London one of safest cities in the world

[ellal]

The real problem comes when people are faced with information that challenges their already set opinion. Most of the time they ignore it rather than asking if their opinion was right in the first place.

From an interesting study...

“Exposure to the exaggerated, emotive language can be compelling for the casual reader, but pretty soon this takes hold. You become caught up in the exaggerated claims and then you start to show confirmation bias, looking for more things that echo your own opinions and views in a similarly intense way, hence you need to read more Daily Mail.”

The long term effects of this dependency are uncertain, but animal studies suggest they could be very dangerous. An experiment where rats had their cages lined with the Daily Mail for a month showed that the animals developed very concerning behaviours.

“They became incredibly hostile and demanding. You’d put them in a maze and whereas they’d normally go and explore, the Daily Mail rats would just look at you angrily, wondering what’s in it for them,” one researcher reported. “And the rats we used for the study were British-bred, white rats. I accidentally put a cage of foreign rats in the room with them once, they almost tore the place apart. Several of them were physically sick. And rats can’t even vomit!”

There have been many different approaches to treating Daily Mail addiction, such as substituting with milder stimulants like the Express or Telegraph, but these have only limited effectiveness"

 

[JohnD]

Is this the same London whose murder rate was being compared to NYC not long ago, or another one?

We have no responsibility for the torrent of fantasy inside your head.

 

[JohnD]

We know that Trump and his followers are attacking UK and the rest of Europe because the nations are not his lackeys.

We also have enemies within, spreading false stories and trying to spread disinformation and fear.



"Ashley Armstrong
Published5 HOURS AGO

The City of London is encouraging top bankers, lawyers and executives to push positive messages about the UK to counter rising disinformation about crime that threatens investment in Britain.

The intervention comes amid a sharp increase in the amount of social media posts spreading fake or misleading news that is fuelling false narratives about safety in the country, including claims that the capital has become dangerous and lawless.

The government, police and cyber experts have already expressed alarm about the creeping spread of disinformation, but the City has now waded in amid fears the proliferation of negative social media is causing concern among overseas investors in Britain."

FT.com

 

[noseall]

We know that Trump and his followers are attacking UK and the rest of Europe because the nations are not his lackeys.

We also have enemies within, spreading false stories and trying to spread disinformation and fear.



"Ashley Armstrong
Published5 HOURS AGO

The City of London is encouraging top bankers, lawyers and executives to push positive messages about the UK to counter rising disinformation about crime that threatens investment in Britain.

The intervention comes amid a sharp increase in the amount of social media posts spreading fake or misleading news that is fuelling false narratives about safety in the country, including claims that the capital has become dangerous and lawless.

The government, police and cyber experts have already expressed alarm about the creeping spread of disinformation, but the City has now waded in amid fears the proliferation of negative social media is causing concern among overseas investors in Britain."

FT.com

Welcome Elon and your endless incessant lies.

 

[JohnD]

Interesting to see Johnny and Regan spreading Trumpism.

 

[JohnD]

The Trumpist attacks are aimed at European democracies.

Few of them have a temporary Emperor who can order international attacks and internal arrests and deportations without recourse to the country's legal system and norms. Trumpland does.

"Martin Wolf
Published 5 HOURS AGO

The US national security strategy published in December singles out the failings of its European allies. Its text is brutal.It claims that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birth rates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

It also says that the US “will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies”.

FT.com

However, truth belies Trumpism

 

[JohnD]

"In sum: “Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.”

The main way in which the US intends to do so is to help “patriotic European parties”. No leader of such a party is more admired by Maga than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. So, how has he done in promoting freedom of expression and liberal democracy, more broadly?

According to the respected Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) database, the answer is very poorly: the country’s index of “liberal democracy overall” fell from 0.77 (out of 1) in 2009 to 0.32 in 2024. Maga’s beloved Hungary is a corrupt and authoritarian state. But it is nothing like as bad as Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, is among Donald Trump’s heroes. That is hardly surprising. A man who tried to overthrow an election cannot be convincingly concerned about democracy."

FT.com

 

[JohnD]

It's no surprise that Trump, the ill-educated inheritor of a real-estate fortune, has little grasp of world events and the effects of nationalism and dictatorship.

Many Europeans have.

Many of middle age or older have personal experience of it.

The EU was created to prevent a recurrence.

"This is not to say that all is well in Europe. There exists a host of potent concerns, including the state of free speech even in the UK, though Nigel Farage’s comparisons with North Korea are grotesque. Yet anxieties about those “patriotic” parties are also reasonable. Europe, after all, has a history. This tells us with brutal clarity that “patriotic” parties, and indeed nationalism more broadly, can all too easily be roads to ruin. The two world wars taught us that. Thus, by failing to throttle Adolf Hitler’s “right” to free speech, Germany ended up losing 5.5mn soldiers and between 1.1mn and 3mn civilians in the second world war. Worldwide, the losses were 75mn in the two world wars."

"Hitler was also one of those “patriots” terrified by what the NSS calls “civilisational erasure”. In May 2025, Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) was designated “rightwing extremist” by the country’s federal office for the protection of the constitution. No doubt, it is not a Nazi party. But it does have neo-Nazis within it. Should Germans who know their history just smile and say, “Why not? Freedom of speech is after all sacred.” It takes cocksure Americans to spout such idiocy. Alas, similar backgrounds and ideas can be seen in other rising European rightwing parties.

Equally foolish is the assault on the EU. Here, too, there are many confusions. Nation states are not natural political features of Europe. They were created, many of them quite recently (just as the US itself was created). What is more, they were also created largely through bloodshed. Thereupon those imagined identities led to more disasters."

FT.com