Best Of

So the first 2 people arrested in the protests outside Southampton police station have got 34 and 37 months each in prison

For what, exactly? Looks awfully “Two-tier” unless someone was seriously injured.

No one should be in any doubt by now that the courts take a f*cking dim view of violent disorder and rioting.

Been that way for a long long time.

Twitter seems to think this was the same judge who sentenced Lucy Connolly. Any truth to that?

"Twitter seems to think" = "Untrue with near 100% probability".

Sandpit is basically a conspiracy theorist.

Err, no.

I started by saying “twitter says X, any evidence for it?” That’s being inquisitive, not conspiracy. I’m not an Arabian Candace Owens.

This is just bloody stupid.
The GOP are still arguing the CA was fixed, even though their candidate goes through to the runoff.

They have taken the gratification of Trump's pitifully fragile ego as their overriding principle, above all else, sanity included.

RAJU: The president keep saying the California election was rigged. What evidence have you seen to show there has been widespread fraud?

SCALISE: You had wide changes after election night in the results

RAJU: They're just counting the ballots

SCALISE: Look, whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2064353400376922302

The Trump response in 2020 did a lot more damage to elections in America than people accepted. People no longer accept they have lost, spurious legal challenges are more and more common, and significant numbers will no longer accept opponents winning as legitimate.

Even sillier in this case, as you note.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

My daughter, who is mixed race, was listening to the news from Belfast and said something that made me quite sad. She said that black and brown people just needed to behave better than white people because every time one of them did something bad it meant that all minorities would get blamed for it. I pointed out to her that her mother was born here over 50 years ago and so maybe people should have got used to the existence of minorities in this country by now and learned to treat every person as an individual. But she's probably right.

That is sad and I have empathy but isn’t that the way of humans? A white balding England football fan throws a chair at a tournament and fights the police and Europeans think all white English supporters are terrible so the good ones have to behave even better to counteract. Britain is hammered by the global south for colonisation and slavery and all Brits are supposed to carry that burden irrespective of the fact that some were bad, some were good, many just taking economic opportunities (in the same way small boats people might be) and so we are judged by the worst standards.

If you are white of Boer descent in SA then you might be treated worse by black South Africans because of your colour and name even if you have lived a sainted life.

The “outsider” in its widest terms is always more noticeable for wrongs and the insiders can’t be “got rid of” in the way that some might want outsiders to be.

Once it was the Irish. It’s not always about colour but purely being an “outsider”.

And also, a lot of the time you'll get people going overboard to be nice, to overcompensate for the actions of others or their own insecurities or whatever.

My wife probably gets more preferential/pleasant interactions from people determined not to be seen as racist, than the equivalent amount of actual racism.

Which, again, seems to be a fundamental feature of human nature.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

My daughter, who is mixed race, was listening to the news from Belfast and said something that made me quite sad. She said that black and brown people just needed to behave better than white people because every time one of them did something bad it meant that all minorities would get blamed for it. I pointed out to her that her mother was born here over 50 years ago and so maybe people should have got used to the existence of minorities in this country by now and learned to treat every person as an individual. But she's probably right.

That is sad and I have empathy but isn’t that the way of humans? A white balding England football fan throws a chair at a tournament and fights the police and Europeans think all white English supporters are terrible so the good ones have to behave even better to counteract. Britain is hammered by the global south for colonisation and slavery and all Brits are supposed to carry that burden irrespective of the fact that some were bad, some were good, many just taking economic opportunities (in the same way small boats people might be) and so we are judged by the worst standards.

If you are white of Boer descent in SA then you might be treated worse by black South Africans because of your colour and name even if you have lived a sainted life.

The “outsider” in its widest terms is always more noticeable for wrongs and the insiders can’t be “got rid of” in the way that some might want outsiders to be.

Once it was the Irish. It’s not always about colour but purely being an “outsider”.

I have lived in a country most of whose inhabitants were descendents of Africans enslaved by the British and it really wasn't something that I carried around with me every day and nobody ever treated me badly for being white or British. On the other hand I've seen how living with racism has taken its toll on my wife and I'm very sad to see it playing out now for my children. It is an incredible privilege to live free of this stuff as white people get to.

What you say is sadly all true but boulay is correct too. Othering is human nature, and if it wasn't race it would be religion (see NI), class, wealth or whatever. There are decades when things get better or worse, this is one which is getting worse after a few decades of it getting better.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

Its the way its passed on, generation to generation, very moving.

There'll be a few lads pacing across fields in Fermanagh tonight, wondering how deep their Dads and Uncles buried things.

Sky News reporter getting a warm reception just now 'WILL YA FUCK OFF'.

Best to board up the Europa Hotel until after the marching season is over.

Flashback. Late 90s, we'd hired a car in Belfast (very little ID required compared with England at the same time) to go round the Glens, came back, parked up in a whole row of cars near The Crown and just up from the Europa, had our evening, returned to the car, it was the only one left parked on the road as far as the eye could see.

Jesus, I crapped myself at the possible implications of that.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

My daughter, who is mixed race, was listening to the news from Belfast and said something that made me quite sad. She said that black and brown people just needed to behave better than white people because every time one of them did something bad it meant that all minorities would get blamed for it. I pointed out to her that her mother was born here over 50 years ago and so maybe people should have got used to the existence of minorities in this country by now and learned to treat every person as an individual. But she's probably right.

That is sad and I have empathy but isn’t that the way of humans? A white balding England football fan throws a chair at a tournament and fights the police and Europeans think all white English supporters are terrible so the good ones have to behave even better to counteract. Britain is hammered by the global south for colonisation and slavery and all Brits are supposed to carry that burden irrespective of the fact that some were bad, some were good, many just taking economic opportunities (in the same way small boats people might be) and so we are judged by the worst standards.

If you are white of Boer descent in SA then you might be treated worse by black South Africans because of your colour and name even if you have lived a sainted life.

The “outsider” in its widest terms is always more noticeable for wrongs and the insiders can’t be “got rid of” in the way that some might want outsiders to be.

Once it was the Irish. It’s not always about colour but purely being an “outsider”.