. You do not seem to be able to separate yourself from the argument you are making. Again, your problem, not mine.

(For anybody other than Grey Wolf reading this, try not to let your personal feelings of support for women affect your comprehension. Yes, hard, I know.)

Again, the irony of you saying this is quite, quite remarkable. You are clearly letting your personal feelings affect your comprehension of points people are making to you.

(No country has managed to solve the fertility problem. Their only solution to the problem that I stated before and you clearly understood has been importing more people to prop up the declining/aging population.
Having children in modern societies is a luxury. In farming societies, everybody wanted more kids because kids meant more working hands, meaning families with lots of children prospered. So children were a benefit and easily justified.
In modern life, children are not a benefit to their immediate parents. They're a responsibility and an economic load, plus time and opportunity cost. So every family fulfils its biological need for children with two kids or often just one and can't justify more because more children would cost more and keep the family in the baby/toddlers stage for much longer, which takes its toll on them (women AND men).

I've addressed this in a substantial post below. The rising costs of modern life, from housing to food, mean families cannot survive on a single wage. There is certainly an argument that if you cut the workforce in half (by preventing women from working), it would lead to a rise in salaries of those that remain, but this would still require business owners to accept lower profits, and the evidence of our own eyes and ears is that they would not do that. This would also not address the housing costs. The British economy is underpinned by property prices. Preventing women from working isn't suddenly going to mean men are earning enough to afford houses on one wage – that would require a salary increase of several hundred percent, costing businesses even more than before the women were excluded from the workplace.

The only way families would be able to afford to live on (even a substantially increased) single wage, would be if house prices were to come down. That's not going to happen; it would cost those at the top too much personal wealth.

Add in feminism and women's empowerment, where women live just like men, grow up, get educated, get a job, establish a life all on their own. Good for women. But modern societies where this is possible haven't existed long enough to modify the female brain not to want somebody better than themselves to complement their lives and build a family with.
I understand them. Why would you want to put up with another human if you don't have to? If that human doesn't enhance your life in one way or another, then your life is better without them. So any woman would want a man that out-earns her so that her lifestyle doesn't get affected much when she has to stop working to have children. But when the average woman now out-earns the average man of the same age due to various policies implemented by governments in modern countries, then finding a man that out-earns you becomes rare, leading to the drop in marriage and children. So a drop in fertility.

And this is where we reach a fundamental disagreement. One we are not going to get past. Your rhetoric here suggests (and this could just be me misreading it) that you think women are lesser than men. It suggests a resentment of women getting an education, getting a job, earning the same (or maybe even more — shock horror) as men. I cannot understand this attitude. It's not one I encounter in my day-to-day life. I work at a firm where the male-to-female ratio is roughly 1:6, yet men dominate its management.

This is not an unusual situation. Women make up about 35% of management positions in the UK (and, indeed, globally)

I simply don't recognise what you're describing here. Maybe I do live in a bubble. Maybe I am blind to the world around me. I look forward to you supplying links to the peer-reviewed research that shows this.

I understand all this. I was merely explaining that people in all levels of power, from city councils to the king in the UK, face an unsolvable problem. If you define the problem as keeping the country running well AND keeping everybody happy, then it's impossible in a declining society.
So their only option is to ignore everybody's happiness and import foreigners that boost the numbers, but upset the people who have lived their whole lives surrounded by their own kind. Many think of this as demographic replacement (conspiracy) and that it's done on purpose because people in power hate white people and they seek to replace them. Meanwhile, people in power have no other choice.

The issue I have with this argument is that legal immigration is only really a problem if one views the people coming to the country as somehow 'lesser' than those already there. I don't. Call me a "simp" or whatever the word was you've used elsewhere, but in my personal experience, the people I've encountered who've come to Britain to work have been lovely. My neighbours are from India. Lovely people. My former boss was from Nigeria. Lovely person. My wife is from France. She's lovely too, obviously.

"Importing foreigners" has not reduced my personal happiness. I may be strange. I may be an outlier. Or maybe I'm just not a bigot. I don't know.
I would suggest that when people do get 'upset' by people who may be different from themselves coming to live in their area, it's because they are being heavily influenced by 'bad actors' who seek wealth and power and see stirring up racial hatred as a shortcut to both.

We have been seeing this in Britain for well over a decade now. You can see it in the United States and other European countries too. Social media has made this easier to achieve. Bad actors within our countries are being supported by adversaries from other countries (most notably Russia).

