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In England only in London does Starmer have a “Best PM” lead over Johnson – politicalbetting.com

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  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    Bit of a kick from that one!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,941
    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    Just watched YouTube vid on Congress of Vienna 1814 (part 1) that contained an interesting analysis of the character of Russian Tsar Alexander I (truly one of history's "characters") and his numerous personal, public and (above all) political personalities.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtOXq9SwarQ&t=116s


    Alexander's perspective & motivations, which coexisted in his head, rotating, appearing, disappearing, returning seemingly at random, with sudden mood swings & policy shifts (also visa versa) accompanied at all times by firm, insistent, aggressive, unquestioning conviction of his own "logic" of thought, purity of motive and absolute infallibility.

    > Enlightenment monarch, committed to constitutional monarchy including elections, parliament and free judiciary

    > Despotic monarch, exercising absolute power on grounds he was chosen by God to rule as His representative on earth, not just in the standard monarchical manner, but as heir to Caesar, Rome and Byzantium = universal Emperor and Christ's Vicar on Earth.

    > Honorable monarch, dedicated to ritual, tradition, true justice and loving mercy, in the purest tradition of Christian knighthood.

    > Delusional monarch, willing & able to thrown all of the above overboard anytime, anyplace it suited his mood, temper and (perceived) self-interest

    With all of the above making Alexander 1 (& etc.)
    > random
    > unpredictable
    > unreliable
    > incomprehensible

    Does this remind you of anyone today? In the world?? And on PB???

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    Russian invaders killed a prominent Ukrainian experimental physicist Vasyl Kladko,–UA Academy of Sciences
    Kladko significantly contributed to research on semiconductor nanostructures; had big plans for the restoration of the electronics industry in Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1503399098900230150
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    boulay said:

    Emmanuel Macron is now trying to imitate Zelensky by turning up at the Elysée in jeans and a hoodie.

    image

    That’s fucking tragic - even going for the unshaven “spent the last two weeks with people trying to assassinate me so no time to shave “ look.

    Yes going to lose. Not a shock result to me.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
    Rather a futile gesture given that gin is made out of vodka.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,032
    edited March 2022
    Westminster Voting Intention (13 Mar):

    Labour 39% (-1)
    Conservative 36% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 10% (–)
    Green 6% (+1)
    Scottish National Party 4% (–)
    Reform UK 4% (+2)
    Other 3% (+2)

    Changes +/- 7 March

    Boris Johnson (39%, no change) has maintained his lead over Keir Starmer (36%, up 1%) in terms of who Britons think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK at this moment.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,822
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
    We will end up with match fixing for royal family deferential reasons!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    Leon said:

    City A.M.
    @CityAM
    ·
    2m
    Police called to John Bercow’s Battersea home over domestic disturbance following assault claim by wife Sally http://dlvr.it/SLgcgT

    Men like him never change 🙄
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,822
    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    edited March 2022

    boulay said:

    Emmanuel Macron is now trying to imitate Zelensky by turning up at the Elysée in jeans and a hoodie.

    image

    That’s fucking tragic - even going for the unshaven “spent the last two weeks with people trying to assassinate me so no time to shave “ look.

    To be fair, its probably more likely due to Putin being on the blower for hours at a time.....
    LOL. Misread that as 'more likely due to Putin being in the shower for hours at a time ..." DIdn't know that Macron and Putin had that type of relationship. More something I'd expect from Trump.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,401
    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
    We will end up with match fixing for royal family deferential reasons!
    Rum old world when we boot out the hateful Russians in favour of the world's most prolific head choppers.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
    Rather a futile gesture given that gin is made out of vodka.
    Don't bet on that!
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419
    Nigelb said:

    boulay said:

    Emmanuel Macron is now trying to imitate Zelensky by turning up at the Elysée in jeans and a hoodie.

    image

    That’s fucking tragic - even going for the unshaven “spent the last two weeks with people trying to assassinate me so no time to shave “ look.

    Cut him a bit of slack.
    Most of us would look pretty rough had we been obliged to spend the last fortnight on the phone with a homicidal maniac.
    Why?
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    That in 2019 was such a mistake.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,822
    Nigelb said:

    boulay said:

    Emmanuel Macron is now trying to imitate Zelensky by turning up at the Elysée in jeans and a hoodie.

    image

    That’s fucking tragic - even going for the unshaven “spent the last two weeks with people trying to assassinate me so no time to shave “ look.

