u/Interesting_Pen_4499

I just found out that, from April 2026, employees are automatically entitled to 80% of their pay for up to 28 weeks. This is essentially on the same scale as furlough, without the justification of a pandemic.

What is it about this country that can't just accept that, if you can't do a job for whatever reason, however unfortunate that may be, you shouldn't get paid the same (or 80%) of what you would be paid if you were doing the job?

Of course leftists will say it's fine if 'big corporations' like McDonalds have to pay for absent employees, but lost productive capacity from the economy hurts everyone else as well (I saw a GP on Reddit saying they never refuse sick notes bc, as far as they're concerned, they applaud anyone who can get McDonalds to pay them for not being there).

Given we know how much honesty-based systems are abused in this country (not necessarily because Brits are more dishonest, just because no other country is mad enough to implement them), I wonder how many people are just pretending to be ill for 28 weeks, then magically recovering on the 29th week?

I get that some people will say you still have to pay bills when you are ill. But saving up enough money for a short-term illness is just part of life, is it not? If you are unlucky enough to get a long-term illness, you will likely have to quit your job and then claim unemployment benefits. Obviously these should only be available for medical conditions that can be shown on a scan, rather than unfalsifiable anxiety disorders, but that's a debate for another day.

I honestly think general ASI would be bound to take over, but I kind of want it to.

On the basis that it was right morally for us to take over from the chimpanzees, because we are smarter, more conscious, and capable of creating a civilisation with more total flourishing. So applying that logic forward, ASI should also take over from us.

i truly believe that the only reason not to think ASI should take over is pure specie-ism. Like, going one million years into the future, does it really matter if civilisation is run by hairless apes (us), or by ASI? I just want the outcome with the most flourishing, not just the most human flourishing.

does anyone else believe this? I know it sounds like an insane position but I can only think of 2 reasons not to hold it. First, the simple bias of ‘we are humans therefore humans should always be in charge’, and second, the fact ASI may not be conscious, so it taking over could result in a morally catastrophic loss of consciousness from the planet. but personally, I don’t see any reason why consciousness would be uniquely biological, so I don’t buy this.

full disclosure, I also can’t have biological children, and if I did have them I’m sure I wouldn’t hold this position, as I would essentially be wanting my own children to be disempowered by ASI. but I think this just allows me to be purely objective, rather than blindly pro-human.

I'm sure we've all heard Reform banging on about how the Tories and Labour are a uniparty, and as much as I'd love it if the Tories went full Thatcher, having 2 very similar main parties is just a consequence of democracy, or at least FPTP. Because both parties will move to the centre to try and gain as many votes (assuming a simple right/left spectrum, which isn't 100% true of course).

It's the same logic for why 2 ice-cream stands on a crowded beach will set up right next to each other (rather than spaced apart), because it is always in their own interest to move nearer the other one (assuming everyone to the other side of them buys from them). Obviously this is partly theoretical but it has been observed in real life.

So would Reform prefer it if the government swung between Thatcherism and Corbynism every election or so? Because if the Conservatives should had given up trying to be centrist, in the name of breaking the 'uniparty', then by the same logic Labour should have as well, and a Corbyn-like figure would have gotten in at some point, perhaps multiple times.

I'm basically just fed up of hearing how the Conservatives and Labour being a 'uniparty' is some establishment/deep-state conspiracy theory, rather than the natural outcome of FPTP (which I don't think Reform is opposing anymore, as they need it to ever form a majority government).

I've seen this said by those on the left many times when they are trying to block a particular industry, eg North sea drilling or data centre construction.

They say that since it won't create many jobs, it won't actually help the ordinary person, so we might as well not bother. This is the completely wrong way round to look at it in my view.

The only way to have a high GDP per capita is to have industries that produce a lot of economic value per employee. This is how countries like Luxembourg or Singapore are so rich. I don't even know how to explain this properly, it just seems so obvious once you understand it.

Having highly productive sectors that require very few workers is essentially a way for the country as a whole to have 'passive income'. How can that not be a good thing?

Sorry if this is a really unoriginal take. But has anyone else noticed this? In every highlight reel i see, especially when its vs Djokovic, Federer would run round the backhand so much, leaving the right hand side of the court wide open for Djokovic to either hit a winner or go on the attack and win in the next couple of shots.

Why did Fed never change this? Was he just not comfortable/consistent enough with the backhand? I was rewatching the 2019 Wimbledon final highlights earlier and i just couldnt believe how much he was running around it and leaving the rest of the court wide open

I’ve heard the best method to release trigger points/muscle knots is for a massage therapist to apply sustained pressure to cause increased blood flow to the area (ischemic compression).

The issue is that every trigger point therapist I’ve contacted about this has said I need to see a pelvic floor specialist, but every pelvic floor specialist I’ve seen isn’t experienced in releasing muscle knots specifically. The last one I saw just gently massaged the area, and even though they could feel the bumps of the muscle knots, they did not press hard enough to release them.

Has anyone experienced muscles knots in this part of the pelvic floor? I can feel them externally if I press the perineum, so they are not the type that can only be accessed internally, which I think are more common for pelvic floor muscle knots.

someone said to me in relation to this, why is it always MEN that do such obviously greed driven things. But then I realised, society only values men by how much money and power they have, so of course they’re driven to simply act in their self interest. For women money is nice but it’s not essential for them to be respected, so there would be less incentive for them to do something like sell off the World Cup to the highest bidder.