So far, the holdout against this solution has been Japan, and their numbers are dwindling, their economy has been stagnant, and their debt has become huge for a country that is running normally (no wars or other upheaval) and used to be an economic powerhouse.

At the end of 2025, the number of foreign residents in Japan reached a record high of 4,125,395, according to the Ministry of Justice. This population accounts for roughly 3.35% of Japan's total estimated population.
This is lower than the UK, which has about 13 million foreign-born residents (about 19% of the population); that's hardly a 'holdout'.

Personally, if I were a dictator with absolute power, the solution is doable, but of course, it would label me as a misogynist. My simple, but horribly misogynistic, solution is this:
No woman is allowed into university or the job market until she has enough children. Three children would free the woman from my misogynystic rules. 4 children or more would free her from taxes also. And for the nitpickers, if the woman is barren and can't have kids, then yes, she would be exempt, and we would have to have a mechanism that minimizes cheating.
This way, women would be forced (yes, terrible word), for a period of their lives, to find men to marry and put up with. Men wouldn't have competition in the job market in their early life and would be able to have families and children.
But I'm no dictator, and this would have all the women up in arms with the support of all the simps. So it's impossible to implement in a modern society.

And thank God for that. Your vision of the future sounds awful.

Frankly, even the language you've used here is awful. "if the woman is barren". What century is this?

I also like this: "we would have to have a mechanism that minimizes cheating." This applies to Men, I assume? We want to stop men from cheating. Not there would be any women for them to 'cheat' with, as all the women would need to be tied to a man in order to live. But let's play along. What would the mechanism? Castration? Public flogging? Stoning?

So the unfortunate reality is, modernity seems to be an evolutionary dead end. It probably leads to depopulation and decline.
What happens in 30 years when all the fertility of Africa isn't enough to prop up the numbers of the rest of the world?

I wouldn't worry about it. According to the new AI film on Netflix that I saw last night, we'll all be killed by our AI overlords before 2050, so that solves the problem.

Even now, you insist on suggesting I called you a misogynist, when I have stated, quite clearly, that I haven't done that.

You said above:

Both of which many people would view as misogynistic. I certainly do.

So you're not saying "You are a misogynist", but you're saying that my views and expression are misogynystic. Same difference.

The only way families would be able to afford to live on (even a substantially increased) single wage, would be if house prices were to come down. That's not going to happen; it would cost those at the top too much personal wealth.

It's not only financial. Many countries have tried to use monetary incentives to stimulate fertility, and they all failed miserably. If it were financial, then the financial incentives would work.

Your rhetoric here suggests (and this could just be me misreading it) that you think women are lesser than men.

No, not lesser but different. Men and women are supposed to be complementary to each other for a healthy society. The men are still trying to play the same role, not very successfully, but the same role. Women stopped playing their role. So society is breaking down.

The issue I have with this argument is that legal immigration is only really a problem if one views the people coming to the country as somehow 'lesser' than those already there.

Again, no. Not lesser. But different. Different people have different cultures and motivations. For a good country to keep going and its people stay happy, social harmony is essential. The bullshit slogan "Diversity is our strength" has never been true.

I've been in close contact with plenty of Muslims. You know their main motivation for immigrating to Western countries? The Islamification of the land.

In the Middle East, in mosques, young men are often told they should go to the West to help make it Islamic. That they are being welcomed into the West because Western men have been unable to impregnate their women and they need the Muslim men to do it for them.

They are not just going to live in the West and integrate. They are going there to take over. Why do you think they block streets and important places for 'prayers'? They are asserting their increasing cultural dominance.

You may not care about that, but it's happening.

At the end of 2025, the number of foreign residents in Japan reached a record high of 4,125,395, according to the Ministry of Justice. This population accounts for roughly 3.35% of Japan's total estimated population.

Yes, they are succumbing to the pressure of keeping things running. They have a huge elderly population and not enough young natives people to take care of them.

Frankly, even the language you've used here is awful. "if the woman is barren". What century is this?

You're tone policing my words too? Typical.

I also like this: "we would have to have a mechanism that minimizes cheating." This applies to Men, I assume?

No. Are you purposefully misunderstanding? Cheating the system by pretending to be infertile (barren) so that they can go to university and not have to play their role in keeping up the population.

I wouldn't worry about it. According to the new AI film on Netflix that I saw last night, we'll all be killed by our AI overlords before 2050, so that solves the problem.

Or maybe we'll all die in the meteorite that is bound to earth in 2032. Look it up. It's a real concern. (Asteroid 2024 YR4, not going to really hit.)

So you're not saying "You are a misogynist", but you're saying that my views and expression are misogynystic. Same difference.

