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The concept that they risk gentrifying BERKLEY of all places is very funny to me like I think that ship has sailed, and not because of bike lanes.

I actually know the answer to this and it's slightly insane. Google pulls from Wikipedia to determine if a place is a city, town, neighbourhood, whatever. Brighton's first line describes it as a "seaside resort" so Google Maps thinks it's a neighbourhood and doesn't display it in the "city" font.

Dystopia www.news.com.au/technology/o...

While none of them said this it is what quite a lot of them did!

Every commentator saying too many kids go to university has to tell their own kid to not do a degree

Of course, but US air bases in the Middle East is exactly where an Iranian attack would be expected.

Can it be described as a surprise when the country you’re in the middle of a war with attacks?

Many issues with this of course but it does raise the question of is the government putting out to tender AI-hallucinated procurement contracts?

I am normally the first to defend civil servants. However, if this reporting is true then there should be mass firings and if at all legally feasible, criminal charges. To butcher a West Wing quote: everyone who did it, everyone who ordered it, and everyone who knew about it.

[me telling my story how I fought in the Trojan War] it was crazy [friend who once got a text from me where I accidentally called Achilles, Achiles] was Adrian Chiles there?

I remember reading an article (I think it was in Prospect) that suggested exactly this and I think it’s an interesting idea with more merits than complete compulsory voting. I’m not sure if I’d support it right now, but it’s something I feel all sides make good points on.

Thinking about this more, if compulsory voting were introduced I quite like a chaos of a re-open nominations option - obviously under FPTP re-open nominations would almost never win but the compelling, maybe conclusive argument is that in the handful of elections it would win it would be very funny

Yes I think having that as a well-publicised option is a necessity for compulsory voting. But in Britain I think most voters don’t even know you’re allowed to spoil your ballot, or they see it as breaking the rules rather than a legitimate form of democratic expression, so a formal option is better.

That said, arguments on both sides are really overdoing it. Lower turnout is bad and more turnout should be encouraged, but that alone is not at a point where democracy is at risk. Similarly if compulsory voting was introduced, it is not such an offence to personal liberty as to invalidate democracy

Obviously a democracy is only legitimate if the system has buy-in from large swathes of the population. But for those who don’t buy into the system, forcing them to engage with it without making positive changes for them will only polarise them against the system more.

The biggest reasons for non-voting are that a person doesn’t care or a person faces a practical barrier to vote. For the latter, compulsory voting risks fining them unfairly. For those in the former camp, I really do think it’s your democratic right to not care about politics if you don’t want to

I remain unconvinced by compulsory voting - I think choosing not to vote is just as much an exercise of a person’s democratic right as voting. I suppose you can always spoil your ballot, but I’d only support this if there were some legitimate spoil your ballot option like a “none of the above” box.

The thing to note here is that the US sunk 67 civilian vessels killing 221 civilians, during peacetime, essentially at random, in international waters, and it somehow wasn’t considered news internationally.

"The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States..." This is my shocked face. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...