    Cut him a bit of slack.
    Most of us would look pretty rough had we been obliged to spend the last fortnight on the phone with a homicidal maniac.
    Truth be told, given the demographics and hours spent at the keyboard I would imagine many of us look pretty rough regardless....
  • Leon said:

    felix said:

    Leon said:

    City A.M.
    @CityAM
    ·
    2m
    Police called to John Bercow’s Battersea home over domestic disturbance following assault claim by wife Sally http://dlvr.it/SLgcgT

    He apparently left the home following plod's arrival with a face like thunder. Sound like Sally had the upper hand .. or even the uppercut maybe.
    Yes. I see now that it has been widely reported, today


    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10609257/Police-called-home-Commons-bully-John-Bercow-bust-wife-Sally.html


    Odd time for it to emerge....
    Perhaps the expected pile-on after his defenestering by the Commons authorities didn't shore up the Tories "he was always a bad'un, bloody remoaners can't accept they lost" position enough. So they wheel out him and Sally Libel having a barney.
    Not one of your better contributions
    Despite that being quite literally what a swathe of Tory MPs and their press poodles have said about the man for years and years.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
    We will end up with match fixing for royal family deferential reasons!
    Rum old world when we boot out the hateful Russians in favour of the world's most prolific head choppers.
    I've always preferred the French to the Russians.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
    Rather a futile gesture given that gin is made out of vodka.
    We should be drinking horilka, you could get something drinkable for €5 a litre at Boryspil and Zhulyany. Was looking forward to using my 4 litre duty free allowance (they don't seem to filter it as much as the Russians/International brands and as a result it still has some grain character. Very acceptable served straight from the freezer. I tried doing that with Reyka and it turned into a slush puppy).
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,032
    edited March 2022

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
    We will end up with match fixing for royal family deferential reasons!
    Rum old world when we boot out the hateful Russians in favour of the world's most prolific head choppers.
    It will be interesting how Tracey Crouch views this as she is reviewing football club ownership and supporters shares

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fan-led-review-of-football-governance-securing-the-games-future/fan-led-review-of-football-governance-securing-the-games-future
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    That in 2019 was such a mistake.
    do you mean 2020 ? If so ,I went then as well and still here !
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited March 2022

    Westminster Voting Intention (13 Mar):

    Labour 39% (-1)
    Conservative 36% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 10% (–)
    Green 6% (+1)
    Scottish National Party 4% (–)
    Reform UK 4% (+2)
    Other 3% (+2)

    Changes +/- 7 March

    Boris Johnson (39%, no change) has maintained his lead over Keir Starmer (36%, up 1%) in terms of who Britons think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK at this moment.

    Electoral Calculus gives a hung parliament on those numbers and Labour 11 seats ahead after the boundary changes. It would be the closest general election since February 1974.

    Labour 288, Conservatives 277
    https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=36&LAB=39&LIB=10&Reform=4&Green=6&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=18.3&SCOTLAB=20.2&SCOTLIB=6.6&SCOTReform=0.9&SCOTGreen=3&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=48&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,401
    kinabalu said:

    dixiedean said:

    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
    It's just Mystic Rose back with a new name, isn't it?
    Is it?
    Tbh. Until reading this thread I hadn't clocked Heathener as a she.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,792

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    Enamine had become a pillar of global drug development, but its Kyiv operations came to a halt on Feb. 24 when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were stunned awake by the sound of explosions.
    https://twitter.com/statnews/status/1503355606945648643

    Ukraine economy could shrink by up to 35% in 2022, says IMF
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/14/ukraine-economy-shrink-2022-imf-russia-war

    The global cost of Putin's war, whatever the outcome, will be immense.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,822
    edited March 2022
    kinabalu said:

    dixiedean said:

    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
    It's just Mystic Rose back with a new name, isn't it?
    Good shout, both early morning, quite long posters that came across as trying that bit too hard to be contrarian (as in the word, not the poster).
  • rjkrjk Posts: 71
    dixiedean said:

    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
    Did you know that the only region of Europe which is majority Buddhist is the Russian Republic of Kalmykia?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykia
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    That in 2019 was such a mistake.
    do you mean 2020 ? If so ,I went then as well and still here !
    I do, yes, sorry. I doubt that it in itself killed many people, but the spread from it was huge. People from every part of the UK after all.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    Long and interesting thread by the Atlantic's Graeme Wood about Saudi Arabia.

    https://twitter.com/gcaw/status/1503398508619083777
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,214
    kinabalu said:

    dixiedean said:

    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
    It's just Mystic Rose back with a new name, isn't it?
    No, I saw your hint about this the other day but don't buy this one despite your legendary powers .....

    Mystic Rose used to irritate me at times but this other poster is genuinely unpleasant in my view and Mystic Rose was never that. She used to go on about her literary prowess and trips to the Far East and stuff. Libdem activism too.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    Just watched YouTube vid on Congress of Vienna 1814 (part 1) that contained an interesting analysis of the character of Russian Tsar Alexander I (truly one of history's "characters") and his numerous personal, public and (above all) political personalities.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtOXq9SwarQ&t=116s


    Alexander's perspective & motivations, which coexisted in his head, rotating, appearing, disappearing, returning seemingly at random, with sudden mood swings & policy shifts (also visa versa) accompanied at all times by firm, insistent, aggressive, unquestioning conviction of his own "logic" of thought, purity of motive and absolute infallibility.

    > Enlightenment monarch, committed to constitutional monarchy including elections, parliament and free judiciary

    > Despotic monarch, exercising absolute power on grounds he was chosen by God to rule as His representative on earth, not just in the standard monarchical manner, but as heir to Caesar, Rome and Byzantium = universal Emperor and Christ's Vicar on Earth.

