One of our group directors sits on a sponsor's board and got two corporate tickets directly from UEFA, he was messaging into the football slack channel this morning (he also happens to be a huge fan of Real Madrid). Absolutely scathing, him and his daughter were trapped outside, told their tickets were fake, the stewards refused to even scan their tickets, they were worried for their safety, the police tried to evict them from the area, he was worried about having his tickets and phone stolen by "local youths" so he couldn't make the call to get in the stadium if they got evicted from the area. He said they just refused to be moved on by the police and he said he was only able to force the steward to scan his tickets because he just refused to move on and his daughter started filming the argument on her phone.
Overall he said it was farcical, up there with the scenes at Wembley for the Euro final, violence all around, he was worried for his daughter's safety, gangs of youths robbing people, he blames the stewards and organisation by UEFA. Says the police were less to blame because they were probably just being told by the organisers that there's fans with fake tickets hanging around and to evict anyone from the inner cordon who has been refused entry.
One of his theories is that the stewards were waiting for bribes to scan tickets and he's sure if he'd quietly given the steward €50 he'd have been in straight away.
As I mentioned on Saturday evening I really hope those on here who instantaneously piled on the Liverpool fans will apologise, including to @TheScreamingEagles
@Leon@IshmaelZ@tlg86 do the decent thing and retract your appalling anti-Liverpool (racist) remarks please.
You daft apeth - as my mum would say - I've spent the last three hours providing evidence and largely exonerating Liverpool fans (tho there were still a few idiots) and putting the blame squarely on: local BAME Parisian thugs, appalling UEFA/Parisian crowd control, and pepper-spray-happy and incompetent French coppers
You can apologise to me at your leisure
Leon your comments on Saturday night against Liverpool and Liverpool fans, whom you blamed relentlessly without evidence, were appalling.
That you have conducted a complete volte-face is characteristic. But I'm afraid only an apology will do for your dreadful comments Saturday night.
It's the sign of a gentleman or gentlewoman to have the good grace to apologise, as I have over my invasion fuck-up.
I'm not going to apologise to you, for the salient reason that you're a prat, but you're quite right in this case that I should apologise to Liverpool fans
'Doing well/fairly well' has not declined since july 2021 when they had a clear lead. If removing Boris undoes the 'doing badly' increase then Starmer has it all to do IF they grow a set and get rid
“I’ve moved here from the US so the idea of only having a fixed rate for only 2 or 5 years was really baffling to me. Now that it is time to remortgage, I see why it's set up this way. Every couple of years the banks get a nice little thousand quid fee, the mortgage broker gets a little kickback from the bank (or you!), and you get a big fuckin headache for no real reason. Oh, and if you want to do something crazy like sell your house during that fixed term? Fuck you, you better pay the bank for the privilege of paying them back early.
Compare this to the American system where most people will get a 30 year fixed mortgage. You could live in your home for your whole adult life and never have to deal with a broker again if you didn't want to. In theory yes the rates will be slightly higher than say a 2 year fixed, but that's not always the case in practice (my buddy in Maryland just got a 30 yr fixed with a lower rate than the banks here are doing 5 yr fixed for), and when you add on the remortgaging fees the benefit starts to evaporate quickly. Plus, if you want to sell your house or reduce your debt by paying ahead, there are no early repayment charges.
I suppose in an era of declining rates there was some benefit to the consumer, as if you wanted to refinance in the US the fees for refinancing are much higher than the fees to remortgage. But when rates are flat or going up, it's just bad for the consumer in every single way.
I cannot understand why on earth remortgaging continues to exist as a thing - why some challenger bank hasn't come in here with the American model and put all these terribly structured anti-consumer mortgages to shame.”
He’s got a point, hasn’t he?
Is our mortgage market shit compared to the US - and if so, why can’t we do things the American way?
What does PB think?
Taking on a loan with the rate fixed for 30 years is risky. Eg you do that and then interest rates come plummeting down, you're stuck with a liability that in PV terms has gone through the roof. Ok your asset side - the house - might have gone up too for the same reason (falling rates) but it also might not have, or to nothing like the same extent. That's more a wholesale than a retail perspective but it does capture a financial reality.
