“Britannia rules the waves…”

In my experience in my specific part of England that holds true - Aldi definitely seems a lot cleaner

Reminded me of this Big Train sketch

Easily my favourite section is the bit about journalism itself. Very eye opening (no pun intended)

There was a clip from Ian Hislop and 2 others from the Eye attending a select committee or something advising politicians about how they could handle disclosing gifts better, and there’s a funny/excruciating bit where one of the Eye journalists responds to an argument saying “they’re beneficial to the constituancy” by reading out to the politician what ‘gifts’ he has claimed: “football tickets… Opera… Stay in a hotel…” until the chairman or whatever intervenes. Private Eye don’t fuck about.

Was my exact reaction when I read this this morning before moving on.

She’s just jealous Glinner’s got a book out and she thinks she needs to raise her TERF game.

I mean I always found his cartoons annoyingly unfunny but I don’t think there’s anti-Semitism in this one. The general state of newspaper political cartoons actually being funny is pretty pathetic, they’re still about as good as The Day Today’s physical cartoonist Brandt.

But back on topic I it certainly looks like there’s no grounds for anti-Semitism for this one.

8/20 here. Proud of getting some right. Really shocked about the answers to some!

A tricky test indeed

This is veering wildly into Is It Cake territory…!

This is why, as an adult vaper, I get slightly fed up of all the anti-vape news stories. Obviously I am heavily against kids using them, and I also think the disposable ones are environmentally unfriendly to say the least.

But they’re a major asset in getting people off the cigs as well and it would be good to remember that once in a while. It’s cheaper. It’s healthier - a low bar but you can tell the difference in days after switching.

To my mind you can’t have it both ways. It’s no coincidence that smoking rates have fallen further at the same time that vape shops have popped up everywhere like a rash - they were falling anyway but it’s sped things up a lot. (Incidentally my guess is it’s not high street vape shops selling to kids but the same garages, newsagents etc that would have sold them fags in the past but that’s just anecdotal evidence and conjecture).

I don’t agree with bans. I also don’t think putting little pictures of tumours on a fag packet ever stopped me lighting up once. What I do like it’s seeing politicians finally mentioning ‘oh yeah, by the way, smoking isn’t very good for you either’ after all this moral panic about vaping

(I am ranting a bit because I’m slightly drunk but I have been thinking this a lot this week)

I like how they focused on vapes first and then looked at smoking laws…

Have to say it though I’d agree with doing something pro-active anti-smoking, but he can say any old thing knowing he won’t have to follow through on it now.

Good for your friend! Only thing that you can really do is be there for him and encourage him - he’s the boss of this but good luck to him.

Only thing that ever worked for me was vaping. Patches, gum and everything I’d use to wean off but I’d start smoking again very soon after. Going cold turkey never worked for longer than a week.

I think the first vape I had was 2012 and I’ve used one since. Genuinely changed my life. I don’t really have plans to quit vaping.

I’m actually quite pleased with this because it seemed like Starmer was weakening on environmental issues, especially after the whole Ulez business. Hopefully if the PM is getting flak for diluting his policies on it Starmer will stick to his guns for once

I mean it seems to me all is saying it’s that instead of having a separate app for BBC, ITV, C4 it’ll all be under one app for when you want to stream live programmes. But I honestly can’t remember the last time I watched a live programme, so will still be using the separate apps to watch stuff on catch-up.

Britbox is actually pretty decent to find old things on, but the smart TV app interface is rubbish.

I think drop in coils are a reasonable compromise between convenience/waste - the waste isn’t very much and the coils I use last me a good long while (I vape MTL though so a coil can sometimes last me 2 months)

Kids who got hooked on smoking use vapes to quit.

I’m not so sure about this. I don’t have any sources but anecdotally it seems like a lot of kids have leaped into vaping without having ever smoked and have got nicotine habits. It began whenever Juul started marketing themselves as wanting to be the ‘ipod of vaping’ long ago and specifically targeted young people in the advertising despite what they might have said

Before then it wasn’t a thing - it was adults who had found a way to stop smoking and were being left to do it in peace. I’ll be proper annoyed if all this leads to me not being able to vape anymore because nothing else worked stopping me smoking. It’s the lesser of two evils by a very long shot.

Imo you should have responsible licensed vape shops that sell these things, and I’d be fine with plain packaging - most of the stuff I get is pretty much in plain packaging already from vpz.

But if they ban disposables there’s going to be an opening for a black market for dodgy stuff full of even more rubbish. Frankly, they should have done something about this a long time ago

I do hope this works to stop kids developing/continuing nic habits. Environmental reasons as well of course but really ever since juul came out teen vaping has been ignored instead of dealt with.

However, I can’t help but think of the days at my school of us smoking and hope kids won’t just take that up instead - luckily it costs a bomb these days so they probably can’t afford it (no idea what disposables cost but guessing not as expensive as proper cigarettes!)

I’m a long time vaper, it’s got me off the cigs, and I use a reusable tank because it’s what I’ve always used but it’s obviously better for the environment and cheaper.

I do support clamping down on disposables because of the waste and these ones seem to be the ones that get into the hands of kids.

However, the whole scare thing about ecigs has always looked like a massive diversion tactic when actual cigarettes are still on sale. I mean it won’t happen because it’s kerching for the government. But I see literally thousands more discarded cigarette butts than I do vapes round our way.

I think the main difference between election mode Blair and election mode Starmer was that Blair looked passionate and enthusiastic about wanting to introduce policies to improve things for people, and that was infectious.

Like I’ve said, I just get the impression with Starmer he kind of says ‘oh yeah… we’re not doing that either now’, and he might have a good reason. It comes over like he’s taking ideas away from the table.

It’s easy for me to say I know. I don’t know the decisions he has to make. I just worry those floating voters will think Starmer and Sunak are very similar and not care who gets in because ‘they’re all the same’

Obviously not. But most of the floating voters labour is trying to attract aren’t radicals they just know they want something better.

I, personally, do not think that after dropping the tax on the top 5% on earners (the main frightened the horses policy) it was also necessary to drop the workers rights and ending 2 child limit on benefits.

They’ve also give cold on green policies by the sounds of it. I mean at some point you’ve got to differentiate yourself

Sure I get that. And I want them in power. But I’m slightly concerned they’re going to be so boring as to not be effective - ie be so concerned to not rock the boat they’ll enable the status quo to more or less continue

I’ve been concerned to see the amount of policies they’ve rowed back on recently. I totally understand they don’t want to scare the horses but at the same time it’s not like Starmer is Corbyn is it?