Not the same at all. I can separate the argument from the person. You, it appears, cannot. Not my problem.

We live in a time when many, many people are fed views and opinions on social media (Facebook and X being the Prime culprits) in a drip, drip fashion, that gradually results in them using terms and rhetoric that their past selves would be horrified to see them use.

It's completely possible for people to parrot racist, sexist terms and views that don't reflect what they actually believe deep down, simply because it's become 'normal' for them to see other people using it in their feeds.

Often, but obviously not always, when its pointed out to them what they are saying and how they are saying it, they are ashamed.

I have seen this happen.

Therefore criticising an argument or how a view is expressed is not criticism of the person because you cannot know upon first hearing the argument, what is actually in a person's heart.

I find, however, that those who object most strongly to certain terms being used to describe their views don't really like what they see in the mirror being held up to them.

Therefore criticising an argument or how a view is expressed is not criticism of the person because you cannot know upon first hearing the argument, what is actually in a person's heart.

You're right.

I concede this one.

You're right.

I concede this one

Thank you.

You're tone policing my words too? Typical.

'Policing'? No, you're completely free to use whatever language you like. I have no intention of stopping you.

I also have every right to tell you I find it horrible.

That's how free speech works.

'Policing'? No, you're completely free to use whatever language you like. I have no intention of stopping you.

I also have every right to tell you I find it horrible.

That's how free speech works.

That's how policing works on the internet. You express your displeasure and disapproval of my choice of words hoping to discourage me from using them in the future lest I offend your sensibilities.

That's how policing works on the internet. You express your displeasure and disapproval of my choice of words hoping to discourage me from using them in the future lest I offend your sensibilities.

Mate, use whatever fucking terms you like. I'm not offended, and I won't stop you.

I will tell you I think they are horrible. Not to discourage you from using them, just because I think they are horrible.

Again, free speech. That's how it works.

It seems to me that you're the one getting offended at being told I don't like what you say.

Still waiting for research links, by the way. Sure they'll be along any second now.

Still waiting for research links, by the way. Sure they'll be along any second now.

Do you somehow think this discussion is my PhD dissertation where I need to prove the validity of my research in hoping to get the approval of some anonymous people on the internet? I'm sure you're all lovely people, but come on...

Do you somehow think this discussion is my PhD dissertation where I need to prove the validity of my research in hoping to get the approval of some anonymous people on the internet?

Not at all, I just think if you're going to make so of the more outrageous claims you've been making, you'd at least point people in the direction of evidence to back up those claims. Without doing that, you can't really expect people just to take your word for it or take anything you claim seriously.

It's that old meme isn't it?

"what's your source?", "trust me, bro".

Couple that with your use of the term "simps" and your subsequent definition and you can understand why I reached to conclusion that you were a much younger man.

The definition came from Grok. But I use the word because it describes perfectly some characters that I met in my life. I think I'm even mature enough to admit that in my early to fairly advanced years, I was a simp. I was raised by my pre-boomer parents to be a simp.

It took a while and many bad experiences to shake my own simpiness away.

Your work in big data would be genuinely interesting to me if you were willing to share it. Genuinely.

I'm not sure what I can share anymore. Most of the stuff that I worked on was either under NDA or worse, classified. I'll try to remember something that wasn't.

I learned the reality of the female nature.

Explains a lot. To me at least. Men who have had bad personal experiences with women do develop different attitudes than those of us who've only had good experiences. I would never, however, assume that my experience with women uncovered a universal truth about the nature of all women. It taught me about the women I know.

Well, yes, of course, different experiences lead to different impressions. Consider yourself one of the lucky 20% or so of men in good relationships.

It could be my luck, or it could be something in my terrible personality that attracted fairly nasty women.

I was raised to never hit women and lived by that most of my life until I was stuck in a situation once where I was basically forced to administer a spanking to an adult woman, and I hated every second of it.

It's that old meme isn't it?

"what's your source?", "trust me, bro".

Exactly.

I'm old enough and probably ornery enough that I don't seek to prove myself anymore. I'm beyond that.

For every study that you can find on the internet that proves your point, I can find two peer-reviewed studies that contradict it. Especially since these things involve a lot of statistics.

You know the old adage: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

For example, how do I prove to you what my childhood friend and still best friend, who was a cop in a big city, shared with me? He said that they're not allowed to say it publicly, but that over 95% of all reported rape accusations he worked on were false. Is he lying? Could be, but why would he lie to me, somebody he's known for over 50 years? I have no way to prove it, but it's something that my own experiences corroborate. Many people would say this statement is anecdotal and misogynystic.

