u/Harleygator_

All my life, people have been telling me to vote for the least bad option, because what I actually want to vote for "doesn't stand a chance." The result is that every election, we get saddled with politicians we didn't really want, doing things we don't really like.

In this election, we already see it. Vote Burnham to stop Starmer. Vote Reform to stop Labour. The message is clear - don't vote for what you want. Vote only against what you don't. Just avoid the bad option. Never go for the good option.

The Makerfield by-election is a chance to do something different - to vote for a party you actually support and want to win. That party is Restore Britain.

I've been told by dozens of people over just the last couple of days that they would love Restore to win, but they're going to vote for Reform to stop Labour. If everyone who thought like this voted for Restore, Restore would win. They showed that last week, winning all 10 of their contested council seats by more than double the votes.

Here's what you have to gain. A local candidate in Rebecca Shepherd, campaigning on local issues. Backed by a pro-British party, led by the hardest working MP in parliament. 3 years of solid attention to the things you actually care about in Makerfield, by people who actually care about working-class northern towns like ours.

This is your chance. If you don't have courage now, you'll never find it when it matters.

If you plan on heading to Makerfield to help with campaigning, including talking to voters on the doorstep and in the streets... for God's sake, show some discipline.

The media is looking for any excuse to give us bad press, and they only need one idiot to step out of line, and he will be the face of our campaign in Makerfield.

The message we send must be clear, concise, and most of all, representative of the Britain we wish to Restore. What does that mean? It means acting like an English gentlemen. Polite but firm, unapologetic but measured. Invested, but not emotional or angry.

This is not about you - it's about the country. If you let yourself down, you let the country down.

Simple message - those that contribute and who are compatible are welcome; those who don't and aren't are not. We voted against mass immigration and it is only fair it is reversed. You don't have to pitch your nose to vote for Rupert Lowe, and unlike Farage he isn't surrounding himself with failed Tories. Our candidate is a local businesswoman, not a career politicians using the town to get a promotion, like Andy Burnham. And, above all, if you agree with us... VOTE. Every single Restore voter must vote, no matter what.

I have set my profile to hide all content, as I prefer to keep my engagement private. But on several occasions, people have replied to comments or posts I have made in one subreddit referencing what I have posted in other subreddits, including posting questions about posts in one subreddit onto my post in another subreddit. These people do not follow me and should therefore not be able to see the communities I've engaged with. Am I missing something, or is this a bug?

The post linked below, from someone I suspect is a leftist, nonetheless makes a very fair point. Reform UK were originally established to give a voice to disaffected voters who had been ignored and betrayed by the establishment - predominantly native working-class Brits. The reason I did not vote for the party in the local elections, and the reason I chose to join and support Restore Britain instead is precisely because of decisions like this one.

Throughout the country, for a reason no sane person can fathom, Reform thought it sensible to accept the candidacy of some people who were in no way representative of the communities they were standing to represent, including some who the vast majority of their own members would like to see deported under a Reform government.

One of my biggest hopes is that Rupert Lowe is taking seriously the need to properly filter out bad candidates for future local and national elections; it would be a mistake to accept candidates who are not at the very least born in the UK with some connection to the people. I'm sure it doesn't need to be said to Rupert, but if his team do happen to read this, please remember who you're supposed to represent, which can only be truly achieved through people who are representative of us, whose self-interest is our interest.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Casnewydd/comments/1t9m5oj/im_sorry_to_flog_a_dead_horse_but_people_who/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

For my shame, I do occasionally browse mainstream newspapers to see what’s going on in the world. On the BBC News homepage today, I noticed something I often do, yet rarely stop to think about because it is so common now – which is, the sheer number of crimes being committed by foreign people in the UK. It seems to me that a clear majority of the crimes, especially those whose nature is so severe as to invite media attention are either done by or involve perpetrators who are not native to the country.

