comment by Tyranny of the majority (SE85) (U21241)
posted 5 minutes ago
I don't think the political landscape is great over here though and we are heading for a MAGA type movement soon I fear.

If Labour and Tories continue to make a mess of things it's inevitable that weasel Farage is going to gain more and more popularity or it not him it will be somebody else who is less obnoxious.

The world is fecked.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
*The west is fecked.

The rest of the world will carry on under a different superpower. Wait and see.

comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 37 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 2 minutes ago
VC, out of curiosity, provided it's not too personal of course, why back to Blighty, and were there ever any other options on the table?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My Mrs is a dual citizen and hails from Scotland. We went to the Borders on vacation three years back and fell in love with the place and the way of life there. We made the decision there and then.

There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the main reason.

The only thing I will miss is the warm weather in Spring and Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes sense, cheers. At the current rate of change, in a few years' time Spring and Autumn might not be all that bad anyway.

comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 58 seconds ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 37 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 2 minutes ago
VC, out of curiosity, provided it's not too personal of course, why back to Blighty, and were there ever any other options on the table?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My Mrs is a dual citizen and hails from Scotland. We went to the Borders on vacation three years back and fell in love with the place and the way of life there. We made the decision there and then.

There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the main reason.

The only thing I will miss is the warm weather in Spring and Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes sense, cheers. At the current rate of change, in a few years' time Spring and Autumn might not be all that bad anyway.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.

I love the borders VC. Also house prices are reasonable for a beautiful are. I think you will enjoy it.

comment by manusince52 (U9692)
posted 7 seconds ago
I love the borders VC. Also house prices are reasonable for a beautiful are. I think you will enjoy it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It will be preferable to living under this version of the Republican party again.

comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 6 minutes ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 37 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 2 minutes ago
VC, out of curiosity, provided it's not too personal of course, why back to Blighty, and were there ever any other options on the table?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My Mrs is a dual citizen and hails from Scotland. We went to the Borders on vacation three years back and fell in love with the place and the way of life there. We made the decision there and then.

There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the main reason.

The only thing I will miss is the warm weather in Spring and Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes sense, cheers. At the current rate of change, in a few years' time Spring and Autumn might not be all that bad anyway.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Palm trees in Dumfries

comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again (U1282)
posted 3 minutes ago

Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you live in a palace

comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 28 seconds ago
comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again(U1282)
posted 3 minutes ago

Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you live in a palace
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Floods are not respecters of buildings.

comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again (U1282)
posted 6 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 58 seconds ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 37 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 2 minutes ago
VC, out of curiosity, provided it's not too personal of course, why back to Blighty, and were there ever any other options on the table?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My Mrs is a dual citizen and hails from Scotland. We went to the Borders on vacation three years back and fell in love with the place and the way of life there. We made the decision there and then.

There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the main reason.

The only thing I will miss is the warm weather in Spring and Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes sense, cheers. At the current rate of change, in a few years' time Spring and Autumn might not be all that bad anyway.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
With our water companies it'll be a proper en-suite.

comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again (U1282)
posted 14 seconds ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 28 seconds ago
comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again(U1282)
posted 3 minutes ago

Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you live in a palace
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Floods are not respecters of buildings.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, it would've been a bit hard for me not to get that given that they're still clearing up the bodies over here.

comment by FieldsofAnfieldRd (U18971)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Trump 2024, Make America Great Again(U1282)
posted 6 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 58 seconds ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 37 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 2 minutes ago
VC, out of curiosity, provided it's not too personal of course, why back to Blighty, and were there ever any other options on the table?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My Mrs is a dual citizen and hails from Scotland. We went to the Borders on vacation three years back and fell in love with the place and the way of life there. We made the decision there and then.

There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the main reason.

The only thing I will miss is the warm weather in Spring and Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes sense, cheers. At the current rate of change, in a few years' time Spring and Autumn might not be all that bad anyway.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, you could be swimming the butterfly in your own bedroom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
With our water companies it'll be a proper en-suite.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So long as they get their dividends.

comment by BraveheartTyke (U6173)
posted 3 weeks ago
It really comes down to the so-called 'blue wall' of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It looks like Trump will easily take back the likes of Arizona and Georgia. So Harris has to win all three of the blue wall states and she's doing badly in Pennsylvania, some outlets have even ruled that out as a 'toss-up' state now and put it in the Republican bracket. Michigan is also slipping away it seems. Wisconsin has only voted Republican once since 1968 so she might take that.