I have two questions.

1)

I've lately been reading a lot of Confucius,

Why? Is it punishment for something awful you did in a past life?

2) what even is a "simp"? I'm probably too old to understand this term.

2) what even is a "simp"? I'm probably too old to understand this term.

A simp means a guy who is overly attentive, submissive, or eager to please a woman—especially one who isn't reciprocating—in the hope of getting affection, sex, or approval.

Basically guys that pedestalise women and believe that women are sugar and spice and everything nice, and that women's farts don't stink.

believe that women are sugar and spice and everything nice, and that women's farts don't stink

I've been married for nearly 25 years and have a daughter. I can tell you categorically than women's farts do indeed stink. Pretty bad, actually. Especially after a curry.

A simp means a guy who is overly attentive, submissive, or eager to please a woman—especially one who isn't reciprocating—in the hope of getting affection, sex, or approval.

The worst thing about this term and its definition, is that it seems to me that the people who use it genuinely believe that the only reason a man would be pleasant to a woman is in pursuit of sex, rather than, you know, just behaving like a decent person.

just behaving like a decent person.

Read the definition again. Behaving like a decent person is vastly different from being 'overly attentive, submissive, or eager to please a woman'.

Calling someone a simp is meant as an insult. And yes, there are way too many simps in this world. Simps are the pawns of women to be used and sacrificed.

'overly attentive, submissive, or eager to please a woman'.

A meaningless definition because how is it measurable in any meaningful way? Who defines "overly attentive", the person giving the attention or the person using the insult? If the latter (which, let's be honest, is what you mean), then any attention at all could be classed as "overly".

Similarly, what do you mean by "Submissive"? Does this mean *always* letting her get her way? Or just "sometimes"? Or does it mean "Not always an arsehole to her"?

As for "Eager to please"... Shouldn't we all be eager to please the people we love? I bought my wife a big bar of chocolate last week because I knew she'd be happy with it; does that make me a simp? What about when I bought my daughter a new pair of trainers over the summer?

You keep insisting you don't hate women, then keep expressing views and using language that says the exact opposite.

I find this confusing. (Also, still not putting a label on you, just making an observation)

A meaningless definition

Sure.

You keep insisting you don't hate women, then keep expressing views and using language that says the exact opposite.

A wise man once said:

Therefore criticising an argument or how a view is expressed is not criticism of the person because you cannot know upon first hearing the argument, what is actually in a person's heart.

Men's instinct is to be protective of women. When men, like you and the simp I used to be, hear something that casts women in a negative light, our first gut reaction is to find it hateful. It's ingrained in us and hard to overcome.

Believe me, it takes quite a bit to get a simp like I used to be to see the reality of most (not all) women's nature. I would recommend reading some evolutionary psychology books, but you would accuse me of hawking some red-pill wares. How about reading 'The Manipulated Man'? That's from the 60s or 70s, way before the red pill and written by a woman and it's brutal. Try starting to read it, I would expect you to put it down, no forget that, you would throw it away, after no more than 20 pages.

I already stated it before. I don't hate women on the individual level, but what women as a group have become under the influence of feminism (classic and modern), yes, that I hate.

Would that make me a misogynist? No. An anti-feminist? a resounding YES.

Toxic masculinity is a huge problem

We've had feminism and women's empowerment for the last what? 65 years? lets start from 1960...

Women have more rights than men, more government support than men, more legal support than men, more educational support than men. Women are outperforming men in so many fields.

Way more boys are being raised by their mothers. Schools are predominantly staffed by women and boys are being taught by women.

What did that lead to?

Terrible society.

We don't have toxic masculinity. What we have is lack of masculinity. Boys and girls are being shaped by women, and I would say more like mis-shaped by women.

What we actually have is toxic femininity. Witness the Lindsay Clancy thing, if that's not toxic femininity I don't know what is.

What we need is more masculinity and less femininity in society.

You are so brainwashed.

You have a son? God help him.

Dude you're the one who brought up the book that gives a fantastic example of toxic masculinity, I don't know what to tell you here.

Read the book.

Way more boys are being raised by their mothers.

Damn, if only your master plan to fix the issue didn't legally force women to do nothing but raise their children.

Are you being purposefully obtuse?

That was an unexpected and, frankly, brilliant answer.
😉

When the emperor embodies the ideal of the Confucian Gentleman and strives to cultivate the virtues of ritual propriety, humankindness, and filial piety, the people he leads will be inherently inspired to do the same. When he fails to cultivate such virtues and instead has to coerce his people by edict into proper behavior, society degrades.

