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As a counterpoint to this one: Obvious of course but incredibly funny the minute they start talking actual policy on this incredibly over-discussed subject it's worse than the Tories' Rwanda.

ya think? Look at the fucking headlines today (Farage planning to deport 600,000 migrants etc), manufactured consent is going wild out there. Anyway, Reform have gotten the tacit approval of the Taliban to organise a returns process https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-uk-nigel-farage-taliban-migrants-small-boats-b2814040.html, so good to know their strategies to fix their pet immigration issue are going to be watertight and effective.

I'm going to focus on the central theme here because there's no need to respond to most of this poorly-researched and error-ridden gish gallop. That central theme is: Why is immigration so high as a pressing issue and is it a sensible issue to be so high? It's not because it affects anyone's wellbeing, because unless you're in direct competition for jobs with immigrants (far less likely than anyone would have you believe, as immigrants are inherently at a disadvantage due to Right To Work), it doesn't. In fact it's inherently illogical to focus on as an issue in comparison to the economy or any number of public services which all do directly affect most voters. Yet it has been at every election for some time a significant one. Why? It's not quite as simple as 'politicians use it as a distraction', but it's so easy to do for unscrupulous ones because many of the population are primed against migrants based on outlier crime stories they imagine are a common reality, or some vague sentiments about losing 'their country'. I live in a very diverse part of the country and I love that because of that I have access to a good portion of the whole world relatively near me. If there were concerns about conservative culture coming in with migrants (potentially but likely overblown), or migrant crime (definitely overblown), I'd sympathise somewhat, but ultimately I'm against anti-migrant policies not only because they're cruel but because they are a severe distraction from focusing on economic injustice and actually fixing the economic anxieties that trouble a large number of the people who claim immigration as their primary concern. They want Reform to win the next election, come in with a set of mass deportations et al, and if they worked (a huge if), the problems that plague them would still be there and they wouldn't feel satisfied. They'd enable hardline governments who would enact cruelty and it wouldn't make them satisfied. People need to be mad about the cost of living, income inequality, landlords and corporations sucking up excess wealth far more than they should ever be worried about their local area having a few people born in different places in it. This is why I say they are in a bubble and need to snap out of it, because their reality is shaped by the content they perceive and instinctual fears of the other - it's not reality. This is only affecting right-leaning people consuming copious amounts of political content and that may be a large number of pensioners and a good proportion of economically anxious people but it's quite far from a majority. call me elitist, pretentious and out of touch all you want, it only fuels me further

I'm quite thankful Boris is out of politics now. The thing in common with other countries that have these dominating, conservative, fascist-adjacent strongmen is that their version is a relatively unique figure, someone who has been active in public life for decades, is widely agreed upon as charismatic, is definitely agreed upon as a "strong leader", perhaps for bending the rules a little, and has some form of a cult of personality behind them. This is true from Putin, to Trump, to Xi, Erdoğan, Orbán, Modi, Netanyahu, Kaczynski in Poland. Any one of these leaving their country's political culture would have dramatic consequences, as there's very little the right-wing has without them, look at the scrambling they're doing to find Le Pen's successor in France, or how lost Brazil's right is now with Bolsonaro in effectual legal trouble (that's how you deal with anti-democratic presidents, Americans). New people of this type are relatively rare too, only Milei in Argentina is really a new star for the global right lately. Which is to say that the only one of these types Britain has is Johnson. Farage potentially also has some traits of successful strongmen but he's likely more akin to a Le Pen or Weidel, just too apparently batshit to win power democratically in any but the best circumstances (though he might have those). Johnson in his prime would clean up and I don't think he would be immune to the anti-democratic tendencies that this type has to take over and backslide the institutions of power in favour of him keeping it. His relative youth compared to some of those other global strongmen has me very concerned should he ever decide to make a political comeback and it's only the disgrace of his initial ousting and the circuitous routes that we demand new or re-entrants to politics take (be an MP) that has me relatively relaxed about the possibility of his comeback right now. I absolutely do not want him back in political life, ever.