Perhaps more significant than the French performance with the footie game, is the German performance with regard to Ukraine. From the New Stateman:
"The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come in for hefty criticism for Berlin’s reluctance to make good on its promise of a zeitenwende (change in the times). The governing coalition and the centre-right opposition, the CDU/CSU, did agree on 29 May to increase military spending by €100bn. However, Die Welt, a conservative German newspaper, reported that Ukraine has only received two shipments of weapons from Germany since March, and Scholz has refused to supply German tanks and armoured personnel carriers to Kyiv."
It won't be lost on people like the Poles that within living history their country was partitioned by the Germans and Russians.
You have to wonder about the future of the EU. The Balts, Nordics and Poles are faced with an existential threat, but meanwhile the French and Germans play 19th century "spheres of influence" politics without the flair, panache or cynical effectiveness of Talleyrand and Metternich.
Johnson is also refusing to supply tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to Ukraine. The French, Dutch, Polish, Czechs all have. What's his problem?
One of our group directors sits on a sponsor's board and got two corporate tickets directly from UEFA, he was messaging into the football slack channel this morning (he also happens to be a huge fan of Real Madrid). Absolutely scathing, him and his daughter were trapped outside, told their tickets were fake, the stewards refused to even scan their tickets, they were worried for their safety, the police tried to evict them from the area, he was worried about having his tickets and phone stolen by "local youths" so he couldn't make the call to get in the stadium if they got evicted from the area. He said they just refused to be moved on by the police and he said he was only able to force the steward to scan his tickets because he just refused to move on and his daughter started filming the argument on her phone.
Overall he said it was farcical, up there with the scenes at Wembley for the Euro final, violence all around, he was worried for his daughter's safety, gangs of youths robbing people, he blames the stewards and organisation by UEFA. Says the police were less to blame because they were probably just being told by the organisers that there's fans with fake tickets hanging around and to evict anyone from the inner cordon who has been refused entry.
One of his theories is that the stewards were waiting for bribes to scan tickets and he's sure if he'd quietly given the steward €50 he'd have been in straight away.
As I mentioned on Saturday evening I really hope those on here who instantaneously piled on the Liverpool fans will apologise, including to @TheScreamingEagles
@Leon@IshmaelZ@tlg86 do the decent thing and retract your appalling anti-Liverpool (racist) remarks please.
OK
1. Don't tell me what to do 2. Don't call me racist 3. I am from Lancashire. Don't try to regulate my relations with Liverpool, it's nowt to do wi' thee. 4. The most telling point about all this is, you could read the narrative with the sport involved, and nationality of one team, redacted, and have no difficulty filling in the blanks. Does that tell you anything? 5. Karma 6. They don't like it up 'em.
Some old nonsense just came through on Twitter. Is it true that Johnson went pro- Leave because the Telegraph threatened to remove his £275,000 pa hobble if he did not?
So the cost of Brexit was £275,000 pa. Let's put that on the side of a bus.
Conservative MPs get rid of this appalling man.
I want Boris gone, but not because of Brexit, or covid which he was ahead of the game opening the economy, or indeed Ukraine where he has at least supported Ukraine while Germany and France prevaricate
I want him out for partygate and his arrogance in putting his mps and his party in disarray for his own selfish ego
Conservative mps just have to remove him
The point being made was that Johnson instinctively went with the Leave side, not because he believed it to be in the UK's interests but to save his £275,000 sideline.
I would question both your Covid (except for the swift roll out of vaccines) and Ukraine analysis. For the large part I would put both down to spin.
You seem to have now accepted it as fact, but you had answered your own question in your original comment.
Yep, you're right. I have accepted it as fact. But then again, I had probably reached the same conclusion way back in Spring 2016.
“I’ve moved here from the US so the idea of only having a fixed rate for only 2 or 5 years was really baffling to me. Now that it is time to remortgage, I see why it's set up this way. Every couple of years the banks get a nice little thousand quid fee, the mortgage broker gets a little kickback from the bank (or you!), and you get a big fuckin headache for no real reason. Oh, and if you want to do something crazy like sell your house during that fixed term? Fuck you, you better pay the bank for the privilege of paying them back early.