The problem for her especially in Pennsylvania is Biden only won it by a wafer thin margin and polling indicates he is far more popular at the time than she was, even Hillary in 2016 is more popular than Harris. Doesn't look good at all for the Democrats.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Easy money for me, the only small surprise is that Trump won the popular vote. It is total humiliation for Harris and the Democrats.

I saw your comments VC on the Election thread and was surprised to see you take the view you did, we've spoke about US politics on here before and you seem to have a better grasp of it than most, but you've held your hands up so fair enough. Better than the reaction of some people who expected Harris to win comfortably.

I'm sure there will continue to be elections in the States. Putin's Russia has elections. The issue is that they are unlikely to be fair and genuinely competitive ones. There is already a huge amount of voter suppression and gerrymandering happening, overwhelmingly in Red states. This has occurred without a determined effort by the federal government to dismantle safeguards. We're also only just at the beginning of the systemic change in our information systems, with AI ready to further blur the distinction between reality and fantasy, and we've just seen the billionaire owners of key media platforms either enthusiastically support Trump through data harvesting, boosting propaganda and suppressing dissenting voices, or being reticent to hold Trump to account (e.g. Washington Post and LA Times broke with precedent in not endorsing a candidate, against the will of the editorial staff).

I don't believe the USA will turn into a fully authoritarian state overnight. I don't think it's inevitable that the Democrats cannot win back power in 2028. But you'd have to be desperately naive to believe that the election will be run as fairly as elections in the past. And we should also factor in the point that authoritarians use lots of levers to manufacture consent - creating fear of dissent, media control, weaponising the legal system to undermine opposition figures, etc. Sure, in Russia they almost certainly corrupt the vote counting process. But a hell of a lot of Russians do cast their vote for Putin - and that doesn't mean the elections are free, fair and offering a genuine choice.

comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 18 minutes ago
comment by manusince52 (U9692)
posted 7 seconds ago
I love the borders VC. Also house prices are reasonable for a beautiful are. I think you will enjoy it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It will be preferable to living under this version of the Republican party again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

VC, what was your motivation to move back? I assume the decision pre-dates last night's result.

I saw your comments VC on the Election thread and was surprised to see you take the view you did, we've spoke about US politics on here before and you seem to have a better grasp of it than most, but you've held your hands up so fair enough. Better than the reaction of some people who expected Harris to win comfortably.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

About the time you made your comment three weeks ago, above, I said to the Mrs that this was not going to be close one way or the other. I just did not see it being the other. Not with the momentum she was building going in to yesterday.

VC, what was your motivation to move back? I assume the decision pre-dates last night's result.

...............

My Mrs wanted to return to her roots. She has been in the USA longer than I have as well.

We made the decision three years ago when we saw the way the USA was heading. Sadly we were right.

I cannot live in such a racist country that also has no respect for women. The handmaids tale is not that far off.

RR

You will be right on the elections. There is no way in hell they will be fair again.

Comment deleted by Article Creator

I thought it was blatantly obvious Trump was going to win and was under the impression that this is what most other people assumed would happen as well.

We have major problems in both political discourse and people's economic realities.

None of the main parties in the US (or UK) are or can deal with the the serious issues than ordinary people have been suffering through for years and years; housing, child care, the cost of bills, fuel, food, stagnant wages, the privatisation of all of our services and utilities, gig economy work, dwindling terms and conditions etc... There's no meaningful or radical policies being proposed by anyone to address any of this and the reality is that these are economic arrangements that largely influence and dictate politics rather than the other way around.

On the other hand you have the 'culture wars' issues that, unfortunately, the political right seem more in tune with the electorate on. It's often ugly discourse rooted in partial truths, tidbits & soundbites. Political and electoral discourse has moved so far away from meaningful discussion on policy and into the arena of pure nonsense and the right wing thrive in this space.

