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Impactful as one of the last major liberal democratic pre-COVID leaders - only Macron left now really, if you don't count Trump returning. Suspect he's trying to do this as a gambit to maybe avoid the Conservatives in Canada winning the next election - like in New Zealand though, not really sure it will work.

I'd also add that there have been many inquiries into this topic and this long after the incidents I am sceptical at how much value new inquiries will add, as ever, inquiries often end up delaying action, the issue is actually implementing their recommendations and clearing up outstanding cases. ...but you yourself did not respond to anything he said at all, just continued bashing him for the reasons you already dislike him. What have these victims said, because I have not been able to see that reported anywhere? So these are tragedies Starmer is not responsible for nor has perpetrated, while his I/P stance is not as pro-Palestine as it should be he's been reasonably balanced about it and unlike Biden it's not like his aid is allowing Israel to continue. It's also just kind of ridiculous to call him responsible for the grooming gangs scandal as a chief prosecutor who came into that office with a backlog, worked to bring down that backlog in his time as DPP, was responsible for locking up hundreds of abusers, and now his government is about to start action into unresolved cases caused by previous Conservative governments dragging their feet over the many completed inquiries that have been done already. Absurd for anyone to say he's on the wrong side of this issue. I really think it's ridiculous to be harping on this kind of thing, particularly the exaggeration of 'most profound in my lifetime', no it isn't, they're just two significant cases with many victims where the important thing is to go after the perpetrators, not the managers of institutions trying to fix things. It just feels unnuanced and ridiculous to claim he is responsible for them in the same way Blair was responsible for a war he was a major party to. I can see where someone might be coming from on Gaza, but I wouldn't expect reasonable people to hold Starmer responsible for either tragedy, only uncharitable political enemies. In any case, and I say this to everyone, I fully agree with the below and hope it's a turned corner for Starmer, this speech was a huge improvement on rhetoric and one should watch if the quoted words above weren't enough: @1876226248881721704 As much as I have political disagreements with him, we need him to be strong and steadfast in government when faced with the threat of far-right misinformation spreaders (cue liam sota arguing 'you can't call anyone who disagrees with you far-right' like a personification of the Daily Mail comment section) who would see him replaced in government by some Faragist dystopia. Similarly, from Gordon Brown: The people bringing this issue into national conversation again aren't doing it for the right reasons and their demands are not the way to get justice.

one imagines that when one is in a responsible position like the sole owner of a major company that if you make statements implying that the strongest military in the world should invade and coup one of its closest allies one should face consequences, but what do I know

This is really genuinely good from Starmer - shuts down all the nonsense provocation that keyboard warriors like Musk have been doing on social media and refocuses it to the real issues. I hope that puts the matter (partially from the other topic) to bed. You need people calling out when others are spreading lies. It's this sort of strength that we need in the PM office, no-nonsense, getting on with the job at hand, not personality politics, I hope it gets cut-through.

oh that's nice to see, love me a bit of right infighting. Though the sooner our news cycle isn't hanging onto every word Musk says the better. Scary as in it's very easily used by right-wing dipshits to convince people it is an issue worth basing your vote on, because it's an emotive issue that everyone does think is awful, but the crux of the right-wing push that Musk has waded in on is to a) convince people that men of South Asian descent are predominantly the ones responsible for these crimes when the statistics of abusers are pretty close to the standard demographics of the UK and b) to convince people that it is the Labour government at fault for this when Starmer and Phillips have been fighting to get justice for cases like this for much of their professional career and it was the Conservative government, that, like with everything under their watch, that dragged their feet on it. It's not an issue for people to go 'the country is declining' on, because it's a historic case - that hopefully will be investigated for justice, but leave that to the professionals, don't leave it to the papers and Musk/Robinson's crude witchhunts.

I also was facing a bit of a well run dry at the end of last year, I have a couple of possibles, not set on anything, but I am feeling like we need something experimental.

