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The MidTerms are over – now for WH2024 – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,795
edited December 2022 in General
The MidTerms are over – now for WH2024 – politicalbetting.com

2024 National Democratic Primary, Without Biden:Harris 32%Sanders 17%Buttigieg 13%Warren 9%Klobuchar 6%Ocasio-Cortez 6%Newsom 5%Whitmer 3%Shapiro 2%Big Village, 452 Adults, 11/30-12/2https://t.co/lDMvrhOFrZ

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  • Options
    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?
  • Options
    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,884
    Second, like Trump (on a good day)
  • Options
    squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,423

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Telegraph getting more like the Daily Mail every day.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
  • Options
    felixfelix Posts: 15,125
    Amidst all the concerns in the UK it's ironic that all continues to be so secure and well in Euroland...

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63885028

    No doubt Scotty-c will be on it today....
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826
    Crazy that it is always the same old faces that get named. Much as I like Whitmer and Klobuchar, they barely seem to feature.
  • Options
    Foxy said:

    Crazy that it is always the same old faces that get named. Much as I like Whitmer and Klobuchar, they barely seem to feature.

    Amy Klobuchar has been hyped on PB for at least the last two elections, and Whitmer last time. If anything, we are too prone to look for outsiders who often do not stand anyway, pace OGH's 50/1 Obama tip.
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,288
    edited December 2022
    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Old age might be the defining characteristic of this cycle, with Biden, Trump and Sanders all well into their bus pass years.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,635
    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Why do you like Bernie?
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,884
    FWIW, breaking from Omid Djalili: Messages I’m getting from Iran:
    “Tehran on verge of collapse. Leaked: Basij leader there has admitted the possibility of Tehran's fall tonight is extremely high and that the Presidential palace may be attacked. Khamenei & Raisi told to be transferred to a safe place ASAP.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,671
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    SACK EVERYONE IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

    Tomorrow marks 5 weeks since Musk sacked everyone at Twitter and it still seems to work fine. Odd because I remember people here saying he’d bankrupted the company and to expect the app to break irretrievably by the weekend.

    Suspect you could do similar with the civil service and not notice much either.
    that's not quite true:

    Twitter is working great from a consumer perspective, but 2FA is still borked and smaller advertisers can't spend any money on the platform.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,671

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    If the first primary is South Carolina, that is terrible for Buttigieg.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826
    edited December 2022

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Why do you like Bernie?
    Because he is different to the mainstream of American politics in his dishevelled grumpy old man radicalism. I wouldn't vote for him for President, but such folk are necessary in a democracy, as are people like Corbyn here.
  • Options

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    I would really like to see Buttigieg make a serious run this time around. Time for a new generation of US leaders with some new ideas.
  • Options
    White House chief of staff was interviewed a day or two ago. He said Biden will make an announcement about 2024 on Monday, and that he expects it to be that he'll run. I think he'd know.
    Unless Biden dies, it'll be Biden
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,365
    DJ41 said:

    Off-topic, re. the alleged coup plot in Germany:

    * Odd how "former parachute unit commander Rüdiger von P., 69," who is alleged to have been in line to run the military arm of the new government, hasn't been fully named. Loads of people must know who he is.

    * Oh dear oh dear, there is a link betwen the Querdenkers and the followers of Rudolf Steiner (anthroposophists as they call themselves). (Steiner thought he understood about viruses, seeing them as nothing more than bits of broken cell.) Wouldn't surprise me if this then connects with Former Commander P once the rest of his surname is revealed.

    * Noticeably absent so far: any comment by Donald Trump on the goings-on. (Not on his Truth Social account anyway, which interestingly is very easy to find using the DuckDuckGo websearch engine but hard to find using the service provided by Google).

    * 3000 police.

    * No photos of any of the plotters' weapons yet, or details or even a rough idea of what kit they had.

    * No info about funding either.

    * When it comes down to it, not much info about the whole business. You don't need 3000 police to bust a ring of silly old f*rts whose main belief is wibble wobble something something the Second Reich.

    I can probably help with your confusion.