Interestingly we do have two recent movements that we can point to as having galvanised people around real issues: Bernie Sanders & Jeremy Corbyn.

Whatever their flaws, their respective campaigns show that their is a huge appetite for a party or individuals to emerge on a much more progressive & radical platform than voters are typically offered. If Democrats & Labour keep putting forward middling ideas and safe establishment candidates then they are doomed to keep failing or find their time in office short lived when they do get there. Unfortunately the political establishment in both the UK and US find a genuinely progressive left-candidate more threatening to vested interests than someone like Trump so the chances of seeing a new Sanders or Corbyn emerge are, in my view, pretty bleak (bear in mind that Corbyn become LOTTO through essentially an administrative error, and in both cases the DNC & PLP *themselves* worked overtime to destroy the prospects of Sanders & Corbyn, let alone the media & so on...).

So all the major parties will continue to offer nothing of much value to people and the political right will continue to make inroads (especially if spearheaded by charismatic figureheads) by tapping into issues & ideas around immigration, free speech, traditions, patriotism and other such social issues/ideas.

We're in a very bad place politically & economically.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 3 minutes ago

I don't think it's inevitable that the Democrats cannot win back power in 2028.
--------------------------------------------------

As you stated yourself, it's a path/process that was already well under way - but the chances of a Democrat winning in 2028 certainly got much smaller today.


By the way, does anyone know where to find voter turnout figures?

I wonder if Trump's actually won many more votes this time out. He got 74.2 million in 2020; his current count sits at 71.1M, but I've no idea how many votes are yet to be counted.

comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 10 minutes ago
VC, what was your motivation to move back? I assume the decision pre-dates last night's result.

...............

My Mrs wanted to return to her roots. She has been in the USA longer than I have as well.

We made the decision three years ago when we saw the way the USA was heading. Sadly we were right.

I cannot live in such a racist country that also has no respect for women. The handmaids tale is not that far off.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

comment by BerbaKing11 (U6256)
posted 7 minutes ago
I thought it was blatantly obvious Trump was going to win and was under the impression that this is what most other people assumed would happen as well.

We have major problems in both political discourse and people's economic realities.

None of the main parties in the US (or UK) are or can deal with the the serious issues than ordinary people have been suffering through for years and years; housing, child care, the cost of bills, fuel, food, stagnant wages, the privatisation of all of our services and utilities, gig economy work, dwindling terms and conditions etc... There's no meaningful or radical policies being proposed by anyone to address any of this and the reality is that these are economic arrangements that largely influence and dictate politics rather than the other way around.

On the other hand you have the 'culture wars' issues that, unfortunately, the political right seem more in tune with the electorate on. It's often ugly discourse rooted in partial truths, tidbits & soundbites. Political and electoral discourse has moved so far away from meaningful discussion on policy and into the arena of pure nonsense and the right wing thrive in this space.

Interestingly we do have two recent movements that we can point to as having galvanised people around real issues: Bernie Sanders & Jeremy Corbyn.

Whatever their flaws, their respective campaigns show that their is a huge appetite for a party or individuals to emerge on a much more progressive & radical platform than voters are typically offered. If Democrats & Labour keep putting forward middling ideas and safe establishment candidates then they are doomed to keep failing or find their time in office short lived when they do get there. Unfortunately the political establishment in both the UK and US find a genuinely progressive left-candidate more threatening to vested interests than someone like Trump so the chances of seeing a new Sanders or Corbyn emerge are, in my view, pretty bleak (bear in mind that Corbyn become LOTTO through essentially an administrative error, and in both cases the DNC & PLP *themselves* worked overtime to destroy the prospects of Sanders & Corbyn, let alone the media & so on...).

So all the major parties will continue to offer nothing of much value to people and the political right will continue to make inroads (especially if spearheaded by charismatic figureheads) by tapping into issues & ideas around immigration, free speech, traditions, patriotism and other such social issues/ideas.

We're in a very bad place politically & economically.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corbyb wanted to dismantle trident - he became unelectable as soon as that came out. First and foremost, people will prioritise their safety. “Strongmen” like Trump and Putin offer that - no matter how misguided.