    > Honorable monarch, dedicated to ritual, tradition, true justice and loving mercy, in the purest tradition of Christian knighthood.

    > Delusional monarch, willing & able to thrown all of the above overboard anytime, anyplace it suited his mood, temper and (perceived) self-interest

    With all of the above making Alexander 1 (& etc.)
    > random
    > unpredictable
    > unreliable
    > incomprehensible

    Does this remind you of anyone today? In the world?? And on PB???

    Too subtle for me.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    NEW: Number 10 don't deny that Boris Johnson offered constituency funding and jobs directly to MPs in return for personal support during partygate.

    On Johnson's very particular use of prime ministerial patronage, with @GaryJMarshall90 in @tortoise.


    https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/shadow-whipping-the-men-who-saved-boris/
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    That in 2019 was such a mistake.
    do you mean 2020 ? If so ,I went then as well and still here !
    I do, yes, sorry. I doubt that it in itself killed many people, but the spread from it was huge. People from every part of the UK after all.
    i tend to take the argument that everyone got it eventually whatever restrictions at certian times but you can hardly blame Cheltenham for the spread given the Tube was still crammed them and operating
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
    It has to be the case though that all larger things than viruses have successfully beaten them off or integrated them. For millions of years. I don't think that changes now. We're all fantastically organised 24x7 defense networks.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    "I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links."

    https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1503378247148621829?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g

    lol

    Looking forward to the Premier League becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of their sovereign wealth fund ?
    We will end up with match fixing for royal family deferential reasons!
    Rum old world when we boot out the hateful Russians in favour of the world's most prolific head choppers.
    The Saudis have the decency (ha) to usually direct their awfulness in places further from the major capitals of Europe. Makes it easier to ignore.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    …,
    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Heathener is no Russian troll or a troll of any kind . She is sincere but just has a different and direct view of things to most on here - That just happens on forums! PB can get a bit "groupthink" and incredulous of certain more leftfield views but does not mean the poster of them are any less entitled to say them without getting banned or even talked about as some kind of troll/weirdo

    I interacted a lot with @Heathener and never got the sense she was a bot or a troll. Quite eccentric, yes, but then that applies to 99% of PB-ers

    Was she ever truly nasty? I must have missed it if so. She could get het up and personal, but I don't remember tirades of abuse or offensive comments
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    Stocky said:

    darkage said:

    Eabhal said:

    Unpopular said:

    Andy_JS said:

    TimT said:

    moonshine said:

    And there was me thinking all this time that @Heathener was just annoying, a wet blanket and a bit dim… must admit that they were a more skilled operative than the other two and they lasted a hell of a lot longer. Experiences that will all being going back to hq in the report to fine tune the training manual no doubt.

    What's the issue with @heathener
    Based in Mother Russia....
    Why am I not shocked?
    Not quite that - IP on a blacklist.

    That could well be an IP from a troll farm, but not conclusive.
    What if Heathener was initially employed by a troll farm in Russia to spread misinformation on the site, but instead found joy in engaging in the free and full debate of PB, a small act of defiance slowly being awoken by our acerbic wit and cutting insight.

    Also, I wish someone would pay me to post here, my offerings would be a lot more frequent if someone was paying for my time.
    If Heathener really does have a former career in intelligence then he/she/they might be concealing their identity for that reason alone.

    I'm not sure how VPNs react with the blacklist thing OGH is using.
    Only a personal view but I would say that Heathener's posts are almost certainly the work of a human. They display a lot of emotion. I cannot see any obvious agenda in them. I would guess that the time spent writing them far exceeds the influence they are having in the real world, so I cannot imagine there is any malign intent, but who knows.
    My view is certainly out of step with all the pro Heathener posts. I feel now like maybe I was becoming groomed by Heathener, I have been liking awful lot of her posts, and I have not posted any nude, sexy German actresses here since she told me off for posting the last one 😼
    Given that you and I are very close ideologically, I'm surprised to hear you have found a need to like any posts from that particular poster.
    I think the wars created strange bed fellows. I think someone remarked after the Great War and peace thread one evening last week, half the site pro intervention the other half couldn’t believe how anyone stupid enough to risk world war three, and it very much kicked off but not the usual split. Someone remarked in the midst of PB WWIII thst the most calm, measured post of all came from Leon. Yes. That shows how crazy war is.

    When the war kicked off a few weeks ago I realised very early on truth would be the first casualty, one side claiming they’ve just killed 180 they other side claiming it was only 35. I don’t instinctly believe any claims from anyone now, wether it the 180 or just one, it’s all sad because it’s all so unnecessary and shouldn’t be happening. 😕 Apart from Heathener there’s not many PB posters saying the same as that at times, even though some claim to be religious so should stand up for a different type of world than one with this in it. Luckyboy is another one I have never liked a single post of, thinking some all a bit obscure, until Luckyboys war posts seem measured to me so I have liked some of them. In particular, I think he said, the reason the hospital bombing with all the talk of children amongst the rubble is important, is half PB wanted to go to war right away, so we have to be sure what the real story is behind it.