You know, this sounds awfully familiar. I can't think why. Is it possible there's a nation on earth where is happening right before our eyes?

I mean, we had Boris, and he certainly wasn't the embodiment of a Confucian Gentleman by any means but we didn't see Britain become a degrad--

No wait, that's exactly what we saw.

I'll ignore all the above as argumentation and nitpicking. Not worth my time addressing, especially point by point.

Another lack of imagination, you really can't think of a reason somebody might say your proposal is bad outside of a) being a woman or b) being a simp.

I'm sure every person will find within themselves various reasons to hate my unworkable solution. But the main ones are personal interest of women who prefer a hedonistic and selfish life, and the simps that hope that they'll get laid if they do and say what the women want. I already said that it would never be implemented even if it would work.

Since you're all so smart and all have read the studies and understood the world and its inner workings better than my retarded self, how come nobody has yet figured a way to fix the fertility issue faced by the whole world? I'm purposefully ignoring the anti-humanists that think there are too many people and that humans are a virus on earth that need to be eradicated.

I'm a dumb troglodyte, and I understand nothing. Enlighten me. Suggest a solution that hasn't been tried and failed, that may actually work to fix the fertility issue so that governments don't need to prop up their population numbers.

How about artificial wombs that bypass the need for women? But then who raises the kids?

How about breeding farms where we put women in like cattle? No that would be too inhumane.

Go on, what do you think would 'entice' women to have more kids in the most loving, happy and cheerful manner? Well at least convince them to stop murdering their own children in and out of the womb...

I'll ignore all the above as argumentation and nitpicking. Not worth my time addressing, especially point by point.

And yet you get upset when people dismiss your arguments and don't give them the time and attention you feel they deserve.

Pot, meet Kettle. I'm sure you'll have lots of babies together.

Genuinely though, can I ask a personal question? How old are you? No, let me rephrase that, which 'Generation' do you belong to? I'm also fascinated to know which of many 'influencers' in the 'manosphere' has boiled your brain quite so completely. I'm tempted to say it's Tate, but that's because he's the only one I'm really aware of and that's only because of all the charges against him.

Still trying to work out what the term 'simp' means.

Still waiting for the links to all the evidence and research that's backs up all the claims you've made.

Genuinely though, can I ask a personal question? How old are you? No, let me rephrase that, which 'Generation' do you belong to? I'm also fascinated to know which of many 'influencers' in the 'manosphere' has boiled your brain quite so completely. I'm tempted to say it's Tate, but that's because he's the only one I'm really aware of and that's only because of all the charges against him.

I'm a very young 65 years old. You can call me immature if you wish, considering that my youngest son is 9.

I don't listen to manosphere influencers. All of them are men trying to make money by influencing other men. They all use it as a shtick to sell something or another.

But I've been through enough relationships and personal failures that I learned the reality of the female nature.

I also worked in big data, and I like to study the second-order effects of individual decisions on the group scale or aggregate level. At one point, I did study how individual decisions by young women (like going to university, getting advanced education, getting a job, and establishing an individual life) shrink their already small fertility window, thus reducing fertility in the population in general.

Interesting. It's just that much of what you say sounds like it comes directly from the kind of podcasts that are younger men are listening to. Couple that with your use of the term "simps" and your subsequent definition and you can understand why I reached to conclusion that you were a much younger man.

Your work in big data would be genuinely interesting to me if you were willing to share it. Genuinely.

I'm always happy to read and learn.

I would say though that this:

I learned the reality of the female nature.

Explains a lot. To me at least. Men who have had bad personal experiences with women do develop different attitudes than those of us who've only had good experiences. I would never, however, assume that my experience with women uncovered a universal truth about the nature of all women. It taught me about the women I know.

Build programs that help men learn how to be valuable partners so that they have something to offer a spouse besides a paycheck and insurance; this will help resolve your problem of women not wanting partners because now there will be partners available who are worth partnering with. Build programs that make it possible for families to be started when both parents are young - that means a lot of things but as a few examples:

Basically blame the bad men and throw money at the problem. All been tried. All failed.

There are multiple studies showing how much in home work and parenting time modern men have been contributing and it's a huge increase from my parents' time, and it hasn't worked.

There are multiple studies that show that the more chores a man does in the home, the less sex and compassion from his wife he gets.

Again, every country tried throwing money at families, free daycare, etc... It hasn't worked anywhere.

Anything else?