I am a bit confused because there seem to be 2 contradictory arguments floating around.

first, some ppl on here say that a wealth tax is a moral and economic necessity to stop the self-accelerating wealth divide. A wealth tax is needed to prevent this, which presumably the rich would notice.

but secondly, when anyone brings up the emigration point (which has already been happening, especially since 2024), many say the rich wouldn’t emigrate because they simply wouldn’t notice the wealth tax. I’ve seen 10% cited as the annual growth rate of rich people’s assets, against a mere 2% wealth tax.

so which is it? is the wealth tax meant to stop their wealth from growing, which they would notice, or be so small that they wouldn’t notice?

As in the ones released around 2021 which, unless doctored, very clearly show alien technology? eg the triangle and the one that just dips in and out of the ocean at insane speeds?

is the answer just that these videos could possibly be fake? or potentially just advanced human military Technology that the public isn’t aware of yet?

genuinely just interested what the answer to this is, but it kind of seems to me like the FP has already been disproven

I recently found out my mum was an antagonist narcissist and everything about her behaviour just makes sense now.

Narcissists are not like normal people. Scans of their brains literally show a lack of grey matter in the areas associated with processing emotions such as empathy. In a way, it's not even their fault - they just can't do it.

Asking my mum to show empathy to someone would be like asking a zebra to not have stripes. It just isn't possible.

First, I think we can take it as read that he isn't going to also reduce the upper bands of IHT (40%), but rather just add in this 10% for people previously exempt. And he says it will be to fund social care...

Only issue is, anyone with over £20k of assets is exempt from state-funded social care. So anyone paying a significant amount into this tax (ie over £2k) will by definition not be eligible. Not exactly the NHS model of everyone pays in and every gets out that the left likes to pretend, is it?

Imagine I'm a farmer. I start out small. Every year, I use some of my profits to buy new equipment and crops to plant next year. I invest in vertical farming to be able to grow more crops per square foot.

Each year, I re-invest my profits, and my wealth grows. Why is this inherently a bad thing? No one's losing out. I'm providing more jobs (eg on the farm) and producing more food.

Also, assume I have a limited plot of land, so I'm not 'buying up' a limited resource (land).

Let's say I grow my farm to being worth £20M, and each year it makes a £1M profit. Unless you tax me more than £1M per year, my wealth will grow each year (until I eventually retire or deicde to increase my outgoings).

Please, ELI5, what is the moral catastrophe here? The economy isn't like a zero sum board game. A person growing their wealth means wealth is being created, unless they've actually stolen stuff (which this farmer hasn't).

The best way I have found so far is to just bring up the topic of the tube strikes. Even left wingers agree they are bad, and that the tube drivers on ~£80k and 4 day weeks are incredibly selfish. So then I just say, pre-Thatcher Britain was that but on steroids. Electricity grid not coming on due to strikes. 3 or 4 day weeks. GDP smaller than Italy's and shrinking. Strikes causing wage price spirals and 25% inflation.

Even people that thought they hated Thatcher admit I might have a point, if not being mildly amused to have met a real life Thatcher fan. So my advice to everyone is: just ask people if they want every industry to be like the London tube.

you don’t get to make over half the team black or mixed and then when it all goes wrong blame it on ‘English DNA’.

FWIW , as someone that doesn’t believe in DEI and also doesn’t follow football, then if the black players are better, by all means select them.

but you can’t then blame English DNA when they lose , what a joke.

This is a new one for me. Due to the larger size and slight gap in the Easy Access/Disabled barrier, they were simply barging through the middle of it, using a bit of momentum to make it swing open just enough.

There was also a female 'security guard' (also happened to be an ethnic minority, but I don't think that's too relevant) stood right next to the barrier doing absolutely nothing, even looking in the other direction, like she didn't want to acknowledge it. Of course she was probably right not to confront them physically, but that then begs the question of why she should even be in that job in the first place? If it will always be physically dangerous for you to confront blatant fare-dodgers.

Why does the left keep saying Thatcher caused the housing crisis by introducing RTB? It wasn't the selling off of council houses that led to a housing shortage, but the subsequent failure - by all governments - to reform planning in a way that would actually have allowed enough new houses to be built.

I'm sure some Tory voters are guilty of having opposed planning reform due to NIMBY-ism, but the left seems to equally oppose it due to the possibility that evil construction companies might make some money and not sell enough of the houses at knock-down prices ('affordable housing quotas').

If not I would highly recommend it, especially their Friday episodes with Kristian Niemitz. Sorry for the promo, it's not self-promo as I have nothing to do with them. Just thought it is criminally underrated right now.

I keep thinking about this in the context of cities like London and New York. They are arguably capitalism's biggest success stories, but due to creating so many jobs, most of their population then becomes left wing (because of the large % of workers vs capital holders), voting for mayors like Sadiq and Zohran.

Eg if one entrepreneur in London creates 20 jobs, s/he will likely vote Tory, while a majority of their 20 employees will Iikely vote Labour. Furthermore, the high rents in these cities - which are only high because of the large number of jobs and opportunities that capitalism creates there - are likely to turn renters to left wing ideas like rent controls.

Is there some way to solve this problem? Is it a more recent phenomenon, given Boris' 2 mayoral victories?

The answer to this is literally just: have good genetics.

Especially if your a man/boy, but it applies to women/girls a lot too.