    I think, like yesterday when Russians killed women and children on the safe route out the city, Ukraine said it wasn’t the safe route they were doing their own thing, at times they seem too honest and not sticking to the propaganda enough?

    I guess it’s just me, but all news from the war seems brutal and inhumane, makes me depressed. I pray for it to end. Anyone post anything saying that, I’m supporting it.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Scott_xP said:

    NEW: Number 10 don't deny that Boris Johnson offered constituency funding and jobs directly to MPs in return for personal support during partygate.

    On Johnson's very particular use of prime ministerial patronage, with @GaryJMarshall90 in @tortoise.


    https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/shadow-whipping-the-men-who-saved-boris/

    Jobs is one thing, constituency funding is quite another.
  • Sky reporting Abramovich private jet seen flying towards Turkey
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,714
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
    Meanwhile...

    Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP
    @grantshapps
    ·
    42m
    TRAVEL UPDATE

    All remaining Covid travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and tests for all arrivals, will be stood down for travel to the UK from 4am on 18 March.

    These changes are possible due to our vaccine rollout and mean greater freedom in time for Easter.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    given if double barrelled named people marry other double married named people then it will only take few hundred generations before the marriage certificate would need to be bigger than the known universe.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    On Topic

    Oh dear
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319

    Cookie said:

    moonshine said:

    And there was me thinking all this time that @Heathener was just annoying, a wet blanket and a bit dim… must admit that they were a more skilled operative than the other two and they lasted a hell of a lot longer. Experiences that will all being going back to hq in the report to fine tune the training manual no doubt.

    What do the sockpuppets get out of coming here? I mean, I like it here - but I think Robert commented earlier that there has been, what, 200 commenters in the past 30 days? It hardly seems worth the bother. We're quite capable of falling out with each other without outside help.
    PB is read by a surprising range of people - a quietly influential site.
    I do try to spread the word
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
    Meanwhile...

    Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP
    @grantshapps
    ·
    42m
    TRAVEL UPDATE

    All remaining Covid travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and tests for all arrivals, will be stood down for travel to the UK from 4am on 18 March.

    These changes are possible due to our vaccine rollout and mean greater freedom in time for Easter.
    COVID numbers delayed today. Interesting to see if the uptick continues once they are released
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    That in 2019 was such a mistake.
    do you mean 2020 ? If so ,I went then as well and still here !
    I do, yes, sorry. I doubt that it in itself killed many people, but the spread from it was huge. People from every part of the UK after all.
    i tend to take the argument that everyone got it eventually whatever restrictions at certian times but you can hardly blame Cheltenham for the spread given the Tube was still crammed them and operating
    I didn't blame anyone - in hindsight though that 2020 meet was unwise. Even at the height of the lockdown you could see daft crowding on the tube. The central line from the east was insane.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
    Rather a futile gesture given that gin is made out of vodka.
    It’s what the Ukraines shout when one of the things we lent them wipes out a Russian tank!

    I’ve just liked another of your posts! Not this one obviously.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Time for omicron parties to boost immunity?
    well i am off to cheltenham tomorrow
    Lucky man
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Nigelb said:

    Russian invaders killed a prominent Ukrainian experimental physicist Vasyl Kladko,–UA Academy of Sciences
    Kladko significantly contributed to research on semiconductor nanostructures; had big plans for the restoration of the electronics industry in Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1503399098900230150

    Poor bastard. Wonder if he had a 'do not disturb my circles' opportunity.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    edited March 2022
    HYUFD said:
    The SNP holding the balance and as, presumably, the Conservatives will still refuse any kind of independence referendum, it seems probable Labour would form a minority Government as Con plus DUP (assuming said DUP win 9 seats) would still be fewer than Labour.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    .
    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
    It has to be the case though that all larger things than viruses have successfully beaten them off or integrated them. For millions of years. I don't think that changes now. We're all fantastically organised 24x7 defense networks.
    The problem with that being we care rather more about individual human lives than does evolution.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited March 2022
    This is also quite sobering. From the excellent John Burns-Murdoch on the FT


    "NEW: I’m not sure people appreciate quite how bad the Covid situation is in Hong Kong, nor what might be around the corner.

    First, an astonishing chart.

    After keeping Covid at bay for two years, Omicron has hit HK and New Zealand, but the outcomes could not be more different."

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g


    TL;DR: Hong Kong is in a horrorshow, South Korea is pretty grim, and if Omicron really gets into China - as seems likely - then it could kill millions

    The CFR of Covid-19 in Hong Kong at the moment is 5%. Yes. It is killing 1 in 20
  • On Topic

    Oh dear

    And Boris still preferred PM in today's RedfieldWilton poll !!!!!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    Hoping that there is a Lviv left to visit this time next year.

    https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1503085313262039044
    A wonderful note about Lviv from someone born here - "You can be born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, educated in Poland, married under the Third Reich, work and retire in the USSR and draw your pension in Ukraine and never have left the town.. LVIV"
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419
    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    dixiedean said:

    kyf_100 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    Isn't it possible that Heathener is just a walter mitty fantasist with a virus on their PC?