Where in there do you see me blaming anybody?

from above:

Build programs that help men learn how to be valuable partners so that they have something to offer a spouse besides a paycheck and insurance; this will help resolve your problem of women not wanting partners because now there will be partners available who are worth partnering with.

Means 'men are not valuable partners' in other words, men suck. If that's not blaming men I don't know what is.

If all you took away from my post was "throw money at families", then your reading comprehension is as bad or worse than your stats comprehension. I'm not your third grade teacher, take it up with them.

From above:

Build programs that make it possible for families to be started when both parents are young - that means a lot of things but as a few examples: housing needs to be available to young couples at a price they can afford, with enough space to raise children. Childcare needs to be available and affordable so that having children doesn't derail every other aspect of your life. Healthcare needs to be affordable and accessible so that women are able to have children on a life-schedule that works for them, as opposed to being trapped and forced into having children they don't want. Schooling should be available, child development opportunities (camps, sports, parks, etc) need to be available and accessible. Hell, let's build some social programs to help young parents connect with other young parents for social development of their children.

Means:

Government housing: Money
Government childcare: Money
Government Healthcare: Money
Government Schools: Money

All you mentioned has been tried. Scandinavian countries have all that. Japan has all that.

All failed.

I asked you to mention something that hasn't been tried and failed already.

You're just arguing to argue.

You're incredibly scatter-brained and all of the place here and if this is abnormal for you, maybe it's an early warning for something that's not too late to be caught.

So you're now resorting to calling me senile.

Sure, way to go buddy.

The hedonistic and selfish life of working a job and being self-supporting? That seems like the opposite of hedonism and selfishness.

Depends on the job, surely? Some jobs are definitely more enjoyable and more selfish than others.

Depends on the job, surely? Some jobs are definitely more enjoyable and more selfish than others.

Over a million American women between 18 and 25 on OnlyFans. That's one in 9 women of that age. Hedonistic for sure.

If you can figure out a way to make people want to have more kids, a lot of countries will be thrilled

I've been thinking about this for years.

What I eventually did, was look at when countries started falling under the required birth rate threshold. The most striking thing I noticed, was that it starts when countries get to a certain 'technological' level.

However, that's a false summit. The actual answer appears to be tax level. The more a country's inhabitants are taxed, the less they seem desirous of having children.

If you compare when a country starts to have a negative birth rate, it corresponds with when both parties have to work. And the reason both parties have to work, is because everything is so dammed expensive, that to have even a basic quality of life, both parties have to be in employment of some type.

If you look at societies with a positive birth rate, one party does not work. In the majority of cases (take the Middle East for example; it's the female half).

The main instigator for this, is tax. You are taxed at source, on your income. You are taxed on the goods you buy. You are taxed on the fuel you need to get to work/to get your shopping. You are taxed on the fuel you need to heat your house. You are taxed on the alcohol you buy. You are taxed on the clothes you buy. You are taxed on the money you leave in your estate. You are taxed on the money you save. You are taxed on the properties you buy. Etc etc.

People can't afford to have kids. It's as simple as that. If you want people to have more kids, give them more money, by taking less from them. If you want a positive birth rate, then a family needs to be provided for by one person in that household.

This will never happen, because governments want both people in a relationship to be working, to both pay tax, to both 'contribute' to the economy, so they both can pay tax. Until governments realise their own policies are to blame, nothing will ever change.

And the reason both parties have to work, is because everything is so dammed expensive, that to have even a basic quality of life, both parties have to be in employment of some type.

These were my initial thoughts too. Housing is a prime example (which doesn't have much to do with tax, but let's have that discussion another day).

In 1975 the average house price was around £11K. The average salary was around 4.5K. So houses costs around two and a half times the average wage. A 10% deposit was well within reach if you saved for a few years and the mortgage repayments weren't going to be onerous.

When I bought my first house at the turn of the millennium, the average house price was around £85K, while average salary was around £18.5K - that's about 4.5x difference. Deposits went from being around a quarter of the average yearly salary to nearly half, and mortgage repayments are starting to eat up more of the monthly take home pay.

Today, the average house price in the UK is around £270K, and average salaries are around £40K. That's nearly SEVEN times the average salary. SEVEN! Deposits are nearly 70% of an average yearly salary and mortgage repayments are crippling.

These figures are readily available with a simple internet search. The term I used was "average uk house price vs salary over time".

If you want to know why people aren't having kids, this is one of the main reasons. If you can't afford to buy your own home on one salary, which is becoming increasingly difficult, then you lack the stability to raise a family. In the 70s, you could live in the same council house for decades. Now, private landlords offer short-term tenancies of a year or two years. Private rents are also sky high, making saving for that deposit even more difficult.