Compare this to the American system where most people will get a 30 year fixed mortgage. You could live in your home for your whole adult life and never have to deal with a broker again if you didn't want to. In theory yes the rates will be slightly higher than say a 2 year fixed, but that's not always the case in practice (my buddy in Maryland just got a 30 yr fixed with a lower rate than the banks here are doing 5 yr fixed for), and when you add on the remortgaging fees the benefit starts to evaporate quickly. Plus, if you want to sell your house or reduce your debt by paying ahead, there are no early repayment charges.
I suppose in an era of declining rates there was some benefit to the consumer, as if you wanted to refinance in the US the fees for refinancing are much higher than the fees to remortgage. But when rates are flat or going up, it's just bad for the consumer in every single way.
I cannot understand why on earth remortgaging continues to exist as a thing - why some challenger bank hasn't come in here with the American model and put all these terribly structured anti-consumer mortgages to shame.”
He’s got a point, hasn’t he?
Is our mortgage market shit compared to the US - and if so, why can’t we do things the American way?
What does PB think?
Yes it is shit , just grifters sponging off us all the time.
One of our group directors sits on a sponsor's board and got two corporate tickets directly from UEFA, he was messaging into the football slack channel this morning (he also happens to be a huge fan of Real Madrid). Absolutely scathing, him and his daughter were trapped outside, told their tickets were fake, the stewards refused to even scan their tickets, they were worried for their safety, the police tried to evict them from the area, he was worried about having his tickets and phone stolen by "local youths" so he couldn't make the call to get in the stadium if they got evicted from the area. He said they just refused to be moved on by the police and he said he was only able to force the steward to scan his tickets because he just refused to move on and his daughter started filming the argument on her phone.
Overall he said it was farcical, up there with the scenes at Wembley for the Euro final, violence all around, he was worried for his daughter's safety, gangs of youths robbing people, he blames the stewards and organisation by UEFA. Says the police were less to blame because they were probably just being told by the organisers that there's fans with fake tickets hanging around and to evict anyone from the inner cordon who has been refused entry.
One of his theories is that the stewards were waiting for bribes to scan tickets and he's sure if he'd quietly given the steward €50 he'd have been in straight away.
As I mentioned on Saturday evening I really hope those on here who instantaneously piled on the Liverpool fans will apologise, including to @TheScreamingEagles
@Leon@IshmaelZ@tlg86 do the decent thing and retract your appalling anti-Liverpool (racist) remarks please.
You daft apeth - as my mum would say - I've spent the last three hours providing evidence and largely exonerating Liverpool fans (tho there were still a few idiots) and putting the blame squarely on: local BAME Parisian thugs, appalling UEFA/Parisian crowd control, and pepper-spray-happy and incompetent French coppers
You can apologise to me at your leisure
Leon your comments on Saturday night against Liverpool and Liverpool fans, whom you blamed relentlessly without evidence, were appalling.
That you have conducted a complete volte-face is characteristic. But I'm afraid only an apology will do for your dreadful comments Saturday night.
It's the sign of a gentleman or gentlewoman to have the good grace to apologise, as I have over my invasion fuck-up.
I really think it's Putin who should say sorry for that one.
One of our group directors sits on a sponsor's board and got two corporate tickets directly from UEFA, he was messaging into the football slack channel this morning (he also happens to be a huge fan of Real Madrid). Absolutely scathing, him and his daughter were trapped outside, told their tickets were fake, the stewards refused to even scan their tickets, they were worried for their safety, the police tried to evict them from the area, he was worried about having his tickets and phone stolen by "local youths" so he couldn't make the call to get in the stadium if they got evicted from the area. He said they just refused to be moved on by the police and he said he was only able to force the steward to scan his tickets because he just refused to move on and his daughter started filming the argument on her phone.
Overall he said it was farcical, up there with the scenes at Wembley for the Euro final, violence all around, he was worried for his daughter's safety, gangs of youths robbing people, he blames the stewards and organisation by UEFA. Says the police were less to blame because they were probably just being told by the organisers that there's fans with fake tickets hanging around and to evict anyone from the inner cordon who has been refused entry.
One of his theories is that the stewards were waiting for bribes to scan tickets and he's sure if he'd quietly given the steward €50 he'd have been in straight away.