    I'm not ruling out the possibility that they're a filthy commie spy, but as others have said, what's the agenda? Why dedicate so much of their time to other random stuff, like misogyny, or getting in fights with people for not social distancing?

    Compare and contrast to PJohnson, you could smell the Kremlin on his breath from a mile away.
    Also. Having lived some time in Thailand and being interested in, and knowledgeable of, Buddhism, is a pretty strange cover quirk for the FSB.
    Not buying it tbh.
    It's just Mystic Rose back with a new name, isn't it?
    Is it?
    Tbh. Until reading this thread I hadn't clocked Heathener as a she.
    Mystic Rose was one of Leon's I think. Doesn't mean Heathener isn't too.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,523
    Leon said:

    Heathener is no Russian troll or a troll of any kind . She is sincere but just has a different and direct view of things to most on here - That just happens on forums! PB can get a bit "groupthink" and incredulous of certain more leftfield views but does not mean the poster of them are any less entitled to say them without getting banned or even talked about as some kind of troll/weirdo

    I interacted a lot with @Heathener and never got the sense she was a bot or a troll. Quite eccentric, yes, but then that applies to 99% of PB-ers

    Was she ever truly nasty? I must have missed it if so. She could get het up and personal, but I don't remember tirades of abuse or offensive comments
    I agree. She was a hardline mask-wearer (which I wouldn't have thought a bot would care about) and shifted from prewar dove to hawk once war was unleashed, but she's not alone in that. She had to put up with quite a bit of abuse and some pearl-clutching (probably a lesbian! said someone derisively) and I think was more sinned against than sinning. Certainly didn't seem to be a troll, and usually interesting; if she's still around I hope she'll come back. I don't really care if she's actually Russian, so long as she's an interesting Russian.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    mwadams said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    Applicant said:

    MISTY said:

    darkage said:

    (reposted FPT)
    I think that Johnson will ride out the Lebedev issues. He will keep saying that the security services never issued any meaningful warnings about him. I still haven't seen any significant evidence that Lebedev is a malign influence, other than he had a line to Putin - not unexpected for someone in his position. How Lebedev got to be where he is, and where all his money came from, is an interesting question; but Boris Johnson cannot be blamed for that.

    Johnson's luck is astounding.

    Ukraine has enabled him to get beyond partygate, keep covid blunders out of the headlines, turn immigration around from a very unpromising place, bury tax rises and find an excuse to finesse energy policy beyond net zero.

    And then there's inflation......Food prices? Petrol costs? Vlad's fault guvnor.

    Its almost tailor made.
    Is politics like sport, where good teams have skill and bad teams always complain that they don't have luck?
    There's been a growing sense of alarm ⏰ and panic from some of our left-wing posters of a nervous disposition - the watch for the RW Monday poll must be agonising for them - 2 hours 30 minutes still to go! The soothing London poll earlier is already wearing off not helped by this latest header.
    Firstly, not all politics is left right, Tory Labour, there’s those of us right of centre voting Lib Dem who are actually torn between getting the popcorn in for the inevitable castration of big dog on one hand and sympathy for sensible minded Tories on the other, unluckily lumbered with this albatross of a PM Much longer than natural because of this terrible crisis situation .

    other pollsters are available for a more peer reviewed picture, rather than swigging just the medicine you like the sound of.

    another way to look at it would be, here is the table when news dominated by an extra ordinary crisis, where even Doug Ross has withdrawn his letter to the 1922, what could this table look like in more normal times? So as a fun ending antidote to Mike’s fake tease of a header, I can actually show you the real state of play today, if it wasn’t for War Crisis rally round flag bounce.

    image
    To use a Malmesbury summing up of my own little data monolith (everyone gotta start somewhere), If it wasn’t for this crisis, Boris not winning anywhere actually behind in midlands the same pollster said, before the news narrative went extra ordinary in Feb.

    so it’s either nuclear war or is this a party 😃
    Hmmmm.....

    image
    I know just the thing! Atomic cocktails o’clock

    45 ml of a Premium Vodka
45 ml Brandy or Cognac
15 ml Dry Sherry
Enough champagne to fill the glass to the top
Garnish: Twist of orange zest

    Combine the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for 15 seconds. Carefully strain into a chilled martini glass. Top up with champagne and add a twist of orange zest.

    image

    Soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WLw_0DFQQ
    I don't think you could top that lot up with enough champagne to notice in a standard martini glass. Sounds nice though.
    Define "Standard"

    image
    Elizabeth Montgomery- my first crush! Gorgeous!
    While we are on wartime cocktails, you can't go wrong with a French 75. Named after their WWI 75mm artillery piece.

    10ml stock syrup
    30ml gin
    15ml lemon juice
    Top up a coupe (or flute if you must) with champagne.
    That does sound nice, but I always regret losing the fizz and creaminess of having it by itself when putting champagne in cocktails.
    I advocate The Stinger

    1 measure White Creme De Menthe
    2 measures Cognac

    I've seen it sink more ships than Arnauld de la Perière
    I’m partial to the NLAW. It’s a martini in which you first smash and destroy a bottle of vodka before pouring yourself a large measure of gin.
    God Save The Queen!
    Rather a futile gesture given that gin is made out of vodka.
    It’s what the Ukraines shout when one of the things we lent them wipes out a Russian tank!