Add in that if both parties need to work just to keep the roof over your head, be it rented or owned, having children then incurs child care costs, which I know from experience are shockingly high. Need child care for two children? Three? It's just not possible for most working people.

So the question we should be asking is why home ownership is out of reach for so many young people. We need to build more homes. We need more genuinely affordable homes and we need more council houses and fewer private landlords. House builders buy up land then take their sweet time to build on it because controlling the supply means higher prices and higher profits. Then we have local populations objecting to large housing developments near them because it affects the value of their own homes. You can be damn sure that the people of Piddington would kick up a fuss (and probably hold another referendum) if Taylor Wimpey came along and said they were building 1000 houses on the outskirts of the village - even if the planning did require them to build the amenities to go with it, eg, a school, shops, a pub, etc.

We also need to ask why wages are so low. Tesco made £2.5 BILLION profit in 2025 (before tax). BILLION. That's 92,600 times the average UK salary. And yet they pay their shop workers at or around minimum wage. There's no reason that Tesco couldn't pay their staff more (so they no longer have to claim Universal Credit in many cases) or reduce the prices in stores, and still make a huge profit.

Would a profit of £1,000,000,000 really be that much worse than £2,500,000,000? It's still an unimaginable amount of money.

Tesco paid their CEO £10,800,000 last year. That's over 200 times the highest paid store managers (around £50K), and over 500 times highest paid cashiers. I'm only picking out Tesco because they are the most visible business in the UK. Most PLCs will be in similar (but not quite as extreme) positions.

"Women are to blame for the fertility crisis" is a lazy reduction of a far more widespread systemic problem. If we want people to have more children, the problems extend far, far beyond "women don't submit to their men anymore".

On a separate note, legal immigration caused by the need to supplement a population due to falling fertility rate is a completely separate issue from the irregular migration (typically called the "small boats crisis" in the UK) of people fleeing political persecution and war zones. Conflating the two is not helpful. The first is only really a problem if you have an internal hierarchy of humanity, where you believe that people of some races or from some cultures are inherently superior to others for whatever reason.

The second is usually the result of political decisions made my men who hold power. Women don't usually start wars.

What you are implying as to the cause of the poor birth rate, isn't taxes, or even house prices. It's greed.

Greed by those using housing as an income, rather than a necessity. Which can be 'cured' overnight by simply making it illegal to own more than one 'house'. Make buy-to-let illegal, and make it illegal for companies to own property for reasons other than housing their own staff. Do that, and the housing market will crash overnight and people who invested in their property will lose millions. Since those people are also voters, no Government would do such an insane thing, even though it would benefit the country and populace in the long run.

You are correct; no company needs to pay its executives more than ten times that earned by the average employee in the company. It's just greed. I know Companies will trot out the usual PR statement of "We need to employ the best for our company and to do that, we need to pay the best to attract them." Which, on the face of it, makes business sense. But you can get around that. Simply make it law that no company can pay its executives/management more than six times the average wage of its average employee. It has to be universal or it won't work. If all the firms have a similar wage ceiling, then you are going to curb the revolving door of management because you remove the financial incentive to do so.

The Western World has normalised the practice of "You are only successful, if you are rich". If you are not earning at least six figures, you have failed in life.

It all boils down to money. Who has it, and who doesn't. For some, they have so much money, that they are not even going to be able to spend it all before they die, so why continue to amass it? That behaviour starts to look more like a mental illness than sound financial acumen. It's almost as if they have so much money, that there is no longer a reason for existing. There is nothing left to strive for, other than their ranking on some Rich List.

What you are implying as to the cause of the poor birth rate, isn't taxes, or even house prices. It's greed.
Greed by those using housing as an income, rather than a necessity. Which can be 'cured' overnight by simply making it illegal to own more than one 'house'. Make buy-to-let illegal, and make it illegal for companies to own property for reasons other than housing their own staff. Do that, and the housing market will crash overnight and people who invested in their property will lose millions. Since those people are also voters, no Government would do such an insane thing, even though it would benefit the country and populace in the long run.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. It's not just that the people with wealth in property are voters, it's that quite often they fund the political parties. The main reason for the "back to the office" drive after COVID was that commercial landlords were scared that companies would need less office space if everyone worked from home and they would lose money as a result. That's why so many commentators in the media went all in on "working from home is lazy" etc.
Every problem in the West can be traced back to greed, both individual and corporate greed. No one needs to be a Trillionaire. No one needs to be a billionaire. Corporations don't need to make such staggering profits. What happens to those profits? They are paid out in dividends to already-rich individuals with large portfolios or pension funds. In either case, the money gets hoarded instead of being recycled back into the economy.