As I mentioned on Saturday evening I really hope those on here who instantaneously piled on the Liverpool fans will apologise, including to @TheScreamingEagles
@Leon@IshmaelZ@tlg86 do the decent thing and retract your appalling anti-Liverpool (racist) remarks please.
You daft apeth - as my mum would say - I've spent the last three hours providing evidence and largely exonerating Liverpool fans (tho there were still a few idiots) and putting the blame squarely on: local BAME Parisian thugs, appalling UEFA/Parisian crowd control, and pepper-spray-happy and incompetent French coppers
You can apologise to me at your leisure
h'a'peth - half penny worth.
Apeth sounds like the name of a Swedish doom metal band.
Unless they are supplied from elsewhere in NATO. Which is also possible.
According to this, "the U.S. is weighing supplying rockets that can travel roughly between 20 to 45 miles, further than the shells fired by the M777 howitzers sent to Ukraine in May, which can reach about 15 miles."
Perhaps more significant than the French performance with the footie game, is the German performance with regard to Ukraine. From the New Stateman:
"The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come in for hefty criticism for Berlin’s reluctance to make good on its promise of a zeitenwende (change in the times). The governing coalition and the centre-right opposition, the CDU/CSU, did agree on 29 May to increase military spending by €100bn. However, Die Welt, a conservative German newspaper, reported that Ukraine has only received two shipments of weapons from Germany since March, and Scholz has refused to supply German tanks and armoured personnel carriers to Kyiv."
It won't be lost on people like the Poles that within living history their country was partitioned by the Germans and Russians.
You have to wonder about the future of the EU. The Balts, Nordics and Poles are faced with an existential threat, but meanwhile the French and Germans play 19th century "spheres of influence" politics without the flair, panache or cynical effectiveness of Talleyrand and Metternich.
Johnson is also refusing to supply tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to Ukraine. The French, Dutch, Polish, Czechs all have. What's his problem?
1. Artillery apparently has been, at least according to reports on the Ukrainian social media side. What hasn't been disclosed is the number / type; 2. What's your definition of Armoured Vehicles? We have given Spartans, Mastiffs and Wolfhounds. 3. Does it make sense to send a bunch of 64 ton (at least) Challenger 2 tanks which require a crew of 4 and a good amount of training to an army used to dealing with 3 man tanks and an area where the roads / bridges are not exactly great and the ground is still quite soft? It made more sense to do what we did i.e. send the Challenger 2s to Poland so they can send the T-72s to Ukraine.
Perhaps more significant than the French performance with the footie game, is the German performance with regard to Ukraine. From the New Stateman:
"The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come in for hefty criticism for Berlin’s reluctance to make good on its promise of a zeitenwende (change in the times). The governing coalition and the centre-right opposition, the CDU/CSU, did agree on 29 May to increase military spending by €100bn. However, Die Welt, a conservative German newspaper, reported that Ukraine has only received two shipments of weapons from Germany since March, and Scholz has refused to supply German tanks and armoured personnel carriers to Kyiv."
It won't be lost on people like the Poles that within living history their country was partitioned by the Germans and Russians.
You have to wonder about the future of the EU. The Balts, Nordics and Poles are faced with an existential threat, but meanwhile the French and Germans play 19th century "spheres of influence" politics without the flair, panache or cynical effectiveness of Talleyrand and Metternich.
Johnson is also refusing to supply tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to Ukraine. The French, Dutch, Polish, Czechs all have. What's his problem?
Perhaps more significant than the French performance with the footie game, is the German performance with regard to Ukraine. From the New Stateman:
"The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come in for hefty criticism for Berlin’s reluctance to make good on its promise of a zeitenwende (change in the times). The governing coalition and the centre-right opposition, the CDU/CSU, did agree on 29 May to increase military spending by €100bn. However, Die Welt, a conservative German newspaper, reported that Ukraine has only received two shipments of weapons from Germany since March, and Scholz has refused to supply German tanks and armoured personnel carriers to Kyiv."
It won't be lost on people like the Poles that within living history their country was partitioned by the Germans and Russians.