I don't mean to be rude but it's pretty easy to find out what I mean by anything you don't understand by googling a common phrase that has been consistently used by the media when referring to this specific case.

This series is surprisingly convincing and a little charmingly silly. Minah's the sort of player I was hoping to see, smart and knows how to avoid suspicion. Hope that goes well for her x

There's no reason for Starmer to go, and he won't. His lack of popularity is too easily attributable to 'hard decisions', Labour aren't like the Conservatives and it is much more difficult for their leaders to be couped in the same way Johnson and Truss were and the backbenchers were threatening to do to Sunak. In fact it would be incredibly worrying for Labour if Starmer was ousted in some manner in the next 12 months as that means that either the media or the international cabal of fascist billionaires Musk et al have more say on who governs the country than the people of Britain. Unless it's for a reason such as personal retirement, I actually fully expect Starmer to be leading at the next election. But for 2025 specifically: Basically Starmer's popularity has been whittled down to the centrist Labour base and therefore the longer he holds in office the more statesman-like people will view him as - essentially there's nowhere for it to go but slowly up, particularly as experience has told us he's a competent operator in a way that Sunak and certainly Truss never were. Despite unrelenting media antagonism, the economy will show small signs of improving by the end of 2025 and Labour will claim credit for that. Meanwhile Tories and Reform will continue fighting like cats in a sack over the small minority of voters the right-wing press tells them are worth pursuing, the nearly retired and recently retired with latent white supremacy, and despite having 20 times the MPs of Reform, the Lib Dems will continue to receive 1/20th of the media coverage. Corbyn and the Gaza Independents attempt to form a small left-wing party but because they're left-wing it stands about a fiftieth of the chance that any of Farage's numerous shitebag attempts of gaining media traction. Polls will close out the year with Labour roughly at 32%, Tories 23%, Reform 17%, Lib Dem 13%. Internationally, the AfD fail to make too much headway in Germany thanks to the CDU providing a rare anti-fascist bulwark from the centre-right, and a Black-Red coalition is formed. Conservative majority in Canada however, and the (right-wing) Liberals regain governance from the left in Australia, but only a minority government rather than the majority they were expecting. The Ukraine war is brought to a close with Ukraine formally ceding Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, having being forced to under pressure from Trump - Ukraine fasttracks its membership to NATO and peace is returned, albeit uneasy, as Georgia becomes an autocracy in debt to Putin much like Belarus. Middle East-wise, Israel slowly brings itself towards peace from a position of strength, Syria's new governance show more and more Islamist traits and shifts towards something similar to the position Egypt is currently in. Trump's governance is relatively uneventful throughout 2025 at least in mainstream offline politics, but he has at least one age-related gaffe that sends his approval down towards the bottom. At least one of the Trump tariffs is implemented disastrously and the media start calling it a Trump tax or something similar that enters common parlance. Vance starts to get cold feet on Musk and challenges him to single combat. Or something. Essentially some sort of fallout in the fragile coalition those lunatics have assembled. We already had the bones of one the other day with Musk and Ramaswamy antagonising the MAGA base on the H1B visa issue, it's not a hard prediction to make.

Get in your political predictions for the upcoming year! Likely to be a far quieter year than 2024 on the political front, at least electorally, not least because so many countries had their elections last year that there are relatively few having them this year - a quick glance at the electoral calendar has Canada, Australia and Germany as perhaps the most notable elections and those will be months apart and only likely to tangentially affect most of our memberbase. Of course that doesn't mean politics stops, as conflicts continue across the globe, the potential for peace talks or other goings on in Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East continues, while at (the British) home front, the Starmer ministry will have to focus on rebuilding British society while fending off attacks from rabid newspapers and fascist billionaires, and over in America, the incoming 2nd Trump administration prepares to take on what can politely be called a divided country. Dump your predictions for political goings-on both home and abroad here.

kinda feel this is appropriate for the musk thread because it sure as shit shouldn't be affecting real life politics no news to anyone but Musk has gone fully off his rocker - inane spam posting about the UK's politics, calling for the King to intervene to make Starmer go, calling for Starmer to go in general on 'grooming gangs' which is fertile territory for the far-right to campaign on because it both makes them look righteous and is Islamophobic, and spreading conspiracy theories about what the Labour gov is responsible for. Oh and calling Tommy Robinson to be freed. feels so f***ing insane that the richest man in the world is laser focusing on the UK government from atop his social media platform and doing his best to spread misinformation about them and bring them down. I think the government need to stop using Twitter.