Just on the homepage today, there were several reports relating to crimes. King Charles visits the victims of a stabbing committed by Essa Suleiman. The trial of triple-killer Valdo Calocane. An English woman called Paris, convicted of organising the murder of her ex-husband, alongside Ramarnee Bakas, Abdulrasheed Adedoja, Israel Augustus, Jean and Arrone Mukuna, and Isanah Sungum. The arrest of a cannabis farmer called Antonjo Kodhelwas. The unmasking of a notorious people smuggler called Kardo Muhammad Amen Jaf. The conviction for harassment of Jews by Adam Bedoui and Abdelkader Amir Bousloub.

To be fair, Kevin Parle and Peter Murray were also convicted for serious crimes… which they committed 20 years ago.

We’re often told by those on the left that the migrant crime wave is a far-right hoax, a myth concocted by racists to undermine the moral standing of otherwise peaceful members of society. Yet one cannot credibly claim that the BBC are an anti-migrant institution, nor that they would deliberately focus on migrant crimes and exclude equal or higher numbers of newsworthy crimes being committed by natives. We can only conclude that the evidence of our own eyes is correct.

What I don’t understand is why the left, by denying this obvious reality, would be willing to put up with such routine atrocities and general menace, rather than acknowledge and address this issue. Do these people have no sense of self-preservation at all? They often accuse us of being stupid, uneducated, gammon-faced oiks, yet they are utterly impervious to reason on this issue.

Genuine answers only – why do you think they don’t seem to care and are happy to ignore it?

Rupert Lowe has stated he favours a more Thatcherite brand of economic policy, one in which regulations are slashed, benefits are restricted, and both taxes and spending are brought down. To be clear, I also favour this model of Austrian-style economics and think it would be the best thing to help our economy get back on track and invite more foreign investment.

However, I am conscious that the British public in general aren’t necessarily as far to this side on this issue as they clearly are on immigration. I think it’s fair to say British people don’t necessarily mind a bit of state oversight and spending, in the right areas. As such, there’s a risk that deviating too far from the current economic model may alienate voters who might otherwise fully agree with our stance on immigration. The immigration issue is too important to be diluting enthusiasm for our cause by making other policies unattractive.

On the other hand, I think we can also be honest that a programme of remigration on the scale Lowe proposes would cause short-term economic hardship. Our economy has grown fat on a diet of cheap foreign labour, and as anyone who has tried to get back into shape knows, eating well and exercising is a difficult habit to make. The antidote to this is pro-market economics.

Do you think Restore should temper their economic instincts in order to get into a position to deal with immigration, or is it necessary to be hardline on economics because you can’t do one without the other?

The local election in Great Yarmouth proved unequivocally that boots on the ground gets votes in the ballot box. People from across Great Britain turned out in their hundreds to post leaflets and talk to constituents, and the result was an absolute landslide victory for our cause. They’ve shown how it can be done.

You can easily find your local branch on Restore’s website. Every branch will need that level of support if we are going to win in 2029. So, the question is, have you contacted your local branch about attending meetups and volunteering your time? If not, why not? No one else is coming to do it for us.

Over the last few days – since the relative success of Reform UK and Restore Britain in the local elections – this and other British-focused subreddits have erupted into what can best be described as an orgy of anti-working-class vitriol by the usual suspects. The general sentiment is that by voting for anti-immigration parties, the working-class are proving they are too stupid to know what is good for them, and the only reason they believe immigrants are causing problems is because their bigotry makes them ignorant. One comment read, “you can’t reason them out of something they weren’t reasoned into.” “It’s not complicated,” said another, “they’re genuinely just racist.” “They’re falling for an obvious con.” “Trying to reason with them is a waste of oxygen.” And so on.

