Gorton and Denton, what have you done?

You should vote Monster Raving Looney Party at the next election.
On of their policies is to ban the sale of grated cheese in supermarkets and only allow cheese to be sold in blocks.
This will make Britain grate again!

Agree. I think this becomes a semantic game around the word great. It’s hard to claim Britain wasn’t a great nation by the standards of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And this translated into material gains back home.

But unless we adopt a Putin-style mentality there is no going back to that!

Have you got a link to this please? not doubting it, but I want to understand what she actually said.

@thisistI'm 42 and never remember it being “great”. Please say what you really mean.

She is a white woman in a relationship with a muslim woman, of course she is sensitive about the anti-immigration/xenophobic/racist rhetoric of Reform. And it's sow the seeds, sewing is needles and thread. Typical of the Far Right to vilify people who can't speak English when most of them can't write it.

People like you are the architects of the UK’s downfall. You clearly hate and despise this country and cheer at its downfall. If you hate Great Britain so much, then why don’t you stop wishing for its demise and find somewhere else to live that you don’t feel so ashamed of? I think you will find it very hard to find any country that doesn’t have regrettable points in its history.

It must feel very draining to feel so negative about your country of origin. May you wouldn’t feel that way if you took some time to learn about our culture and heritage?

It can’t be as bad as you say it is. Otherwise there wouldn’t be millions of tourists (around 40 million last year) and people desperate to come here to live.

I fundamentally agree, but think when most people lament not being ‘great’ it’s more often out of ignorance rather than willingly skimming over the moral issues. There is a naive idea that a country can be ‘great’ in the sense of being preeminent on the world stage without considering that this has generally only been possible through history via conquest and exploitation.

Britain was definitely not average in recent centuries, but the link between this status and empire is still not being made. When it is, there are too many defensive voices and this allows people to avoid engaging with anything difficult. The recent National Trust stuff has made me realise that many people see the purpose of conserving heritage as giving us something to feel good about rather than a way of understanding historical reality.

Success as a country needs to look different to Victorian ideas of ‘greatness’.

You lot are terrifying.

They don't get anywhere close to these far right parties, so no.

Could have been worse, Reform could have won. Do I think the Greens have a credible policy to govern.... absolutely not but is a hell of a lot better than getting Reform who will sow division and drag us closer to the US.

I absolutely don't want men in women's changing rooms.

But I want a Reform government even less.

I think a Green government would be incredibly damaging. A Reform government would be catastrophic.

ARRGGGH! clutches pearls. NOT MEN?

I’ve used the men’s loos loads of times. Occasionally, if I’m really busting (and it’s empty), I use the disabled or baby change. Am I a man or a baby or a disabled person? Nope, do I need a piss - yes. But what’s your tangential point? Surely there must be one…

Also, are people really surprised that a constituency with lots of muslims voted tactically to beat a party that would expel their parents from the country, or persecute their children? Are they really?

Up to a point, I think the Greens and Reform are two cheeks of the same arse, in that they offer simple solutions to complex problems. I think the differences are:

(i) the Greens, however misguided on some things, are coming from a good place, wanting to make things better for people. Reform are overtly racist bigots.

(ii) it doesn't matter at this point whether the Greens are a viable government, as they're unlikely to win more than a handful of seats. There's every chance that Reform will at least be in coalition after the next election. that's fucking scary.

Agree, I would add the Greens to your list.

@80smonstershe’s not no. Why get personal?

You are right, Restore is worse, as is Advance and Britain First.

She did not say that.

I am constantly amazed that people will fall for this kind of bullshit without doing the most basic of research. The clip doing the rounds today is clipped entirely to suit the narrative of the Reform supporters, used by their social media to whip up more division in the culture wars. They have discovered the Green Party are a threat to them and will use whatever they can manipulate to smear them.

Here is what was said.

Matt Goodwin: But you’ve never asked why those things are happening?
Hannah Spencer: Of course we have…
MG (interrupts, speaking over HS): Why are they happening
HS (continues her point): …of course we have, because people like you are dividing people……
MG (interrupts again): So I’m responsible for the MEN bombing?
HS: that’s not what I’ve just said.

The clip is then cut off so we don’t see what the full response to that was. It is clear she is responding to his first question, not his second one, and anyone with more than a single braincell can work can see that.

You can hate the Greens and be concerned about them getting in, that’s absolutely fine. But if your argument against them is based on on this kind of rhetoric, when Reform are using sound bite clips to frame a false narrative about them, it’s clear you aren’t actually interested in making an informed decision and have only one singular reason to support them. You should do some soul searching to decide why that is the case and what it says about you.

The Greens have given us the best and worst examples of Thatcherism.
Zack the smart arse earning fees from women hoping to enlarge their boobs. He talked them into believing that a form of meditating was enough. He grew his own fortune by abandoning his religion, and now runs a Political Party. All on slick talk.
Hannah Spencer left school at 16 and worked, didn't go on benefits (take note Angela). Hannah qualified in a trade and and started her own plumbing business. With the profits she has built a property portfolio of a £million, how entrepreneurial. She has now qualified as a plasterer. Still working hard with her hands.
So far so good.