    I’ve just liked another of your posts! Not this one obviously.
    Thanks! :)
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    I wish GB News would start making subtitles available on the channel.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60743322

    TL;DR Julian Assange denied permission to challenge extradition.

    Assuming he does get extradited this time it will be peak-irony.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,638
    There's a lot of it about (Scotland not yet counted in).

    United Kingdom Daily Coronavirus (COVID-19) Report · Monday 14th March.

    170,985 new cases (people positive) reported, giving a total of 19,700,952.

    135 new deaths reported, giving a total of 162,873. https://t.co/JLlw8ZkBGK

    https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1503424983678304260?t=xL9TDvnhPpJ8vY1suQBPJg&s=19
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241
    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    Do you have a "legal" name? Not sure it is a concept in English law. You can call yourself what you like.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813

    Sky reporting Abramovich private jet seen flying towards Turkey

    wow
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60743322

    TL;DR Julian Assange denied permission to challenge extradition.

    Assuming he does get extradited this time it will be peak-irony.


    A court spokesman said Mr Assange's application did not raise "an arguable point of law".


    Not an uncommon theme with a lot of commentary on the man's situation.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,424

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    New Nature paper for @Leon.

    "We argue the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe"
    https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1503383079963926533

    Why am I the go-to person for doom-mongering? lol


    However I have been saying for some time that the idea all viruses naturally evolve to a more benign state is questionable, at best. And here, in that paper:


    "The notion that viruses will evolve to be less virulent to spare their hosts is one of the most persistent myths surrounding pathogen evolution."


    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
    Meanwhile...

    Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP
    @grantshapps
    ·
    42m
    TRAVEL UPDATE

    All remaining Covid travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and tests for all arrivals, will be stood down for travel to the UK from 4am on 18 March.

    These changes are possible due to our vaccine rollout and mean greater freedom in time for Easter.
    And yet I know more people who are laid low with Covid now than at any time during the pandemic.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    Do you have a "legal" name? Not sure it is a concept in English law. You can call yourself what you like.
    I honestly have no idea now you put it so baldly.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    Leon said:

    BTW I'm not sure why that Bercow story is emerging NOW, it refers to an incident last August

    Or is City AM just desperate for clicks? It has become quite eccentric of late

    It's only just been made public I think.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited March 2022
    Leon said:

    This is also quite sobering. From the excellent John Burns-Murdoch on the FT


    "NEW: I’m not sure people appreciate quite how bad the Covid situation is in Hong Kong, nor what might be around the corner.

    First, an astonishing chart.

    After keeping Covid at bay for two years, Omicron has hit HK and New Zealand, but the outcomes could not be more different."

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g


    TL;DR: Hong Kong is in a horrorshow, South Korea is pretty grim, and if Omicron really gets into China - as seems likely - then it could kill millions

    The CFR of Covid-19 in Hong Kong at the moment is 5%. Yes. It is killing 1 in 20

    New Zealand CFR however just 0.1%.

    66% of Hong Kongers over 80 were unvaccinated when Omicron cases surged is the real problem
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241
    Nigelb said:

    Hoping that there is a Lviv left to visit this time next year.

    https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1503085313262039044
    A wonderful note about Lviv from someone born here - "You can be born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, educated in Poland, married under the Third Reich, work and retire in the USSR and draw your pension in Ukraine and never have left the town.. LVIV"

    I do too. It's a lovely place, with the same Austro-Hungarian charm as Krakow and Prague
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,638
    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    It is quite common for female doctors to work under their maiden name professionally, with all their paperwork in that name, and a different name socially. It helps with anonymity from stalkers too.

  • @bigjohnowls please explain? Starmer net positive approval, almost overtaking Sunak?
  • Sunak continues his descent, he missed his chance and he's blown it.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,419

    Sky reporting Abramovich private jet seen flying towards Turkey

    Seems a bit unfair, I hope the turkey managed to swerve it.
  • Sky just announced that BP's move away from Russia will cost them many billions and is their defence against any windfall tax
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of @Heathener, I think everyone missed their greatest comment last night.

    In my response to why they were using an IP that appears on a number of blacklists (basically compromised PCs), they said it was because they were close to the intelligence services, and needed to hide their identity.

    Even if you believe that is true, there are easier ways to do that:

    One could, for example, use a commercial VPN service that does not keep logs. Or buy a prepaid SIM card for a data connection.

    What one does not typically do is to use a compromised PC to post to politiclbetting. What with that basically being illegal, and all.