    It is the standard legal way to name suspects in Germany, with first name and initial.

    What has Donald Trump got to do with it?

    They may be silly old farts, but there are a few thousand of them, many have weapons, and some have links to, or are currently in, the military and security services - including the KSK. I'm not sure why their beliefs would reduce the need for police - not believing in the legitimacy of the state seems like the kind of belief that would tend to increase the need for lots of police rather than lessen it.


  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,880
    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,635
    Foxy said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
    "Scab labour"

    That's a term that denigrates those who use it, not those whom it is meant to refer to.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118
    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    He's barely a year older than young Mr Joe.
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,288
    edited December 2022

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,884

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Why do you like Bernie?
    He’s a sensible, honest, hard-working centre-left politician who made the mistake of being born in the wrong country.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    I think it's possibly one of those language drifts, as infamous starts to become a synonym for famous.

    Or it's about the dog.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,635
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Why do you like Bernie?
    He’s a sensible, honest, hard-working centre-left politician who made the mistake of being born in the wrong country.
    I'm unsure Bernie would be centre-left if in the UK. He was certainly very fond of Corbyn, at least whilst Corbyn was a winner... ;)
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826
    Nigelb said:

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    He's barely a year older than young Mr Joe.
    Joe is ancient too!
  • Options
    squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,423
    edited December 2022

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118
    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    He's barely a year older than young Mr Joe.
    Joe is ancient too!
    Say it ain't so.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826
    edited December 2022

    Foxy said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
    "Scab labour"

    That's a term that denigrates those who use it, not those whom it is meant to refer to.
    It doesn't sound as if the armed forces are keen to be scab labour over Christmas either. Indeed it sounds as if Wallace is a bit pissed off.

    Using the forces in case of floods or pandemics is one thing, intervening in industrial disputes is another.
  • Options
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    Why do you like Bernie?
    He’s a sensible, honest, hard-working centre-left politician who made the mistake of being born in the wrong country.
    He might be positioned like that in terms of his policy positions but when he had some leeway to choose who to put on his campaign team he picked a bunch of shifty tankies (who proceeded to bollocks it up for him). It was all very Jeremy Corbyn.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118
    How much did Apollo 11 astronauts get paid to land on the moon?

    $33.31

    https://mobile.twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1600699231169150976
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,670
    edited December 2022

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    The less famous RAF J.Johnson.

    A reminder of the days when destroying infrastructure and killing civilians was accounted to be a good thing.

    On checking Wiki I see there was even a third RAF Johnnie Johnson.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 45,826

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
  • Options
    Back to the Midterms for a moment...

    Last month, the morning after the vote, Paddypower offered 50-1 against a Democrat Senate victory. At that time the score was 49 Republicans and (I thought) 48 Democrats, with three states left to be called. I had a £10 bet on the Democrats.

    Yesterday I learned that two of those "Democrats" were, by Paddypower's rules, not counted as they are independents.

    In which case Paddypower were offering their bet when there were only 46 Democrats, with three states left to be called, so it was impossible for that bet to win.

    Anyone come across this before?
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,015
    I suspect if there is more of this in the coming months, deliberate targetting which will have a major impact on people, the Unions will rapidly lose public support.

    Those that currently have it that is.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/07/border-force-staff-to-strike-over-christmas-in-row-over-pay
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 68,306

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    I would really like to see Buttigieg make a serious run this time around. Time for a new generation of US leaders with some new ideas.
    Although even a new generation of leaders won't solve the problem that their constitutional arrangements are stuck in about the sixteenth century.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,015

    Foxy said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
    "Scab labour"

    That's a term that denigrates those who use it, not those whom it is meant to refer to.
    Yeah, it's an idiotic term and one rooted in the past. Still if it makes him happy to throw it about let him. As you say it says more about those who use it.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 28,232

    Back to the Midterms for a moment...

    Last month, the morning after the vote, Paddypower offered 50-1 against a Democrat Senate victory. At that time the score was 49 Republicans and (I thought) 48 Democrats, with three states left to be called. I had a £10 bet on the Democrats.

