âoeLabour savingsâ just means job cuts. In the long distant past increasing productivity led to better wages, now it just means increased profits for the shareholders. If AI increases productivity 20%, well why not just cut 20% of the workforce and pocket the difference?

The audience in QT is chosen to represent the politics of the area in which an episode is filmed. I can't be bothered to find out the exact selection process but I expect it's something like this: people who apply for tickets are asked how they voted in the last election, the producers take the percentage of votes cast in that election then allocate the tickets accordingly. Actually there was an instance some months ago when a guest - either Reform or Tory - complained that the audience was packed full of lefties by the BBC and in a rare display of backbone the host clapped back quite forcefully to explain how the audience was actually chosen.

No, not really. The thing is that there is more than one left-right axis. Here are the two main ones:
â Economic - Left means more state ownership. Right means a more free market approach.
â Social - Left means more personal freedom and equal rights. Right tends towards authoritarianism.

It's perfectly possible to be left on one and right on the other or vice versa. Extreme economic left plus extreme social right is something like the USSR under Stalin. Vice versa is something like a US libertarian, assuming you can find a genuine one that actually believes in no government interference whatsoever and isn't just an anti-tax Christofascist.

As regards freedom of speech generally of course we have that. We had it long before we felt any need to legislate for it, e.g. in the European Convention for Human Rights. (The one that Farage says we should withdraw from, calling it an imposition from Brussels despite the fact the the UK played quite a large part in drafting the fucking thing in the first place.)

If the King happened to be driving down the street I could shout at him "Your brother is a nonce!" with no legal consequences. Try doing that with Trump. I could stand outside Scotland Yard shouting "The Met(ropolitan Police) are wankers!" and no-one would bat an eye. On the other hand if I were to do what the Westboro Baptists are known for and start harassing people in the street or gatecrash funerals with signs and loudhailers the police would tell me to move along, because such actions are meant solely to hurt and intimidate others.

The US has laws on speech just as we do. The main difference is that ours are slightly more restrictive because as I said earlier we place somewhat more importance on public order than you do. It's not entirely dissimilar to the aphorism that your freedom to swing your fists ends an inch in front of my nose. We know what some of the consequences of absolute free speech are; the murder of Jo Cox, an MP, is a recent example. The difference is that no-one in the political sphere took that as a reason for mockery - unlike the attack on Paul Pelosi - and everyone reacted with shock and disgust.
The general response to the remarks from some in the MAGA movement to the Pelosi incident ranged from bafflement to distaste to âoewhat in the actual fuck is wrong with those people?!"

Farage complains about anything, because he has no solutions to any of the problems our nation faces. It used to be the EU, until he and his conned us into voting Leave. Then he moved on to immigrants, blaming them for the state of the UK. Now, bereft of any original thought as he is, he's latched on to cancel culture and freeze peach. Deep down he doesn't really want to be PM because that would involve him actually turning up and doing something. As the saying here goes: he's all mouth and no trousers. He went into politics for what he could get out of it, not for any measurable desire to help others.

Because we place society as a whole over the individual's right to spout whatever hateful racist screed that comes into their head. We have laws against calls to violence, like the kind that Lucy Letby plead guilty to. Shortly after the Southport killings but before the rioting started Farage was out there peddling disinformation in the guise of "just asking questions". The cunt knew what he was doing - he's not stupid - he just cared more about his own public profile than the people who would be hurt and terrorised by rioters who were targeting Muslims and immigrants when the actual perpetrator was neither.

We're talking about a man who while at college (age seventeen) would creep up behind Jewish students at his school, whisper "Hitler was right" and make a hissing sound suggestive of a gas chamber. I'm not suggesting he be punished for this, only that it reflects the sort of man he is. He's always been a hateful xenophobe.

Anyway, re: the thirty arrests business, note that it says arrests, not convictions. These cases usually just end up with the police visiting the poster, telling them it could potentially be unlawful, asking them to take it down and suggesting that they think more carefully about what they put out there before they click 'post'. If you look at the cases that were actually successfully prosecuted you may change your mind. In the Letby case she was literally calling for a building housing asylum seekers to be burned down while they were in it, and like I said we have laws about that sort of thing. We have laws against hate speech because we know what happens when people start listening to it.

The next time you encounter someone who complains that they can't speak their mind any more, try asking them what it is they want to say. You won't be surprised at the answer.

No they haven't. The only person who thinks that is Nigel Farage. If anything he should get down on his knees and kiss Aunty Beeb's feet for all the free publicity they've given him. Read TFA and you'll see that he has been given far more guest spots on QT and other BBC programmes than the size of his party should warrant.

Old Frog Face is practically the archetype for right wing voices who constantly whinge about being 'cancelled', despite the fact that they're doing it on broadcast television. The man is a charlatan who like many others of his ilk devolves into bluster and personal attacks when presented with facts that don't support his narrative. A man who consistently tries to present himself as a man of the people, despite being a privately educated commodities trader millionaire with at least ten side gigs to his job as an MP. A man who has spent more spent in the US with his tongue up Trump's arse than he has representing his constituents' interests.

Question Time isn't a news programme. There are neither stories nor interviews, just a panel, a moderator and the audience. The panel is supposed to be selected to match the political landscape in the area the episode is filmed (it's in a different place every week), the moderator chooses which audience member gets to ask a question and tries to keep guests on-topic (the current host Fiona Bruce has herself had some accusations of bias levied* but there have been worse than her) and the audience are people who live in the area where the episode is filmed.

There's a lot of anger among regular QT viewers about guests coming from the so-called "Institute of Economic Affairs", who are basically the poster child for Tufton Street. They're not politicians, they're lobbyists who are very keen to keep their sources of funding secret. Many QT viewers do not think they should be invited as guests.

* Usually when there's no pushback from her when a guest asserts something that is patently false.

That's because from a UK perspective the US right wing appears to be absolutely batshit mental.

I'm just glad they blurted it out in the first paragraph. Saved me from reading the rest of that shite.

Ask the Finns. They know a thing or two, just ask the Russians.

Not if The Donald dies, retires with a blanket pardon, or is ousted 25A style before the end of his term.

Vance went from "Trump could be America's Hitler" to serving as his VP.
If I were you I'd worry more about who's going to be pulling that spineless nonentity's strings because, unlike Trump, Vance seems to have no convictions whatsoever.

Fair point.

You're conflating two different things.

Attached to the belt reel is a spring, which retracts the belt when it's not being used, and a mechanism to stop the reel from moving when the vehicle jerks suddenly. It doesn't affect safety if the former doesn't work, but the latter is essential.

The thing you're talking about - the pre-tensioner - is usually located where the belt buckles in. In the event of an accident a small pyrotechnic charge is used to tighten the belt to hold the passenger more firmly in their seat. Some manufacturers may put them in the reel mechanism but all the ones I've seen were in the buckle. I've read that some of them even use miniature Wankel engines to convert the pressurised gasses from the charge into rotary motion.

No they're not. We just call them "phones" now.