You have to wonder about the future of the EU. The Balts, Nordics and Poles are faced with an existential threat, but meanwhile the French and Germans play 19th century "spheres of influence" politics without the flair, panache or cynical effectiveness of Talleyrand and Metternich.
Johnson is also refusing to supply tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to Ukraine. The French, Dutch, Polish, Czechs all have. What's his problem?
1. Artillery apparently has been, at least according to reports on the Ukrainian social media side. What hasn't been disclosed is the number / type; 2. What's your definition of Armoured Vehicles? We have given Spartans, Mastiffs and Wolfhounds. 3. Does it make sense to send a bunch of 64 ton (at least) Challenger 2 tanks which require a crew of 4 and a good amount of training to an army used to dealing with 3 man tanks and an area where the roads / bridges are not exactly great and the ground is still quite soft? It made more sense to do what we did i.e. send the Challenger 2s to Poland so they can send the T-72s to Ukraine.
The tank thing is actually even stranger - the Poles are sending their T-72s, but the Germans are curiously slow to supply the promised Leopard 2 replacements to the Poles.
Perhaps more significant than the French performance with the footie game, is the German performance with regard to Ukraine. From the New Stateman:
"The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come in for hefty criticism for Berlin’s reluctance to make good on its promise of a zeitenwende (change in the times). The governing coalition and the centre-right opposition, the CDU/CSU, did agree on 29 May to increase military spending by €100bn. However, Die Welt, a conservative German newspaper, reported that Ukraine has only received two shipments of weapons from Germany since March, and Scholz has refused to supply German tanks and armoured personnel carriers to Kyiv."
It won't be lost on people like the Poles that within living history their country was partitioned by the Germans and Russians.
You have to wonder about the future of the EU. The Balts, Nordics and Poles are faced with an existential threat, but meanwhile the French and Germans play 19th century "spheres of influence" politics without the flair, panache or cynical effectiveness of Talleyrand and Metternich.
Johnson is also refusing to supply tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to Ukraine. The French, Dutch, Polish, Czechs all have. What's his problem?
1. Artillery apparently has been, at least according to reports on the Ukrainian social media side. What hasn't been disclosed is the number / type; 2. What's your definition of Armoured Vehicles? We have given Spartans, Mastiffs and Wolfhounds. 3. Does it make sense to send a bunch of 64 ton (at least) Challenger 2 tanks which require a crew of 4 and a good amount of training to an army used to dealing with 3 man tanks and an area where the roads / bridges are not exactly great and the ground is still quite soft? It made more sense to do what we did i.e. send the Challenger 2s to Poland so they can send the T-72s to Ukraine.
Also, in fine British tradition, we're also bodging together stuff in any way that might be halfway useful to them - e.g. The ground-launched brimstone - so it gives the impression that we've adopted them as one of our own.
Unless they are supplied from elsewhere in NATO. Which is also possible.
According to this, "the U.S. is weighing supplying rockets that can travel roughly between 20 to 45 miles, further than the shells fired by the M777 howitzers sent to Ukraine in May, which can reach about 15 miles."
"The EU will have an image problem if it begins to be seen more widely as essentially a vehicle for Franco-German interests."
Will?
I will allow the Germans some latitude, as they try their best to be neutral, but the French generally don't bother. At the few European meetings I attended, we could rely on the Scandinavians and the Dutch. The Irish see us as their embarrassing cousins, and the Italians concentrate on the nearest vineyard.
You can't beat a few stereotypes, but the EU often lived up to it. Unless it's just me.
One of our group directors sits on a sponsor's board and got two corporate tickets directly from UEFA, he was messaging into the football slack channel this morning (he also happens to be a huge fan of Real Madrid). Absolutely scathing, him and his daughter were trapped outside, told their tickets were fake, the stewards refused to even scan their tickets, they were worried for their safety, the police tried to evict them from the area, he was worried about having his tickets and phone stolen by "local youths" so he couldn't make the call to get in the stadium if they got evicted from the area. He said they just refused to be moved on by the police and he said he was only able to force the steward to scan his tickets because he just refused to move on and his daughter started filming the argument on her phone.
