This guy acts like any of this is new, or that it’s some right wing conspiracy to make us mistrust the government.

They’re in the pocket of capitalist interests and have been for hundreds of years. More and more it’s becoming clear that the leading factor behind most of our major societal issues is unfettered capitalism, destroying everything and squeezing everything.

Our governments answer only to the rich these days, moreso than ever before in recent Western history. Any response from the people can be moderated and restricted, and at worst results in a pathetic protest that - while it may be large - is a brief, unsustained blip that doesn’t even rattle the stock market, let alone worry the rich ruling class at all.

Society has been cleverly trained to think they can’t affect change, and that writing a comment online (like this one) is a good way to affect change or make a difference.

All it does is make you feel like you’ve done something useful, when you haven’t, and identified yourself and your political opinions to your government, who will put you on various lists and come for you when the time comes.

This guy is on the right track, but needs to think bigger. Much, much bigger.

What I hate most about the Independent these days is that they’re a UK news agency for UK news reporting, but seem to want to heavily report on local USA news now.

Not just big international news worthy stuff, but lots of small local area USA news.

I’ll see some headline that sounds serious, only to open it and find it’s not referring to events in the UK at all, but in the USA, which is entirely irrelevant to me.

Not sure why they pivoted to being a US news company, but I’m sick of it, so they’re on my blacklist now.

Why don’t France want to go to war with a random country for lols? Are they COWARDS?!

The American military is a den of animals and monsters. disgusting subhuman cowards; Bloodthirsty beasts.

Dehumanising people, calling them animals, subhuman, beasts, etc - using their own horrid, evil tactics basically - is not how you win me, or anybody decent, over.

They can be bad people doing bad things, but the moment you try to persuade us that they’re not human, but are less than human (and it thus follows that doing bad things to them is more acceptable than doing bad things to actual human people), you immediately lose my support.

No thank you.

Is Russian propaganda truly “the strongest”, or just the most obvious, especially to someone like myself who is an outsider to their system?

I suspect propaganda across the west is just as pervasive, it’s just more insidious, and much harder for us to spot from within.

I wanted to keep using Boost, and they banned third party applications from Reddit.

Especially annoying given that their own application was awful and at times unusable with whole features completely missing.

I was barely aware they ‘funded’ mental healthcare at all, it’s been on life support for years.

I’m on various years and years long mental health waiting lists, I’m sure they’ll get even longer if they reduce the £5 a week they bother to throw at mental healthcare.

Irish Stew with pickled red cabbage on top.

Because I’m lazy and wanted to make something good that’d last a few days.

They just need to transfer power from the car’s inertial dampers to the containment field

Okay, who will fulfill their role of policing, though?

When there’s a crime committed and we need somebody answerable to the nation’s laws in their actions, well trained to handle all situations safely, to go tackle/chase/fight the criminal, or rescue somebody from a criminal, who are we sending?

When they’ve been caught but need to be processed through the legal system, searched, questioned, charged with a crime, detained if needed for days or weeks, etc, all while ensuring that their legal rights and needs are being adhered to by the government branch that’s got all these responsibilities, who are we sending?

I see a lot of people who call for the abolishment of all policing, such as yourself, but you might as well be suggesting we get rid of the Fire Brigade, or Teachers.

The Police are an essential service in any human civilisation, without which crimes would go entirely unpunished, criminals could do anything they want with impunity, there would be no law and safety, because the law is only as strong as those who enforce it. Society would collapse into chaos.

At best you’d have random disconnected groups of civilians banding together to enforce their own moral “law” on those they deem criminals, but they are unaccountable, unregulated, and no more than a lynching mob, even with good intentions.

I do of course agree that in some countries their police system is broken institutionally, and requires a complete reforming from the ground up. But that’s a far, FAR stretch from suggesting the whole concept of policing the nation should be completely abolished. That way lies madness.