There were planned protests in a number of places this weekend, was kinda quiet really and in most places the anti-migrant protesters were matched or beaten in numbers by the anti-racists. This is not a majority view, you are living in a bubble in fear of those different from you. It's also just kinda sad that you clearly see 'overseas workers' as some strange aliens rather than people who think just the same as you and me and can be just like anyone else - interacting with other people across the world and taking the time to get to know them has always been something I've loved doing, and more British people should try it.

Connolly: sentenced after pleading guilty to distributing material with the intent of stirring up racial hatred. Also as T Boy says, not as you describe. Trump: convicted on falsifying business records on all counts and the legal system quite honestly went super light on him because of his political stature, which is the real crime. Those convictions are now suspended and he should have been charged and convicted for treason after Jan 6th. The phrasing of 'seen as a joke where pedophiles get no time' just tells me you don't know anything about court or the legal system, and are reacting to headlines. The British justice system is extraordinarily busy and underfunded and isn't perfect but it's dealing with thousands of cases each year, and most go through fine. Let's focus on what the government is doing about sentencing, things I agree with, remove short prison sentences (prevents people from becoming career criminals in a prison environment), increase community punishments and focus on the right incentives for behaving well: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/24/labour-abolish-most-short-prison-sentences-england-wales meanwhile the so-called shadow justice secretary, to keep this vaguely on-topic, isn't saying anything about sentencing, but is showing up outside protests against asylum seekers and at migrant camps to show off how personally cruel to desperate people he can be to the Reform voters he's opportunistically trying to sway.

'pick your poison' and instead of just a bland suit followed by professional politicians who will try to tackle the generally insurmountable issues affecting the country it's a loudmouth fascist because that's apparently acceptable to the people who tactically vote against the Tories (???)

Connolly pled guilty to incitement and served her sentence. The amount of time the right wing spends trying to relitigate our court system is embarrassing, almost as if they don't care about justice when they're on the wrong side of it (reader: they don't). They hear some halves of the story, convince themselves she was put in prison for social media posts divorced of any context and then start saying 'you can't apply laws to us because what we imagined her doing wasn't actually that bad'. She'll probably grift it into a bit of right-wing relevance over the 'injustice' anyway. The Tories turning into a Reform tribute act, aping their lines, as indeed Connolly has become a bit of a talisman for the right to scream at and point 'injustice', will further put them into irrelevance. Perfect encapsulation of the above not caring about justice when it's about people one supports, like an automatic whataboutism generator (including poorly sourced local news court stories that likely boil down to poor funding for overloaded magistrates courts). The country was on the brink of some very serious violence and the harsh crackdown on anyone trying to start something probably saved much worse things from happening last summer. This line which I've seen a couple of times from you is really fucking wrong, because the logical outcome is essentially that we should not apply laws when the defendant is political. The current right-wing across the globe have a huge habit of screaming persecution when their morally bankrupt leaders inevitably fall foul of the law in one way or another, and listening to their acolytes and not acting would in fact create the very two-tier justice system they claim exists. We need a functioning justice system to punish them accordingly - the failures of the American system to punish Trump as he should have been led to his comeback.

I'm quite the fan of KxAxWxAxIxIxI and Sunset Kiss too. Good album though I hope this is just a one-off with so many collaborations, I'd love to have Momo on an album that's mostly BABYMETAL as they are now. (was so hyped at Bring Me The Horizon last night when they played Kingslayer, wasn't actually expecting that one at a festival set)

Like I said, low wage pay (to the point that many Brits do not wish to do that work) and the sacrifice of everything on the altar of capitalism is what leads you to that situation where people are being hired from abroad because they accept lower wages for harder, less fulfilling work. You don't solve that with harsh rhetoric against immigrants, because it also involves burning everything else down, equal rights, cementing low wages for everyone, while you're at it. Besides, the changes that have been made by both the Sunak and Starmer administrations have been largely cutting down on visa-sponsoring and dependents where not necessary, there was a spike just after Covid where people who couldn't return before did, and they have cut down on people abusing masters degrees to get unrelated visas. Governments are doing things, but you don't want them to be doing the flashy stuff, as that is invariably needlessly cruel (recall Home Office vans from Theresa May's time as Home Sec). Though the care industry specifically will need and will use immigrants for a long time to come, where English is not even a required skill, that is just how it is with our age pyramid.