Undergirding this disdain appears to be a simple premise – the working-class are liars. When we report the impact of mass immigration on our local areas, especially in deprived parts of the north and midlands of England, or when we describe how migrants behave in general and towards us, we are committing a hoax. Little to none of what we say on this issue is worth being taken seriously because we are not truly telling you what we experience – rather, we are merely regurgitating far-right lies we have been tricked into believing, or spreading them ourselves for nefarious, racist ends. We are too stupid to tell the difference between propaganda and the evidence of our own eyes and ears. Too bigoted. Too dishonest.

If you think this is a harsh characterisation of the attitude to the working-class… you’re wrong. I have seen it in this sub-reddit and others. I have experienced it first-hand. I have been called a liar for saying things I know to be true, having seen them with my own eyes and heard them from the mouths of my own family and friends.

For some personal context, I have mixed heritage (my grandmother is African) and my father married an African woman with young children from a previous marriage, so my stepsiblings from age 1 upwards were a different colour to me, though we share ethnic origin. My wife is mixed Pakistani. I also have a Distinction-graded postgraduate degree. I say this because I will now share with you my own experience, growing up and living in a very deprived area of northern England with a large population of predominantly Pakistani Muslims, and I want everyone to know who the usual suspects will be dismissing as stupid and racist here.

Between the ages of 10-16, I was targeted repeatedly by Muslim students with violence and menace. I was spat on. Sucker punched several times without provocation. Chased home by mobs of more than 20 youths. Placed in a headlock from behind and repeatedly kneed and punched. Suffered an attempted mugging by four Muslim teens. And this sort of thing happened regularly to others too, from my social groups – the perpetrators almost always Muslim, the victims always not. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

The school had broader issues, of course. Mass brawls would break out regularly in the playground – Muslims on one side, non-Muslims on the other (the racial divide another coincidence, naturally). Eventually, this spilled into the streets, with group fights outside the gates. Cars with young Muslim men would park outside and join in the fray on the side of their fellows.

And, of course, some of the white girls occasionally got into those cars with those Muslim men and were driven off. That’s just another little coincidence, I suppose. They were probably just taxis. We all know that wasn’t happening, was it…

But let’s talk about that for a moment, shall we? A relation of mine worked part-time for a few months in a curry house operated by a Pakistani Muslim man, as a server. She was too young to drive, so the staff drove her home each evening. On one of those evenings, one of them – another Muslim man in his mid-50s – pulled over somewhere nice and quiet. I don’t need to describe happened next. When she reported it to the police, do you know what the restaurant owner did? He harassed her. He flooded her with abusive calls and texts, death and r**e threats. He would drive his car past her house at all hours of the day and night, honking his horn to let her know he was there, or park on the corner and drive away when she noticed.

I met another victim when I was early 20s, a working-class Mancunian, this one abused in her teenage years by a gr00ming gang. She was probably lying, though, right? Well, (self-harm) >!the fact she had cut the trauma into the flesh of her own arms, creating a lattice-work of red scars from the backs of her hands to the tops of her shoulders!< had me convinced, but then, what do I know? I’m just stupid, ignorant, bigoted working-class oink gammon scum.

Fast forward the next decade or two. I live in a large English city whose face has changed rapidly over that time. The place is overcrowded, unclean, unsafe, and undergoing a process of alienation. The buses and trams are packed with foreign people who push and jostle to get on, talk loudly or play music on full volume onboard, and don’t thank the driver when they leave. Litter is now ubiquitous, as are groups of foreign men who loiter around coffee shops, making weird pst-pst noises at women, smoking, and speaking alien languages, apparently unemployed yet somehow able to doss around freely while I’m forced to work. Of course, it could be worse – they could be loitering in groups around nightclubs instead, totally sober and preying on drunk women in the dark… oh, wait, they do that too.

To give a bit of flavour to this depiction, there is a historic town hall in the centre of the city, a beautiful building surrounded by archways and statues. Over the last two years, each morning as I go to work, a work crew is there hosing down with soap and water the pathways, corners, and red telephone boxes around it. Why? Because migrants are using them as a public toilet. I know this because I’ve seen them myself, defecating in broad daylight. The place often stinks of human excrement.