Corbyn on the other hand was painted as some cardigan wearing, yoghurt knitting, tree hugging hippy that wanted to remove our greatest war/invasion deterrent and cosied up to our enemies in the Middle East.

This is why Labour are so middle ground now, no one is electing Jeremy Corbyn

I agreed with most of Corbyn's agenda, but I could never vote for a yoghurt knitter.

comment by Striketeam7 - staying humble (U18109)
posted 5 minutes ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corbyb wanted to dismantle trident - he became unelectable as soon as that came out. First and foremost, people will prioritise their safety. “Strongmen” like Trump and Putin offer that - no matter how misguided.

Corbyn on the other hand was painted as some cardigan wearing, yoghurt knitting, tree hugging hippy that wanted to remove our greatest war/invasion deterrent and cosied up to our enemies in the Middle East.

This is why Labour are so middle ground now, no one is electing Jeremy Corbyn
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I know you weren't trying to prove my point, but... thanks anyway!

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 23 minutes ago
I'm sure there will continue to be elections in the States. Putin's Russia has elections. The issue is that they are unlikely to be fair and genuinely competitive ones. There is already a huge amount of voter suppression and gerrymandering happening, overwhelmingly in Red states. This has occurred without a determined effort by the federal government to dismantle safeguards. We're also only just at the beginning of the systemic change in our information systems, with AI ready to further blur the distinction between reality and fantasy, and we've just seen the billionaire owners of key media platforms either enthusiastically support Trump through data harvesting, boosting propaganda and suppressing dissenting voices, or being reticent to hold Trump to account (e.g. Washington Post and LA Times broke with precedent in not endorsing a candidate, against the will of the editorial staff).

I don't believe the USA will turn into a fully authoritarian state overnight. I don't think it's inevitable that the Democrats cannot win back power in 2028. But you'd have to be desperately naive to believe that the election will be run as fairly as elections in the past. And we should also factor in the point that authoritarians use lots of levers to manufacture consent - creating fear of dissent, media control, weaponising the legal system to undermine opposition figures, etc. Sure, in Russia they almost certainly corrupt the vote counting process. But a hell of a lot of Russians do cast their vote for Putin - and that doesn't mean the elections are free, fair and offering a genuine choice.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On the media owners backing trump aka Elon Musk. Did you care when 99% of donation by employees of former Twitter were to the Democrats? Or when Facebook (zuckers and his wife I mean) donated a fk ton of money to two non profit governmental organisations

Or is it just when support goes in a different way to you that you care and worry about democracy?


Why are elections “unlikely to be fair”? That’s just a statement with nothing behind it mate.

Define and flesh out “huge amount of voter suppression” again just another sweeping statement with nothing of substance to it. If you’re going to reference Voter ID then I will disappointed to hear said red herring which has been repeated and repeated so often. The reason why it’s a red herring is that when you consider ALL of the things that require you to have ID (rent, government support, Medicare, a bank account, mortgages, a job, alcohol, guns the list goes on). I wonder what other forms of voter suppression you might be thinking of.


I agree with AI being a hell of a mess that we will have to deal with, social media has been just as bad in the past ten years say

You say it’s naive to think that the next elections won’t be fair (as in the same as they are now) but again that’s just another sweeping statement. You’re making a prediction, a guess on what might happen 4 years from now and anyone that doesn’t agree with you is naive? Cmon that’s just silly. For one, prediction beyond two years is incredibly unsuccessful akin to pure guesswork.

“authoritarians use lots of levers to manufacture consent - creating fear of dissent, media control, weaponising the legal system to undermine opposition figures, etc”

You say this as if all of that does not apply to the Democratic Party.

Fear of dissent - check
Media control - check (only now that twitter doesn’t exist but google & Facebook and formerly twitter were all influenced and/or backing the democrats)
Weaponising the legal system - check



I may well be proven wrong in 4 years and Trump pushes something through that allows him to have a third term. But I’d happily wager on that with anyone here.

Yes Putin has been in power for 25 years but what you’re talking about is something that has not happened in the US since the civil war which ended 160 years ago.

I’m not after an antagonistic exchange, just want you just flesh out your statements a bit because at the moment they’re meaningless conjecture.