You are correct; no company needs to pay its executives more than ten times that earned by the average employee in the company. It's just greed. I know Companies will trot out the usual PR statement of "We need to employ the best for our company and to do that, we need to pay the best to attract them." Which, on the face of it, makes business sense. But you can get around that. Simply make it law that no company can pay its executives/management more than six times the average wage of its average employee. It has to be universal or it won't work. If all the firms have a similar wage ceiling, then you are going to curb the revolving door of management because you remove the financial incentive to do so.

Exactly. Only, it needs to be a worldwide thing because the top earners are mobile. Why stay in Britain (or even Europe) and be faced with a wage cap if you can head across the ocean and earn obscene amounts? The only reason to do it would be "patriotism" – but as we all know, patriotism is for the working class, not the owning class. Even Richard Tice, one of Reforms "Patriots" has a base in Dubai that he'll inevitably run to when Reform finally collapses in on itself.

The Western World has normalised the practice of "You are only successful, if you are rich". If you are not earning at least six figures, you have failed in life.

It all boils down to money. Who has it, and who doesn't. For some, they have so much money that they are not even going to be able to spend it all before they die, so why continue to amass it? That behaviour starts to look more like a mental illness than sound financial acumen. It's almost as if they have so much money, that there is no longer a reason for existing. There is nothing left to strive for, other than their ranking on some Rich List.

It's tossed around so much these days it's genuinely lost meaning, but it's easy to forget just how much one billion of any currency is. One Thousand Million. I said above the average salary in the UK is about £40,000. It would therefore take the average earner 25,000 YEARS to earn one billion pounds.
The average working lifetime is about fifty years (assuming you start at 18 and retire at 68). So 25,000 years is 500 working lifetimes.
Just to be clear for those at the back, it would take the average working person in Britain 500 working lifetimes to earn One Billion pounds.
That's not an opinion. It's Maths.
To put it in context, Forbes reports Musk's net worth today at $950 billion, which is about £700 billion.
That's 350,000 working lifetimes at average salary.
Women not having babies isn't the problem. People hoarding more wealth than most people could earn in hundreds of millions of lifetimes is. (And yet, people will still defend it.)

Every problem in the West can be traced back to greed

That's probably true. The small boat migrants aren't refugees because they set sail from a safe country. They just prefer the UK's benefits largesse to that of France.

AJ

If that were true, they'd all be heading for Germany, not Britain.
[Source]

Country-Cash payments for asylum seekers
Germany-€202 a month in reception centres, €455 a month in community housing.
France-€48 a week in government accommodation, €100 a week if unallocated.
Spain-€56 a month in reception centres, plus catering and basic expenses (clothing, transport).
Netherlands-€73 a week uncatered; €54 if dinner provided (less for subsequent household members).
Denmark-DKK 443 (€59) a week uncatered, rising to DKK 701 (€94) if claim substantively processed and applicant complies with centre contract.
UK-£49 (€57) a week uncatered. £10 (€12) a week catered.

'Largesse' includes the ease of claiming and the likelihood of being accepted.

What's your explanation for migrants leaving safe countries like France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden to risk their lives crossing the channel? The French government blames our benefits system.

I realise the number of illegals is actually quite small compared to the quota the EU would foist upon us if we were stupid enough to rejoin (but nobody would be that stupid, would they?) But geographically we're a small country so wherever they get placed, they're going to represent a huge culture shock.

AJ

Usually (Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands for one), but they are often the reason for the fight in the first place.

Thatcher. How can one person be so responsible for so much of what is wrong with modern Britian? Quite incredible when you think about it.

High energy prices compared to the rest of Europe? Thatcher's sale of the utility companies.

Sewage being dumped in Rivers? Thatcher's sell-off of the water companies.

Sky high housing prices? Thatcher's "right to buy" resulting in the sale of all the council houses.

Thatcher (and Reagan) convinced the world that "trickle-down" economics was a real thing. What we actually have is "trickle-up" (actually, it's more of a flood than a trickle). The gap between the haves and the have-nots was supposed to shrink. It's widened every year for the last half a century.

You have no disagreement with me about that.

And yet there are plenty of people who would disagree with it. She's still worshipped in the Tory party to the extent that we got a month of a Thatcher-cosplay as a Prime Minister.