No, you are being fed such hate and fear from your media diet. Ask yourself why the people you get your media from are making you focus on the plight of people who are different from you, rather than water company mismanagement, rising prices and low median wages (among others), and would like you to consider a group of snake oil salesmen whose management style is outwardly horrendous, divisive and controlling. Change can most certainly be bad and what is on offer from Reform looks fucking abysmal.

As alluded to, it matters little what the government actually does, while they're better than most of the alternatives, they are following a pretty important and inflexible reality for UK governments. As bad as things are for many, they will be so much worse if the wrong things are done - we saw that back in 2022 and with Brexit. There's so little room to maneuver within that framework. Of course that's not the only framework, but voters must be very careful who they hand power over to. If they hand it over to those willing to scapegoat and demonise the vulnerable and the other, that's a solid path to authoritarian fascism for a generation and Reform can and will take us there if they are given the opportunity and the institutional backing. It would be a consistent track record with British voters easily being manipulated and voting for the charming conman though.

Because the presentation of this story is very tabloid-esque, I hope Jason knows that the vast majority of streamers are people playing video games or acting as influencers filming themselves in public and others watching them - just like with influencers there's a few doing bad stuff and the odd tragic headline like this but the vast majority are average citizens exploring ways to monetise their internet fame and this shouldn't be a commentary on the industry. Of course this also ties in with the fact that violence on these platforms should be far more unacceptable than sex-related content, even if the latter should still be firmly 18+. It all tends to get lumped into one with censoring acts like these though.

Restricting freedoms of the internet is not the correct response to tragic, but isolated incidents like that. Kick itself is a site with a mixed reputation, pays streamers well which is why it's emerged as a valid contender to Twitch but really needs to get its moderation policies in order, along with the gambling incentives that it entices less scrupulous streamers into advertising. But that's all stuff specific to that site. Parents should just enable parental controls and block it and any other site they're concerned about. That's always been the existing and only good solution, pay attention to what your damn kids are using the internet for.

With regards to deleting old messages though, I just went and looked in my inbox and my god it's impossible to sort that thing to find old messages you want to get rid of without scrolling forever. Worst filtering and sorting options I've seen in a long time.

Back then, 'Automatic Call' gave me the same feelings as 'Infohazard', lab-created to appeal to as many of our normal entrants as is possible. Though 'Infohazard' also surely helped by the small contest, more entrants means more variance and more people with different musical opinions to potentially leave it out of the votes.

Ofcom have also begun investigating 4chan for non-compliance which, I mean, good luck ever getting them to comply. I don't think every VPN provider would comply if they made them age-gated, Mullvad certainly wouldn't. They're definitely looking to make them age-gated, but particularly for those which adults pay for, having to flash a license check to use it is another way to track who's circumventing government/corporate control. Big tech companies have never liked the 'switch your country to watch region-locked shows on Netflix' spiel that the private VPN field has traded on prior to this and there's probably a whole lot more of that now after VPN downloads topped charts.

Just a quick notification to say that after discussions with Philip on whether it would be an imposition on our data storage needs, we've increased the Private Message storage of most members to 500 (up from 200), and for all the various Moderators to 2000 (up from 1000)*. Mods should also find restrictions on PMing multiple people have been lifted. Please ensure to continue to delete old PMs to save microlitres of water. Thank you for your attention to this matter. *if I've missed anyone because you have an unusual group let me know, I think I did every group.

Holy christ what a points total! Congratulations Dandy*, great winner! Very pleased to see Kath and blacksquare in the mix for top 5, really enjoyed their entries this month too. Thanks for the hosting this month Phil, really well presented and I enjoyed seeing this alternative style of reveal.

oh wow thank you for the 18 Lotunia! Good to see them in the top 20 too, well deserved.

LOL tbf, Aelandor deserved to beat me, that's an incredible noise entry from them thank you to all who got me this far into the results, it's a great performance for one of my J-Pop K-Pop entries

okay rather shocked to still be in after Aeroche, Thelonia and Cor Lupus have fallen! thank you Travis for the 10! (and cody also x)

I think Persephonia was growing on me, shame that's out before the top 30 too. yay a point from Bré for a pure pop entry

Skall deserved better! Beautiful instrumentation on that one.

I'll take a hefty haul of points from Greenfroze, thank you Freeze and commisserations!