    They kept saying how they'd worked for the intelligence services, albeit a long time ago. I'm pretty sure most people who'd worked for them wouldn't say so on a public forum.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    Do you have a "legal" name? Not sure it is a concept in English law. You can call yourself what you like.
    I honestly have no idea now you put it so baldly.
    There may be no such thing as a legal name in the UK, but there certainly is a correct form of your name as contained in legal documents. If I get an airline ticket and boarding pass as Tim, and the security officials check it against my passport, I am not getting onto the flight until my ticket/pass are changed to reflect the full name in my passport
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Having read what the Russians did to Ukraine in the 1930s I can believe it:
    Russia's army is deliberately destroying agricultural machinery in Ukraine, undermining food security in UA and the world, incl exports to EU,China
    Systematic cases have been recorded in Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Kherson,Kharkiv Oblasts.–UA Intelligence
    https://facebook.com/DefenceIntelligenceofUkraine/posts/270576275253800
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    Heathener was one of 2 posters that meant I had my longest posting gap since 2007, from 4/2/22 to 8/3/22.

    I am sure some of you could regard that as a huge positive of her time here.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    TimT said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    Do you have a "legal" name? Not sure it is a concept in English law. You can call yourself what you like.
    I honestly have no idea now you put it so baldly.
    There may be no such thing as a legal name in the UK, but there certainly is a correct form of your name as contained in legal documents. If I get an airline ticket and boarding pass as Tim, and the security officials check it against my passport, I am not getting onto the flight until my ticket/pass are changed to reflect the full name in my passport
    I recall a possibly embellish tale from Bill Bryson about trying to convince airport officials the William Bryson of his passport was him, including brandishing one of his own books as evidence.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    …,

    Cookie said:

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I'm quite traditional about this.
    Getting married isn't just having a girlfriend/boyfriend. It's forming a unit for life. If you're not prepared to subsume your identity into a joint identity you're going about it wrong.
    My wife took my name, so all five of us have the same surname - which to me feels like how it should be.
    You might think 'well you're a man you would say that' - but I have three daughters and I still think like that: I hope they all take their husband's name when they marry. No-one will take the name forward (I have no brothers, my father's brother had no children, my grandfather's brother had no sons...) - but I don't care, it's only a name and not a particularly interesting one - the point is for all of us in the family unit to share the same one.

    And again, this is a personal view but not changing your name feels like starting out with one foot already out of the door.

    Once upon a time, I didn't think this way, or at least not particularly strongly. But once upon a time I didn't see how I would view life from the perspective of 'us' rather than 'me'.

    For those who find the whole thing hopelessly male-dominated, how about a portmanteau name? I recently came across an Allen and a Winterbottom who both changed their names to Allwinter.
    It gets a bit complicated with changing names when marrying a divorcee- my ex was married before and when we discussed us getting married in the future we talked about the name thing.

    She said she would keep her ex-husband’s name, not because she was still pining for him, but because she didn’t want to have a different surname to her daughter. Especially an issue when travelling with her.

    I totally understand why, especially whilst the daughter is younger but it would have been a bit of an odd feeling introducing your wife with her ex-husband’s surname!! And double barrelling it or even triple barrelling to include her maiden name as well would have been nuts.
    I know people who get around those issues by just changing the legal name to one thing, but just going by other names at work for instance.
    Do you have a "legal" name? Not sure it is a concept in English law. You can call yourself what you like.
    That's theoretically true but effectively false - to change your name with a bank, for instance, you need documentation to back it up.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    This is also quite sobering. From the excellent John Burns-Murdoch on the FT


    "NEW: I’m not sure people appreciate quite how bad the Covid situation is in Hong Kong, nor what might be around the corner.

    First, an astonishing chart.

    After keeping Covid at bay for two years, Omicron has hit HK and New Zealand, but the outcomes could not be more different."

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g


    TL;DR: Hong Kong is in a horrorshow, South Korea is pretty grim, and if Omicron really gets into China - as seems likely - then it could kill millions

    The CFR of Covid-19 in Hong Kong at the moment is 5%. Yes. It is killing 1 in 20

    New Zealand CFR however just 0.1%.

    66% of Hong Kongers over 80 were unvaccinated when Omicron cases surged is the real problem
    Because NZ ensured elderly people were vaccinated.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,576

    Sky reporting Abramovich private jet seen flying towards Turkey

    Anecdotally, there is a bit of a property boom in Ankara with Russians buying property.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,424

    Leon said:

    Heathener is no Russian troll or a troll of any kind . She is sincere but just has a different and direct view of things to most on here - That just happens on forums! PB can get a bit "groupthink" and incredulous of certain more leftfield views but does not mean the poster of them are any less entitled to say them without getting banned or even talked about as some kind of troll/weirdo

    I interacted a lot with @Heathener and never got the sense she was a bot or a troll. Quite eccentric, yes, but then that applies to 99% of PB-ers

    Was she ever truly nasty? I must have missed it if so. She could get het up and personal, but I don't remember tirades of abuse or offensive comments
    I agree. She was a hardline mask-wearer (which I wouldn't have thought a bot would care about) and shifted from prewar dove to hawk once war was unleashed, but she's not alone in that. She had to put up with quite a bit of abuse and some pearl-clutching (probably a lesbian! said someone derisively) and I think was more sinned against than sinning. Certainly didn't seem to be a troll, and usually interesting; if she's still around I hope she'll come back. I don't really care if she's actually Russian, so long as she's an interesting Russian.
    Same applies to a lesbian, surely.
    The only person I've ever disliked on account of their sexuality was someone in a discussion group who prefaced every remark with 'speaking as a gay man'. Even when there was no conceivable association between anyone's sexuality and the subject of discussion.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    Omnium said:


    i tend to take the argument that everyone got it eventually whatever restrictions at certian times but you can hardly blame Cheltenham for the spread given the Tube was still crammed them and operating

    I didn't blame anyone - in hindsight though that 2020 meet was unwise. Even at the height of the lockdown you could see daft crowding on the tube. The central line from the east was insane.
    Yes, after I'd been sent home by my employer on the Monday of Cheltenham week, Mrs Stodge had to go into work until three days AFTER Boris Johnson's announcement of a lockdown. I don't mind telling you she was terrified and in tears by the end as the tubes were still crowded and people were coughing everywhere.