Overall he said it was farcical, up there with the scenes at Wembley for the Euro final, violence all around, he was worried for his daughter's safety, gangs of youths robbing people, he blames the stewards and organisation by UEFA. Says the police were less to blame because they were probably just being told by the organisers that there's fans with fake tickets hanging around and to evict anyone from the inner cordon who has been refused entry.
One of his theories is that the stewards were waiting for bribes to scan tickets and he's sure if he'd quietly given the steward €50 he'd have been in straight away.
As I mentioned on Saturday evening I really hope those on here who instantaneously piled on the Liverpool fans will apologise, including to @TheScreamingEagles
@Leon@IshmaelZ@tlg86 do the decent thing and retract your appalling anti-Liverpool (racist) remarks please.
You daft apeth - as my mum would say - I've spent the last three hours providing evidence and largely exonerating Liverpool fans (tho there were still a few idiots) and putting the blame squarely on: local BAME Parisian thugs, appalling UEFA/Parisian crowd control, and pepper-spray-happy and incompetent French coppers
Beginning to look like a Conservative MP's No Confidence vote in our "wonderful PM"ould be as early as nect week!! If so suspect he would win by a good margin but due to abstentions fail to get the backing of 50% of all Tory MPs. At the same time Durham Police could well fine Starmer and we will have two competitons on our hands. Any advance on two, is Davey under threat?'
"The EU will have an image problem if it begins to be seen more widely as essentially a vehicle for Franco-German interests."
Will?
I will allow the Germans some latitude, as they try their best to be neutral, but the French generally don't bother. At the few European meetings I attended, we could rely on the Scandinavians and the Dutch. The Irish see us as their embarrassing cousins, and the Italians concentrate on the nearest vineyard.
You can't beat a few stereotypes, but the EU often lived up to it. Unless it's just me.
Back when I was at the UN in Geneva, someone recommended "War with the Newts" by Karel Capek to me as a way to understand how the various national delegations would think and act. Remarkably, while written in 1936, the stereotypes broadly still held in the late 1980s. I guess they still would now, too.
Nick - It's not terribly important but, "From ex-LAB MP Nick Palmer" might be clearer if you changed it to: "From Labour member and ex-MP Nick Palmer", or something similar. Especially in a post about defections.
Or am I wrong about you still being a member of the Labour Party?
Nick - It's not terribly important but, "From ex-LAB MP Nick Palmer" might be clearer if you changed it to: "From Labour member and ex-MP Nick Palmer", or something similar. Especially in a post about defections.
Or am I wrong about you still being a member of the Labour Party?
Comments
Sorry, Liverpool fans
1. Don't tell me what to do
2. Don't call me racist
3. I am from Lancashire. Don't try to regulate my relations with Liverpool, it's nowt to do wi' thee.
4. The most telling point about all this is, you could read the narrative with the sport involved, and nationality of one team, redacted, and have no difficulty filling in the blanks. Does that tell you anything?
5. Karma
6. They don't like it up 'em.
Apeth sounds like the name of a Swedish doom metal band.
Still ambiguous, though.
2. What's your definition of Armoured Vehicles? We have given Spartans, Mastiffs and Wolfhounds.
3. Does it make sense to send a bunch of 64 ton (at least) Challenger 2 tanks which require a crew of 4 and a good amount of training to an army used to dealing with 3 man tanks and an area where the roads / bridges are not exactly great and the ground is still quite soft? It made more sense to do what we did i.e. send the Challenger 2s to Poland so they can send the T-72s to Ukraine.
There is a interesting history to why ATACMS triggers (ha!) certain people in the US arms control establishment.
Will?
I will allow the Germans some latitude, as they try their best to be neutral, but the French generally don't bother. At the few European meetings I attended, we could rely on the Scandinavians and the Dutch. The Irish see us as their embarrassing cousins, and the Italians concentrate on the nearest vineyard.
You can't beat a few stereotypes, but the EU often lived up to it. Unless it's just me.
Jeez and you a wordsmith.
If so suspect he would win by a good margin but due to abstentions fail to get the backing of 50% of all Tory MPs. At the same time Durham Police could well fine Starmer and we will have two competitons on our hands. Any advance on two, is Davey under threat?'
Or am I wrong about you still being a member of the Labour Party?