But there are benefits to this, of course. If you need a haircut and shave from a Turkish barber, a sweet treat from an American-candy store, or a new case for your mobile phone from an Accessories shop, they absolutely have you covered. You can’t turn a single street without passing one of these businesses. Oddly, I’ve never seen a single customer in 90% of them, though. But they must be popular and profitable, and definitely not fronts for money laundering and human trafficking or anything like that.

What I describe is not a lie, a fabrication, a hoax. It is not something I made up, nor something I just believed because I read about it online. This is what I’ve seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, and felt in violence upon my own skin. It is the same experience you can hear from the mouths of the working class as far afield as Hull and Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool, Stoke and Leicester, and "darn sowf" as well.

The usual response to the things I have described is that, well, eNgLiSh PeOpLe dO iT tOo. This is correct, of course. Some English people are rude. Some are dirty. Some commit crimes. Especially us oikish working-classes. But there is a big difference between domestic and migrant crime. Every society has its bushel of bad apples. Bad English people are our problem, and we deal with them through social programmes and criminal prosecutions. But bad foreign people are not our problem, and inflicting the problems they bring on us is a policy decision. It does not have to be that way. Every r**e, stabbing, and theft by a foreign person who otherwise had no legitimate business being in the country is a preventable atrocity. A choice made at our expense.

Do I think Reform are the answer? Of course not. I think Nigel Farage is a grifter. But what I have written here is the reason for his popularity and success in recent elections – because the experience of the working-class with the foreign people who have been foisted upon our towns and cities is REAL and has been IGNORED for far too long, and we are sick of it. We are tired of being told we’re evil and thick for wanting solutions to real problems. We’re fed up of being demonised for not putting up and shutting up.

So, we’re going to vote for Nigel Farage, and if he doesn’t fix it, we’re going to vote for Rupert Lowe, and if he doesn’t fix it, we’re going to go down the line until we elect someone you’re really not going to like. It’s time to start listening.

So, I would like honest answers from the usual suspects, who have spent the last few days (actually years) degrading the working-class – why aren’t you listening to us? Why won’t you acknowledge what we are going through? Why do you deny our lived experience? What do we have to do to convince you that our suffering is real and that we don’t deserve the society you’re inflicting upon us? Or – answer honestly – do you just not care? Are you just happy as long as you have enough serfs to clean your toilets and serve you at Pret?

I'm not really into online PvP/PvE titles like CoD, Arc Raiders, Helldivers 2, etc, because I don't have time to commit to them regularly. I tend to prefer single-player narrative experiences where I can go at my own pace. So I don't really have any online friends to hang out with.

However, there are a few titles I'm interested in playing which are reportedly much better in co-op, but I sadly have few friends who can commit to them. I'm looking for a guy/some guys who'd want to play through these games together from time to time, maybe once a week or so, ideally people who enjoy similar single-player experiences like I do.

The sorts of games I've been looking at are Grounded, Abiotic Factor, Remnant: From the Ashes 1 & 2, and Borderlands. Would also be open to some EAFC26 if anyone is interested in some co-op seasons, though I have a love/hate relationship with it (I love to hate it).

Some personal info. I'm a dad. Married. Like rock music. Don't watch a lot of TV or movies. Read a lot of books. Currently juggling Crimson Desert and Hades 2 as my single-player games.

I think the consensus on FM26 Console is unanimous – the game doesn’t justify its price, and you shouldn’t spend your money on it. However, the game was just added to the PS Plus Catalogue, meaning it can be played for free now. Normally, if something is free, there’s no harm in trying it out… however, the reviews from critics and gamers alike are absolutely scathing, and I’m not sure I want to waste my time with something which is reportedly so bad.

So, FM26 Console isn’t worth the money… but as money isn’t a factor, is it worth the time?