Best Of

I wonder what @Big_G_NorthWales and @Leon are talking about in the sin bin?

What on earth did Big G do to get sin-binned?

See @TSE down thread. There's a spam bot now looking for certain words that might drag OGHs into the legal pit.

The following words are no longer to be used on this site:
B*m
B*tty
Kn*ckers
Kn*ckers
W**-W**
Semprini

P*ne*pp*e on Pi**a

A song by R*diohead?

By the way, all okay with your good lady RP?

Thanks for asking. She's on the mend. Very sore but getting through it.

The ban on discussions about the grooming story is still in place. People have been told enough times, given how past discussions have turned into a mess that potentially puts PB at risk.

That is a risk we are not prepared to take now particularly when the Online Safety Act is now in place.

The alternative is closing PB down as OGH made clear.

The spam trap automatically bans people when certain words are used.

Online safety act is probably the worst bit of legislation ever made here

To be fair, the issue is a couple of posters who turned discussions of such matters into the Turner Diaries.

Actual sane people discussing the legal and moral issues - a @Cyclefree header, for example - weren’t the problem.

I also think this is going to become a position that is more and more difficult to hold as the rest of the media is filled with news of the Enquiry. Fully understand the current concerns by TSE and OGH but I think something will eventually have to give.

I am hopeful that we can discuss it again in the future but enjoin some posters from commenting upon the story.

But that day isn't today.

I agree with Morris Dancer's earlier comment: would we be so keen to mock a politician or a subset of the electorate who believe in a god (or local equivalent)? Because I don't see any functional difference between believing in ghosts or believing in a god.

I believe in not mocking people.

This is my take.

We shouldn't mock people for sincerely held beliefs that do no harm. Belief in ghosts is valid and cannot be disproven. As with God and any number of other things. Mocking the beliefs is unkind and marginalises people. I don't believe in any of the above, but that's neither here not there.

However, I do think there's something to be said about people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. A Christian or Muslim or Hindu mocking someone who believes in ghosts deserves to have their own ludicrous belief system mocked in equal measure.

Fox News, so who knows ?

https://x.com/TreyYingst/status/1933493841392177570
On the strikes against IRGC Air Force leadership: Israel tricked the top command of Iran’s air force into a meeting and then kept them there, I’m told by an Israeli security official.

“We did specific activities to help us understand things about them and then used that information to make them act in a specific way,” the official said. “We knew this would make them meet, but more importantly we knew how to keep them there.

All these stories we hear about the Israelis don't make them sound very nice do they? I wonder how the Western world would react if the Iranians had out of the blue sent war planes over and killed several Israeli scientists and their families? The US and UK would go bananas

Iranians risking their own lives, instead of using poorer proxies such as Palestinians, Houthis, Syrians or Lebanese? Don't be stupid.

NB. That Spectator story that claimed that 4% of young women in the UK are on OnlyFans: it seems to be total bollocks.

https://x.com/ScottGoetz_/status/1933099350592491987

The 280,000 figure appears to be sourced from this entirely anonymous Google Spreadsheet labelled “Enterprise Statistics” which is high in the search results if you search for “OnlyFans statistics”: https://simplebeen.com/onlyfans-statistics/

If you dig into that spreadsheet you’ll discover that the 280,000 figure for the UK is marked in Grey which means (see the Documentazione tab on the spreadsheet) that the source for that figure is ... wait for it ... ChatGPT.

So the Spectator splashed a story on the front page where the source turns out ultimately to be ChatGPT. Shocking failure all round: Do they not fact check anything?

It is amusing to me how some of our sites most ardent Labour/Tony Blair supporters are vicious critics of what Israel is doing with regards to Iran. The rank hypocrisy absolutely stinks.

Regardless of what you think of the wisdom of the Iraq war in hindsight, when it comes to legitimacy, comparing the two side-by-side is instructive.

We claimed the right to invade Iraq due to self-defence due to their seeking WMDs (non-nuclear)
Israel claims the right to bomb (not invade) Iran due to self-defence due to their seeking WMDs (nuclear).

Iraq had not attacked the UK, either directly or indirectly.
Iran has repeatedly attacked Israel, both directly and indirectly.

Iraq was not seeking the destruction of the UK.
Iran is seeking the destruction of Israel.

We claimed due to some controversial evidence that Iraq was seeking non-nuclear WMDs (which in hindsight was wrong).
There is uncontroversial evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear WMDs.

Regardless of what you think of Israel in general, or the war in Iraq in hindsight, as far as legitimate claims to self-defence go . . . the Israeli claims of self-defence here are a million times stronger than anything Blair could claim.

As far as I'm concerned, Israel bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, killing top generals and nuclear scientists, is fine. Israel has shown that it can carry out well-targeted strikes against those who threaten it, whilst keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.

Unfortunately, that is the opposite of what it's doing in Gaza. My conclusion is that if large numbers of civilians are being killed there, it's because the IDF wants to kill them.