    Yesterday I learned that two of those "Democrats" were, by Paddypower's rules, not counted as they are independents.

    In which case Paddypower were offering their bet when there were only 46 Democrats, with three states left to be called, so it was impossible for that bet to win.

    Anyone come across this before?

    I seen it mentioned on Betfair Exchange.
  • Options

    Back to the Midterms for a moment...

    Last month, the morning after the vote, Paddypower offered 50-1 against a Democrat Senate victory. At that time the score was 49 Republicans and (I thought) 48 Democrats, with three states left to be called. I had a £10 bet on the Democrats.

    Yesterday I learned that two of those "Democrats" were, by Paddypower's rules, not counted as they are independents.

    In which case Paddypower were offering their bet when there were only 46 Democrats, with three states left to be called, so it was impossible for that bet to win.

    Anyone come across this before?

    Yes, and we often warned about it on this very PB. I guess you might have some sort of case that the bet could not be won at the time you placed your bet, though PP might counter that the independents could have joined the party.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 68,306

    Back to the Midterms for a moment...

    Last month, the morning after the vote, Paddypower offered 50-1 against a Democrat Senate victory. At that time the score was 49 Republicans and (I thought) 48 Democrats, with three states left to be called. I had a £10 bet on the Democrats.

    Yesterday I learned that two of those "Democrats" were, by Paddypower's rules, not counted as they are independents.

    In which case Paddypower were offering their bet when there were only 46 Democrats, with three states left to be called, so it was impossible for that bet to win.

    Anyone come across this before?

    It's been raised on these boards that they considered King and Sanders to be non-Dems for the purposes of the bet, but I'm astonished they were still offering bets on Dem control when their rules made it mathematically impossible.
  • Options
    Taz said:

    Foxy said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
    "Scab labour"

    That's a term that denigrates those who use it, not those whom it is meant to refer to.
    Yeah, it's an idiotic term and one rooted in the past. Still if it makes him happy to throw it about let him. As you say it says more about those who use it.
    What term would you prefer? Strike-breaker seems even more pointed.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,884
    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118

    Back to the Midterms for a moment...

    Last month, the morning after the vote, Paddypower offered 50-1 against a Democrat Senate victory. At that time the score was 49 Republicans and (I thought) 48 Democrats, with three states left to be called. I had a £10 bet on the Democrats.

    Yesterday I learned that two of those "Democrats" were, by Paddypower's rules, not counted as they are independents.

    In which case Paddypower were offering their bet when there were only 46 Democrats, with three states left to be called, so it was impossible for that bet to win.

    Anyone come across this before?

    Yes, we've discussed it frequently and issued warnings. Same confusion every election.

    It's theoretically possible that the independent Senators might choose to caucus with the Democrats in the next session, so they're not committing fraud, I think ?
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,297
    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

  • Options
    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,295

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Well, they recently became infamous for leaving the 'red gear' in an F-35B and thus consigning a £90m aircraft to the bottom of the Med. Most of the "Hole in the Wall Gang" would be happy with/proud of the sobriquet 'infamous' to be honest.
  • Options
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    The best that can be said is the dambusters raid was a precision raid rather than standard second world war carpet bombing, and that its impact was so crucial that for six months the Nazis diverted men and material away from the front lines in order to effect repairs.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    That thought is being wise long after the event.
    The capability of assessing the military
    effectiveness of such actions was considerably more primitive back then.

    A far stronger moral case could and can (correctly, IMO) be made against the fire bombings of cities back then.
  • Options
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    No it was not a misjudgement. Even if its effect was limited, it still had an effect and was worth doing, particularly at a time when, outside of North Africa, or options for taking the fight to the Germans was limited. The false equivalence that Foxy makes between Nazi Germany and Ukraine is pretty offensive.
  • Options
    ChrisChris Posts: 11,371
    Nice to see the Peruvian ersatz version of Trump almost immediately detained by the police after attempting to dissolve Congress, while reportedly trying to flee to Mexico.
  • Options
    ydoethur said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    I would really like to see Buttigieg make a serious run this time around. Time for a new generation of US leaders with some new ideas.
    Although even a new generation of leaders won't solve the problem that their constitutional arrangements are stuck in about the sixteenth century.
    Although one of Buttigieg's campaigns is to end the Electoral College system.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 64,118
    Good article by Fallows on the controversial article.

