The effect of this would be extremely minimal. Almost all empty homes in the UK are homes that are temporarily empty pending sale or between renters. Having empty homes is actually extremely normal, you can’t really not have empty homes, as people are always moving.

With rare exceptions, empty homes aren’t just sitting there empty for years, like this article implies. The landlords would much rather rent them out and make money.

The UK has far fewer empty empty homes than anywhere else in the developed world. Our housing stock isn’t enough.

There’s no other option but to build more. I hope Labour’s plans can help with that, but who knows. And it’d need to be sustained.

NIMBYism is killing this country. We have the smallest available housing stock in Europe by some margin. Labour are right to be trying to make a dent in the issue.

Unsurprising. Iran has made threats about our bases not long ago, although thankfully so far they’ve not done anything. Hopefully it stays that way. The last thing we need is to be dragged into this.

Authoritarian arrest?! They broke into an RAF base and crippled multiple planes, FFS.

Why do you want Farage to win so badly? He’d be awful for the country. Do you not see the damage he’s already done?

No, the majority are not questionable. Every single one of those are unambiguously left wing moves.

People are falling victim to the anything to the right of me [socialist] is right wing.

Labour are objectively a centre-left party, and I just gave evidence of that. Saying “well all of that is left wing… but it doesn’t count!” isn’t a legitimate argument.

Of course defence is important. How separated from reality are you for you to think it isn’t?

Sabotaging UK defence is obviously a bad thing, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Ok, so clearly you didn’t read my comment.

Feel free to read it then get back to me. Goodbye until then.

Is it normal for all MPs to have met the PM in a close encounter? I genuinely don’t know.

… by Reform not being tackled? I thought it was self evident? How can I say that it’s raining outside? By looking at the rain outside.

Did you not read my comment?

they could declare Reform a terrorist group and lock them up

I’m sure that’d be legal and go well. Just declare political opponents terrorists and arrest them. That’s some Trumpian shit right there.

You don’t need to defend Labour here. They’ll throw you under the bus to protect the wealthy too.

Who says I’m defending them? I’m being realistic.

“Protect the wealthy” lmao. It’s like you’ve completely ignored the government’s actions.

Come on, “throwing around red paint” is quite misleading, no?

They poured it into the engines of multiple RAF jets, destroying those engines. That’s several million in damages, and a lot of downtime.

And legally speaking, it absolutely was a terrorist act.

Honestly the above comment infuriated me.

They would not be defending this person if they were a man.

Having lower expectations of women isn’t progressive, it isn’t feminist. It’s infantising. It’s misogyny of lower expectations. “Oh you can’t expect women to understand the difference between right and wrong.”

A woman who is happy to support Elon is every bit as bad as a man that is happy to support Elon. Supporting a nazi is supporting a nazi.

How would you say they aren’t tackling Reform? I’d argue they are, just that it’s hard to debate a populist who can promise whatever he wants knowing he won’t receive even a tenth of the media scrutiny.

Labour have tried to tackle wealth inequality. A windfall tax on energy firms, VAT on private schools, inheritance tax on “farming” estates that were increasingly used as a tax avoidance scheme, banning the use of offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax, WFA means testing, introducing taxes on non-doms, etc.

It’s also true that taxing wealthy people is hard, because they have the resources and the ability to avoid taxes/move assets/leave. Wealth taxes are notoriously hard to implement, we see that worldwide. And even if we managed it, it wouldn’t earn near enough.

You keep saying Labor, are you from the UK?

And tbh, while Labour is far from socialist, they’re doing some left wing things:

• Nationalising rail. Seems left wing to me.

• Nationalising steel. Seems left wing to me.

• Nationalising parts of our energy sector. Seems left wing to me.

• They’re increasing workers rights in a bunch of different ways. Seems left wing to me.

• They’ve significantly hiked minimum wage. Seems left wing to me.

• They’ve implemented a windfall tax targeting profiteering energy firms. Left wing.

• Placing VAT on private schooling. Left wing.

• Means testing WFA. Left wing.

• Placing taxes on non-doms. Left wing.

• Invested a great deal more in infrastructure. Left wing.

• Capped public transport costs. Left wing.

• Implementing stricter rules for landlords. Left wing.

• Essentially restarting SureStart in all but name. Left wing.

• Changing inheritance tax to squash loopholes surrounding buying up farmland. Left wing.

• Ending the use of offshore trusts as a way to avoid inheritance tax. Left wing.

• Bringing the NHS back under direct public control. Left wing.

• Expanding green energy. Left wing.

There’s probably more I’ve not thought of, too.

Putting everyone in the “neoliberal” group as if they’re the same isn’t productive IMO. Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Tories, and Reform aren’t all the same.

People also need to be realistic about what the electorate overall wants.

Explain?

Unfortunately there’s a very real possibility this is our future, and exactly what this community wants.

Too bad, we must give more to pensioners

Farage could not have asked for better news than this. Ugh.

E: do the downvoters think that vote splitting is not a thing? This is the best news for Farage in a long time.

I will never understand why people think FOSS is or should be apolitical.

FOSS has always been political. It’s literally never existed in any other way.

Reading into this, it seems like there’s actually a lot going on right now when it comes to sorting out our decaying (ha) dentistry services.

Good.

If this gets well and truly sorted, this will be a visible, tangible thing people can point to and say they’ve done well there.

People can’t really conceptualise the less visible things like “wages have gone up by 2% more than inflation this year”, “inflation has dropped by 0.3%”, “infrastructure investment has been raised by X%!”

We’re bad at understanding numbers like that and visualising what impact they will make on our lives over a longer period of time.

The difference between “I’ve not been able to get a dentist appointment for 4 years” and “I can trivially have one booked every 6 months” is something that everyone will notice and appreciate.