Mailwatch(ed) Forum

It's yet another row for people to get worked up about.

This is Leishman. Never mind what the Government is doing, take a pop at the Government for not pressurizing Ineos enough.

Leishman seems to have made a promise off his own bat that the jobs at Grangemouth would be saved by the Government. I'm surprised his silly arse didn't head out the door months ago.

In other news, this is promising. Doubtless restricting ISAs will be another "unthinkable" change that can't be made. We might as well all give up now.

He spends so much time attacking Labour, for a long time I assumed Leishman was SNP.

Member of the Campaign Group. Unite member.

Maybe he'll join one of the new Trot parties.

He's an all purpose chucker about of public money. Not just Grangemouth (absolute money pit, unlike what the Government is investing in) but also WASPI.

You'll be amazed to hear "£24bn wealth tax" features in his thinking.

Here's another of his zingers

When we look at the regeneration needed around Old Trafford, why would we not say you can have that money, but you need to keep Grangemouth open? That’s just negotiation in my opinion.

Nobody has asked for any public money for redeveloping Old Trafford. And Grangemouth's closure was decided before there were any Old Trafford plans. So how could there be any negotiations?

Radcliffe did ask for the funding for a northern national stadium

This seems appropriate.

[media]https://bsky.app/profile/vincexy798.bsk ... 44qkk5mk2j[/media]

>edit<
Why isn't that working?
What have I done to make you mad this time, baybee?

Don't worry, Stephen Bush is on hand with top advice.



The only people who seem to be bothered by this are politicos.

mattomac wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 8:30 pm Radcliffe did ask for the funding for a northern national stadium

He didn’t mention money when the new Norman Foster stadium was announced, but vaguer “support”. The losses at Grangemouth are hundreds of millions a year, think it’s unlikely support is anything like that level.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 8:57 pm Haven't seen what regulatory changes Reeves is promising, but our pals at a certain paper have already tried to make them sound really stupid, and "trickle down", which sounds spectacularly unlikely. Trickle down means cutting higher rate taxes. No tax cuts are proposed, as far as I know.

You can read it here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... 025-speech

Reasonable reaction here.

There’s an editorial talking about trickle down economics too. Taxes on the rich have gone up, not down.

The tankies have really got the knives out.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c93kkg37n3kt

Voting age - plans to reduce it to 16 by time of next election.

Well, that'll send the right (and the print media) into absolute apoplexy; and if it gets through, might just spike the Tories and ReFuck forever.

Fairly sure the usual suspects will hate it though. For reasons.

The Green Party will be turning cartwheels. I didn’t think they’d do this, but it’s positive in that it reduces the power of older voters.

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Thu Jul 17, 2025 9:51 am The tankies have really got the knives out.

It’s wider than Tankies. The Guardian knows what it’s doing tapping into these various vibes. Yesterday 19 trees being cut down in a cemetery by a motorway was treated like a major story.

There’s a feed back loop of “local campaigners”, think tanks, academicsand journalists who all reinforce each other. The think tanks are open about their funding, unlike on the right, and the academics are cuddlier but the dynamic is in some ways similar. The upshot is nobody is interested in details. The narrative is all.

While I think it’s a great move overall in reducing older voter skew, what does concern me is this:

1. 16 year olds voting for fucking awful people “for the lols”
2. 16 year olds not being arsed
3. 16 year olds voting for dead end parties bumping up their vote count and encouraging more people to vote for dead end parties in subsequent elections who might otherwise tactically vote, and that scenario meaning someone else sneaks in

Or to put it another way, this really should have been bundled together with some form of PR.

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Thu Jul 17, 2025 11:20 am While I think it’s a great move overall in reducing older voter skew, what does concern me is this:

1. 16 year olds voting for fucking awful people “for the lols”
2. 16 year olds not being arsed
3. 16 year olds voting for dead end parties bumping up their vote count and encouraging more people to vote for dead end parties in subsequent elections who might otherwise tactically vote, and that scenario meaning someone else sneaks in

Or to put it another way, this really should have been bundled together with some form of PR.

All of that may be true of some, but most 16 year olds in my experience have either been pretty serious about politics or just not engaged - not yet matured enough.

This is a thing about being a teenager that I posted on Facebook, and all I know confirms it.

Dear Mom and Dad,
Please stick with me.
I can’t think clearly right now because there is a rather substantial section of my prefrontal cortex missing. It’s a fairly important chunk, something having to do with rational thought. You see, it won’t be fully developed until I’m about 25. And from where I sit, 25 seems a long way off.
My brain is not yet fully developed
It doesn’t matter that I’m smart; even a perfect score on my math SAT doesn’t insulate me from the normal developmental stages that we all go through. Judgement and intelligence are two completely distinct things.
And, the same thing that makes my brain wonderfully flexible, creative and sponge-like also makes me impulsive. Not necessarily reckless or negligent but more impulsive than I will be later in life.
So when you look at me like I have ten heads after I’ve done something “stupid” or failed to do something “smart,” you’re not really helping.
You adults respond to situations with your prefrontal cortex (rationally) but I am more inclined to respond with my amygdala (emotionally). And when you ask, “What were you thinking?” the answer is I wasn’t, at least not in the way you are. You can blame me, or you can blame mother nature, but either way, it is what it is.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Jul 17, 2025 11:19 am

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Thu Jul 17, 2025 9:51 am The tankies have really got the knives out.

It’s wider than Tankies. The Guardian knows what it’s doing tapping into these various vibes. Yesterday 19 trees being cut down in a cemetery by a motorway was treated like a major story.

There’s a feed back loop of “local campaigners”, think tanks, academicsand journalists who all reinforce each other. The think tanks are open about their funding, unlike on the right, and the academics are cuddlier but the dynamic is in some ways similar. The upshot is nobody is interested in details. The narrative is all.

What's their end goal exactly?

Remind me - how old is the leader of Warwickshire council and which party does he represent? Only anecdote I know, but when I was sixteen myself and several others I was friends with at school would have genuinely voted BNP. I wonder how many of my peers would vote now?

I can't help but feel this may bite Labour on the arse: doesn't Reform have a huge following on TikTok amongst the 18-34 age group?

As Crabbs said above;

16 year olds voting for fucking awful people “for the lols”

I recall there were a number of young people who voted for Brexit "to shake things up a bit".