    On That ProPublica ‘Chinese Lab Leak’ Story.
    https://fallows.substack.com/p/on-that-propublica-chinese-lab-leak
    ...Here is a crucial point: Skepticism about the story was entirely separate from views on the “lab leak” hypothesis itself (which the story supported, as had the Republican staff report). I have no idea where the pandemic virus came from and have never joined arguments about its origin. I don’t know enough. This post is explicitly not about the “lab leak” idea. The same is true for most people questioning the ProPublica story. The controversy involves language, evidence, and journalistic transparency and accountability....
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,524

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    There has been a persistent effort in museum displays etc to make Operation Chastise out to be a failure and a war crime.

    The first is arguable. The second is bullshit.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,994
    At the moment given Trump's clear lead with GOP primary voters still and his announcement he will run again and the likelihood Biden will then also run again to keep Trump out again and Biden's clear lead with Democrats it looks like Trump v Biden again.

    If however Trump falters or pulls out of fails in the early primaries then DeSantis looks well placed on the GOP side and yes Buttigieg on the Democrats side
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,524
    Chris said:

    Nice to see the Peruvian ersatz version of Trump almost immediately detained by the police after attempting to dissolve Congress, while reportedly trying to flee to Mexico.

    He has proved to be an utter twat in nearly every dimension. Even by the standards of Peruvian politics. Where Lizz Truss would be a genius who towered over the tiny, tiny clowns around her.
  • Options
    M45M45 Posts: 216
    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Dear me. Was ww2 an unprovoked war of aggression started by the UK? Does Ukraine have an indigenous arms industry for putin to attack?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,994
    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    AOC would be a gift to the GOP, DeSantis would trounce her, even Trump could beat her
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,670
    edited December 2022
    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    That thought is being wise long after the event.
    The capability of assessing the military
    effectiveness of such actions was considerably more primitive back then.

    A far stronger moral case could and can (correctly, IMO) be made against the fire bombings of cities back then.
    Interlinked surely since both had the effect they had on the German civilian population as one of their aims (interruption of the supply of clean drinking water being part of Chastise)?

    Fwiw Harris objected to forces being allocated to these special operations, mainly due to them taking away bombers from his own personal mission to make Germans reap the whirlwind rather than any soft heartedness.
  • Options
    Nigelb said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    We didn't invade Germany.
    The centre of Warsaw was pretty much bombed to smitheroons by German bombing by the end of September 1939.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,297

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    No it was not a misjudgement. Even if its effect was limited, it still had an effect and was worth doing, particularly at a time when, outside of

    North Africa, or options for taking the fight to the Germans was limited. The false equivalence that Foxy makes between Nazi Germany and Ukraine is pretty offensive.
    Against an enemy like the Axis, you fight with every means at your disposal, however brutal.

  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,855
    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
  • Options
    SirNorfolkPassmoreSirNorfolkPassmore Posts: 6,631
    edited December 2022
    rcs1000 said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    If the first primary is South Carolina, that is terrible for Buttigieg.
    That's not confirmed, although it's proposed.

    Assuming it goes ahead (a fairly big assumption), it's only terrible for Buttigieg if he does terribly. Remember, primaries are about the expectations game. He will be expected to do bady and Harris would be expected to do well - if Harris is well down on Biden's 48% and Buttigieg well up on his 8% in 2020, it's a decent result that will be written up as such, even if she still wins pretty handsomely.

