20 hours ago, Lindsey. said:

Idek if this is the right thread to post this but I'm sure someone will move it if needed!

It's more of a general rant, I'm just losing faith in humanity as each day goes on. You read about everything that's happening in the US and think "god, at least we'll never be that bad" but honestly we are so headed that way and I don't think I quite realised just how quickly it's happening until recently. I'm quite fortunate in that a lot of my friends and the people I surround myself with all share similar views on y'know basic human rights etc but I'm constantly being challenged on my views at work right now (by a group of ignorant young white men no less) and it's really getting to me. I work in an environment where as a gay woman I am the minority, I have a colleague who is also a gay woman but the 10 other men we work with are all the text book definition of socially privileged. There are a few that I know agree with me and my colleague but they won't verbally back us, they just shy away from the topics or try to put a stop to the discussion which doesn't actually help. It's became more of a problem at work recently as we have a new apprentice who is 19 years old, thinks he knows everything but has some of the most horrific and backwards views I've ever heard but he doesn't have the knowledge to back up why he feels the way he does, hes obviously just regurgitating stuff he's heard elsewhere. He constantly uses offensive slurs regarding race, disabilities, sexuality, just everything and I call him out every time which just makes him try and debate with me, thinking he's smart or something. 100% he's doing it as a way to try and talk down at me as a woman and thinks it's going to win him brownie points with the other bigoted guys in my team. I just don't really know how to approach it as the only other person that speaks up is the other woman I work with and nothing I've tried so far is getting through to him.

People are entitled to their own opinions but I just don't think human rights and treating people equally should ever be a matter of debate and the use of slurs is just never justified? There's so many other words you can use in place of those ones that won't offend anyone but you're actively choosing the ones that will cause a reaction? He says this in front of our manager as well and he just doesn't say anything, the 19 year old's argument is always "well there's no ____ people in here so how can I offend them?"

I've told him I'm going to start making a list of every slur or offensive term he uses and write an appropriate word next to it that he can use instead and he'll need to study it every day until he learns what's okay and what isn't and I'm genuinely serious 😅

I’m not sure if the environment you work in but that would never be acceptable in the civil service.

Is there an equality commission style bureau in Scotland - if so you could take the company to the cleaners.

Do we reckon the Russian bribes stuff might be the first undoing of Farage?

No matter how much Reform are trying to bury the story and change the narrative, it keeps coming up.

We love someone who's actively against Farage getting his lines out in media airtime, thanks Zach!

It's a huge weakness for Reform and hopefully all other parties seize upon it. Having lived through the Conservatives surviving numerous scandals because there are right-wing forces aligned to them, I'm cautious about it having any long-term effect, but it should continue to dog them at least.

Remember Lucy Connelly? She's the woman who was sentenced to 31 months in prison for calling for people to burned alive. Farage and his followers were outraged and called her a political prisoner. Someone who was convicted of threatening to kill Farage got a five year sentence. Farage said that wasn't enough.

Saw another red cross painted on a roundabout yesterday.

The thing about these flag lads is that they say it's about national pride. Where was their national pride when the England women's football team won the Euros in July? Or when the women's rugby team won the Rugby World Cup?

Farage's fascists introduced a ten-minute rule Bill today calling for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In a sane world, it would have been defeated overwhelmingly. This is what actually happened.

The Labour frontbench didn't vote. Sixty-three Labour backbenchers voted against. It isn't unusual for minister to abstain from a vote on a motion brought by a minor party, but you might have thought that a government led by a former human rights lawyer would have made the effort. The Tories who bothered to vote backed Farage. The Lib Dems backed sanity and voted against. On countless occasions, I have asked people advocating leaving the ECHR to say which rights they are particularly keen to leave for themselves. I have never received a reply. It just seems that there a lot of people keen to join an exclusive club whose only current members are Russia and Belarus.

I see Reform had a small rally in my home town of Barnsley yesterday. No Farage as he probably chickened out due to what happened last time. Was during the '24 election campaign and he arrived in his bus and it got stormed and attacked by protestors and police just managed to protect him and get him away fast.

Seems Reform reckon they can score an election pact with the Tories ahead of a GE. This would make it very difficult for the other parties.

14 minutes ago, Rooney said:

Seems Reform reckon they can score an election pact with the Tories ahead of a GE. This would make it very difficult for the other parties.

They probably could tbh...

Fearful of what the country will look like if they get into power.

It feels like we're sleepwalking into it.

JFC... why would he do this, even if he was paid to do it??

Because he knows that useful idiots will end up disseminating the video with comments like “look what this eejit Nigel Farage has done now”, so everyone’s social media feeds are now filled with Farage’s face, therefore increasing his ubiquity in people’s minds. And before you say “but I’m so smart and wonderful, I’D never vote for Nigel Farage just because I see his face everywhere”, that may be the case, but the nature of social media means that when a video is shared, it will have inevitably fall into the feed of many people for whom it could tip them into voting for Reform UK (and before you say that’s not rational, you’re right, it isn’t, but I don’t believe that many people come to their decisions rationally, myself included).

So basically it’s evidence of the maxim that the cheapest way to do PR is to let your enemies to your promotion for you. Farage appears to know that being omnipresent on social media is key to keeping himself and his party in the public eye, which is why he still does those Cameo videos whilst still on the sizeable salary he gets as an MP and TV presenter, and why he puts so much stock in his TikTok presence to get his face out there (I’d read recently that he’s the UK politician with the largest following on social media, I think only Zarah Sultana comes close, but I would need to look that up to see if that is still the case). If you really want to stop Farage, then the key is to stop talking about him, even to criticise or laugh at him. Unfortunately like Trump in 2015, people just can’t avoid it.

As for K&TG, their creation of the video in the first place should be questioned, just another example of their grift aimed at left leaning individuals, which goes all the way back to 2010 and culminated in that dreadful “Boris Johnson is female anatomy” series of songs that was lapped up in the thousands.

Correct^ the only bad publicity is no publicity

1 hour ago, Brett-Butler said:

Because he knows that useful idiots will end up disseminating the video with comments like “look what this eejit Nigel Farage has done now”, so everyone’s social media feeds are now filled with Farage’s face, therefore increasing his ubiquity in people’s minds. And before you say “but I’m so smart and wonderful, I’D never vote for Nigel Farage just because I see his face everywhere”, that may be the case, but the nature of social media means that when a video is shared, it will have inevitably fall into the feed of many people for whom it could tip them into voting for Reform UK (and before you say that’s not rational, you’re right, it isn’t, but I don’t believe that many people come to their decisions rationally, myself included).

So basically it’s evidence of the maxim that the cheapest way to do PR is to let your enemies to your promotion for you. Farage appears to know that being omnipresent on social media is key to keeping himself and his party in the public eye, which is why he still does those Cameo videos whilst still on the sizeable salary he gets as an MP and TV presenter, and why he puts so much stock in his TikTok presence to get his face out there (I’d read recently that he’s the UK politician with the largest following on social media, I think only Zarah Sultana comes close, but I would need to look that up to see if that is still the case). If you really want to stop Farage, then the key is to stop talking about him, even to criticise or laugh at him. Unfortunately like Trump in 2015, people just can’t avoid it.

As for K&TG, their creation of the video in the first place should be questioned, just another example of their grift aimed at left leaning individuals, which goes all the way back to 2010 and culminated in that dreadful “Boris Johnson is female anatomy” series of songs that was lapped up in the thousands.

And it's fairly obvious that Steve Bannon is advising Farage. I think it's been speculated, but a lot of the recent plays are straight out of Trump's playbook in 2015/2016.