To each their own but it's one of the few services that I sub to that meets the crossover of 'worth it because I use it', 'probably needs the money' and 'we'd lose something very valuable if it ever went'. If they didn't have a premium tier I'd genuinely be looking for ways to donate similar amounts that's how much use I get out it (plus the ability to freely edit any tags streaming services mess up is awesome). Plus I mean, did you see their Playback? Blows your Spotify Wrapped this Apple Replay that out of the water with fidelity of information and deep dives (unfortunately still with some of the cringy language that permeates each one of these yearly roundups).

Pretty accurate on UK politics for the few predictions I dipped my toes into actually, woefully bad at America.

(crossposting from EOY) this was my list of really notable 2024 albums that I noticed enough on first listen to come back to at least a couple of times: 1. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk 2. Mori Calliope - Phantomime 3. Bring Me The Horizon - Post Human: Nex Gen 4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - NO ALBUM TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD 5. Charli XCX - Brat 6. Parannoul - Sky Hundred 7. Fat Dog - WOOF! 8. Nightwish - Yesterwynde 9. Fleshgod Apocalypse - Opera 10. Linkin Park - From Zero Imaginal Disk has just been far and away my favourite though, every single song on there is glorious synth-pop. I'm trying to listen to more albums as a whole though so I will probably browse this thread for recs, I know Nilufer, Vampire Weekend, Doechii, Father John Misty, Tyler, Kendrick are things I need to listen to and I went through at least Fontaines DC and The Cure when going down the list of critically acclaimed albums in the last week or two, they sounded good.

Just a brief one here, a one page post of my favourite albums and songs this year, albums to be enjoyed as a whole, and then specific songs I've really enjoyed playing on their own. OPe7tn_Hju4 56SfTg1aWe4 1. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk 2. Mori Calliope - Phantomime 3. Bring Me The Horizon - Post Human: Nex Gen 4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - NO ALBUM TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD 5. Charli XCX - Brat 6. Parannoul - Sky Hundred 7. Fat Dog - WOOF! 8. Nightwish - Yesterwynde 9. Fleshgod Apocalypse - Opera 10. Linkin Park - From Zero started really focusing again on album listening in the second half of the year and in fact have added some great catalogue albums to my favourites, such as M83's Before The Dawn Heals Us and Lana Del Rey's Norman f***ing Rockwell, but for 2024 releases I think Magdalena Bay takes it quite comfortably, flawless album from start to finish. My fave Mori Calliope did good this year too, often at this stage the shine wears off for me but she put out the best full-length she's done to date in Phantomime with really well-constructed pop throughout it. Bring Me The Horizon's Post Humans are always good and Nex Gen really does the job well. GY!BE I started listening to when they dropped their album focused on the horrors we see in Gaza, Brat is brat, Sky Hundred is a fantastic little album, WOOF! was great if a little short, Yesterwynde the same if a little long, operatic metal from Fleshgod Apocalypse and a very welcome return from Linkin Park... anyway I hope to bring you more albums next time as I probably continue to be very interested in rating them on sites promoting good-music™ like Album Of The Year (not plug it's just a really fun site) SRXH9AbT280 LxxlN_FhLac 1. Linkin Park - The Emptiness Machine 2. Bring Me The Horizon - Top 10 Statues That Cried Blood 3. BABYMETAL & Electric Callboy - RATATATA 4. Bambie Thug - Doomsday Blue 5. Visions Of Atlantis - Tonight I'm Alive 6. IRyS - Carbonated Love 7. Charli XCX - 360 8. Mori Calliope - Last Days 9. Beast In Black - Power Of The Beast 10. Deathbrain - Stargazing With You to not make this too long I begin to notice a theme, and that theme is that the majority of these 10 are hard-hitting whirlwind rock songs that put the best of emo rock to the test and to be honest, 2024 has been great at providing those moments - The Emptiness Machine, Statues, and RATATATA forming a holy trinity of songs I have played hugely this year and all still sound perfect. Also a landmark Eurovision entry in Doomsday Blue, Eurobeat with Carbonated Love, a very addictive pop song in 360, a great ballad in Last Days, more power metal with Power Of The Beast and even some breakcore with Stargazing With You. anyway check all those out if you want good music/experience my sound that is mostly made up of unsubtle rock and/or synths, see you all next year