    As for Cheltenham, yes, well, it's an easy target. The course will say they constantly followed the public health advice and guidance prevailing and were never told to pull the plug and hindsight is a wonderful thing and had we known then what we know now etc, etc.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553

    Sky reporting Abramovich private jet seen flying towards Turkey

    What's the significance?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    ...

    Sky just announced that BP's move away from Russia will cost them many billions and is their defence against any windfall tax

    Lord Astor applies here.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355

    TimT said:

    ping said:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60738120

    Hmm.

    The problem with double barrel surnames is - well - it creates a dilemma for the kid, doesn’t it? What do they do when they get married (to another double barrel surnamed spouse!?) Are we heading into a world of exponentially increasing surnames? Will no one think of the registrars?

    And why does Hamilton stop at adding just his mother’s surname? What about his grandmothers’ on both sides. And so on…..

    There are all sorts of practical - and logical - difficulties with dismantling the patriarchy.

    I took the approach of choosing to take my wife's surname. It keeps things nice and simple, and breaks with the patriarchy.
    My wife took mine, against my expectations and without consulting me. Apparently she was fed up with spelling out her 12-letter family name, so preferred my 6-letter one. Perhaps we should have gone with my mother's (Beck) as, although mine is just 6-letters, as it's Cornish, I have collected well over 30 misspellings of it over the years.
    Changing names just seems odd to me. And isn't it a bit of a faff?

    I was very surprised that our niece changed hers when she got married. So she now has a Punjabi first name and a Lancashire surname.

    Mind, if I adopted my mother's maiden name, I might be eligible for an Irish passport...
    I guess it depends what you think a surname is for. For most people it's not enough to uniquely identify them, so not much good for that purpose. I see it as a family name, so logically everyone in the same family should share the same name. Which means that when you start a new family, someone has to change their name, so that everyone has the same one.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    This is also quite sobering. From the excellent John Burns-Murdoch on the FT


    "NEW: I’m not sure people appreciate quite how bad the Covid situation is in Hong Kong, nor what might be around the corner.

    First, an astonishing chart.

    After keeping Covid at bay for two years, Omicron has hit HK and New Zealand, but the outcomes could not be more different."

    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?s=20&t=_HA-1kalR9LJCgO23Ho-4g


    TL;DR: Hong Kong is in a horrorshow, South Korea is pretty grim, and if Omicron really gets into China - as seems likely - then it could kill millions

    The CFR of Covid-19 in Hong Kong at the moment is 5%. Yes. It is killing 1 in 20

    New Zealand CFR however just 0.1%.

    66% of Hong Kongers over 80 were unvaccinated when Omicron cases surged is the real problem
    Indeed. It really isn't that surprising given that statistic.

    Quite extraordinary how China has completely and utterly fubared this.

    In NZ, the outcomes are as you might expect – and NZ has been supremely successful overall – the chief problem there is mindset, hence why Jacinda is now in trouble in the opinion polls.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    Leon said:

    Heathener is no Russian troll or a troll of any kind . She is sincere but just has a different and direct view of things to most on here - That just happens on forums! PB can get a bit "groupthink" and incredulous of certain more leftfield views but does not mean the poster of them are any less entitled to say them without getting banned or even talked about as some kind of troll/weirdo

    I interacted a lot with @Heathener and never got the sense she was a bot or a troll. Quite eccentric, yes, but then that applies to 99% of PB-ers

    Was she ever truly nasty? I must have missed it if so. She could get het up and personal, but I don't remember tirades of abuse or offensive comments
    I agree. She was a hardline mask-wearer (which I wouldn't have thought a bot would care about) and shifted from prewar dove to hawk once war was unleashed, but she's not alone in that. She had to put up with quite a bit of abuse and some pearl-clutching (probably a lesbian! said someone derisively) and I think was more sinned against than sinning. Certainly didn't seem to be a troll, and usually interesting; if she's still around I hope she'll come back. I don't really care if she's actually Russian, so long as she's an interesting Russian.
    Hmm. She was extremely unpleasant at times and favoured violence against those who chose to decline masks – when masks were entirely voluntary. I won't miss her much.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,036
    edited March 2022

    Sunak continues his descent, he missed his chance and he's blown it.

    He is young. He was promoted wildly above his ability and experience when Javid unexpectedly quit, and then bought popularity with hundreds of billions of public money. But he might get another chance several years hence.
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