I dunno, you could say that cost is a factor, because the NHS can’t do everything, so they have to prioritise based on the funds they have.

But on the other hand, given that assisted dying is only set to be offered to people who are thought to have 6 months left to live, I assume there won’t be many people using the NHS in this way, so surely it would be a very small part of the NHS budget.

Maybe at the very least they should decriminalise the assisting of someone ending their life in certain cases, so that if somebody helps their relative go to Dignitas in Switzerland, they won’t be breaking the law.

The parts of Ukraine that have been invaded by Russia have not been liberated, they have been subjugated to the rule of the Kremlin. And as I said before, “elections” in Russia are rigged. It’s not just ballot stuffing, it’s also the fact that genuine opposition candidates aren’t allowed to stand for election.

And as far as I understand, Zelenskyy and Poroshenko were both pretty pro-EU all along.

I don’t know why you’re going on about a “nazi problem” when Russia has plenty of far-right activists themselves.

The key point though is that it’s up to the people of Ukraine to decide if they want referendums. It’s not for an imperialist power like Russia to impose their own demands that Ukraine should hold referendums.

If Ukrainians wanted another leader like Yanukovych then they could have elected one in 2014 or 2019, but they didn’t.

Maybe Ukraine should have another election but it would be difficult when much of their land is illegally occupied by Russia.

Liberated regions like Kherson, liberated from the Russian invaders? Maybe they have had local elections, I dunno.

I think it would be good if the Donbas and Crimea could democratically decide their future, but I don’t believe the referendums held by Putin’s regime, given that the Russian regime rigs elections (that video shows ballot stuffing in Russia).

I don’t see how Ukraine, or Ukrainian far-right elements, provoked the war. The war was begun by Russia who sent their troops (illegally of course) into Crimea and the Donbas in 2014.

In 2022 I think a lot of Ukrainians definitely did want to fight back and many people signed up for the military. They didn’t want Russia conquering their country.

Wanting freedom from the dictator in Moscow is not idiotic.

If the bribes/threats aren’t public then why are you sure they happened?

Boris Johnson… went to Kyiv to bribe and threaten Zelensky into backing out

What did he bribe/threaten Zelenskyy with? I thought what he said to Zelenskyy was “decide what you want, and the UK will support your decision either way”.

Maybe some Brits will think “why’s he in bloody France then, he should be at the Cenotaph”, and perhaps that’s why other prime ministers chose to be in London.

I’m not saying the Dems need to go further to the right to win elections, but they just need to appeal to middle America I guess - people who probably don’t see themselves as on the left or right. Like the OP pic of this thread points out, Biden won in 2020, and he’s a pretty centrist politician.

On !leftism@lemmy.world they’ve been suggesting that Harris went too far to the right to try to capture moderate Republicans, and that’s why she lost, but yes I think this OP image makes sense.

Arguably though you could say it’s not as simple as left/right. Maybe the Democrats should look at which specific demographics they did badly with, and then figure out how to better appeal to those demographics.

Yeah something like that probably would be sufficient. But maybe Starmer’s statement was more flattering because he really wants the US-UK relationship to work. Europe perhaps doesn’t need to be so flattering, especially since Europe is a much bigger bloc, so it can throw its own weight around a bit more (e.g. if the EU introduced tariffs on US goods it would presumably hurt the US more, compared to if Britain did the same thing).

Maybe I’m wrong, I dunno.

I guess ideally Biden should never have run for a second term, and they could have had proper primaries.

Realistically perhaps Britain just needs partners, with the US of course being a major partner (Five Eyes for example).

If we weren’t so closely tied to the US then maybe Starmer could be making a statement similar to that of Macron and Scholz today:

Germany, France vow close cooperation after US election… “We will work in this new context for a more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe…”

Fair points. Biden won enough men in 2020 though. Maybe Kamala was just seen as too leftist or too focused on women’s issues or something… I’m not saying she was those things, but maybe some people saw her that way.

Fair. Maybe voters cared about personalities though. And they thought Kamala was partly responsible for rising prices under Biden’s term, so maybe they weren’t as bothered by other policy areas.

Trump holds grudges so maybe he would insist on only meeting Starmer and not Lammy. Who knows.

True. Maybe Harris should have focused more on working class endorsements, union endorsements, etc. I dunno.

Perhaps these two factors contributed to this:

1. Harris is a woman and maybe some Americans just don’t want a female president
2. Harris maybe leaned too hard on celebrity endorsements, at a time when Americans are feeling worse-off financially, which perhaps made her seem out of touch to middle America

Maybe something that hurt Kamala was her use of top music stars… maybe average Americans feel those celebrities are out of touch with average people. I saw this on BBC News:

a Republican at one Trump rally… said their candidate had completely “reimagined” the Republican party from its country club voter stereotype to appealing to working class families, while the Democrats had become the “party of Hollywood”

If that’s true then both Ukrainians and Russians have impositions on their freedom, but at least Ukraine seems to have had democratic elections over the last 10 years, whereas Russia has been rigging their elections, perhaps since 1999 (or longer than that).

Anyway, I would definitely like for Ukrainians to be allowed to leave their country if they wish. But the blame for this invasion surely rests on Russia. The Kremlin launched this imperialistic invasion in 2022, building upon their earlier invasions in 2014.