an incredible collection of songs in the end, great job putting it together - disc 3 looks amazing but all of them look very strong

Saw this today - a few animation issues aside, very good film for Tolkien nerds better than Rings Of Power. It's like a legend of Edoras, Helm's Deep and all that a couple of centuries before the main trilogy and the main reason I'm troubling to post this is that it's had precious little hype for a Lord Of The Rings film. Plus it hits my overlap of LOTR and anime, so very much worth watching if you at all enjoyed the depiction of Rohan in Lord Of The Rings originally. héra is my idol

Very musically competent track, I hope that can translate, it's in less danger than being seen as 'just another Albanian track' than most years. Good choice overall even if Elvana would have also been a good selection.

not adventurous enough to put 'Not Like Us' on there though smh I think Obama's true taste is soulful-sounding pop and RnB, and he throws in a few popular radio hits from other genres to round out the list. Mostly people pleasing but a bit of his own personality in there.

the photo goes hard. They're definitely throwing the book at him as hard as they can. Harsh repression more than anything.

obviously the 'notable' story is the huge debut performance of Reform, to which this analysis seems pertinent: @1870011357073969392 significant movements but not as much once you price that in.

supporting neo-Nazis is egregious even for him: @1869986946031988780 he's really chafing at the bit to be the most dangerous human alive right now. or the far-right project has set their sights on Germany as the next target, one or the other.

I don't know what exactly they said to them but all the photographs I've seen of various Labour MPs going around 'promising justice' for the WASPI women don't seem like they ever promised them anything more than looking into their case to resolve it fairly, and now that they have, it's not sustainable for the minority who suffered losses to receive any pay outs. I love holding governments to account but I don't think I've ever tried to hold them to account for something they didn't promise. Point made about the feeling that there is a betrayal, even though it is not - it's partly of their own making but much more prominently the media focusing on these paltry limited issues and not the genuinely quite effective governance the party has done so far - the plans set out from all departments look great and they are responding to issues far more quickly and well than the Tories ever did. Partly why I said the government needs a good PR team because they should have realised by now they're getting no free rides. Especially given Reform, dark money funding coming from Musk, and maybe the Tories too, Labour does need to start the process of winning and keeping voters too - I am apprehensive that this government will go the way of Biden's, an astonishingly effective government utterly monstered by the media who ensure that they don't return to power and let someone far worse in.

It's never been a justified issue to campaign on, almost any other wrongful cause is more worthy than this, a handful of women with a lifetime of the best ever conditions for any generation yet didn't check their retirement packages for years getting wall-to-wall paper coverage because they're the only demographic that buys papers any more. Neither this nor the winter fuel are betrayals in the slightest, just the elderly getting their own taste of the cuts that Tories have been doing to the rest of society for years. would it be better if we all had benefits and retirement packages to live in luxury? yep, but that requires an economy running on full speed and investment opportunites can and should be the priority for spending; the one thing the government could really invest in is a competent PR team.

kinda goes hard, ID have got some nice rock in there