    The primaries then move to quickly more favourable ground for Buttigieg in New Hampshire and Nevada, then Michigan and Georgia before Super Tuesday. The South Carolina move has grabbed headlines, but Michigan and Georgia are probably more significant as South Carolina came before Super Tuesday anyway, whereas Michigan and Georgia come right up the calendar and are acid tests in states that are likely to be really competitive in November. Georgia could be problematic for Buttigieg for the same reasons as South Carolina (although again, expectations game) but he lives in Michigan now, seems to have a decent relationship with Governor Whitmer if she's not running, and there's been a lot of transportation investment there he can connect himself to.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,524

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Yes, as a feat of both military ingenuity and bravery it deserves respect; as an act of war however it killed a lot of civilians with a pretty minimal impact on German industrial production; the best that can be said is that it was a misjudgement.
    No it was not a misjudgement. Even if its effect was limited, it still had an effect and was worth doing, particularly at a time when, outside of North Africa, or options for taking the fight to the Germans was limited. The false equivalence that Foxy makes between Nazi Germany and Ukraine is pretty offensive.
    Chastise resulted in a serious loss in production, diversion of a huge workforce to rebuild the dams and lots of resources to protect dams for the rest of the war.

    The real mistake was not doing a Mosquito raid to follow up, to destroy the form work for pouring the repair concrete. This type of raid wrecked several Nazi mega projects later in the war.

    It’s almost as if context in history is important. The reason that we don’t attack whole cities, if civilised, these days, is that we have the capability not to.

    Much as a surgeon might chop off a leg - back then, it might be the only option. Today it might be criminal incompetence.
  • Options

    ydoethur said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    I would really like to see Buttigieg make a serious run this time around. Time for a new generation of US leaders with some new ideas.
    Although even a new generation of leaders won't solve the problem that their constitutional arrangements are stuck in about the sixteenth century.
    Although one of Buttigieg's campaigns is to end the Electoral College system.
    Electoral Kindergarten more like!
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,315
    edited December 2022

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Isn't doing shit jobs for low pay the point of being a soldier?
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,297
    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,315
    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    He's positively youthful compared to the oldest Senator.
  • Options
    kle4 said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Isn't doing shit jobs for low pay the point of being a soldier?
    Public sector soldiers get high wages and gold-plated pensions.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 34,339
    FPT
    Foxy said:

    Julian Knight has whip removed

    Have MPs always been this dodgy, or do we have a particularly rum crew at the present time?


    The current crop of Tory backbenchers are the ones who thought BoZo would be an excellent PM

    QED
  • Options
    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    Foxy said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    While I quite like Bernie, he is ancient. Time to endorse AOC and pass the radical baton.
    He's barely a year older than young Mr Joe.
    Joe is ancient too!
    Trump will be 78 by November 2024.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,524
    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

    The mistake that gets made is saying that bombing “only reduced GDP by x%”

    Turnips and Tiger tanks can’t be substitute easily. Strangely the Allies tried to bomb Tiger tank factories, not turnip fields.

    It is quite informative to read the history from the other angle - from late 1943, nearly all German military production was hit by bombing effects.

    The belief that all Bomber Command did was firebomb cities is simply wrong.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,315
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Armed Forces should not be used as scab labour. The Unions have arranged emergency cover to continue.
    "Scab labour"

    That's a term that denigrates those who use it, not those whom it is meant to refer to.
    It doesn't sound as if the armed forces are keen to be scab labour over Christmas either. Indeed it sounds as if Wallace is a bit pissed off.

    Using the forces in case of floods or pandemics is one thing, intervening in industrial disputes is another.
    Is it? The government uses what resources it has to hand as contingencies. Not saying it's good but I don't see the distinction.
  • Options
    ChrisChris Posts: 11,371
    edited December 2022
    Sean_F said:

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

    That word has now achieved the unique status of "never to be pronounced under a circumstances whatsoever", unless spelled with a 'a'.
  • Options
    M45M45 Posts: 216
    Sean_F said:

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

    Politically impossible these days. You would lose a job in US academia and for all I know UK just for saying in quotes that "the dog in the film was called ******." And the times may not be much of an excuse; racism was offensive in wartime (with English pubs objecting to attempts to impose colour bars) and in 1955 when the film was made.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,994
    Scott_xP said:

    FPT

    Foxy said:

    Julian Knight has whip removed

    Have MPs always been this dodgy, or do we have a particularly rum crew at the present time?


    The current crop of Tory backbenchers are the ones who thought BoZo would be an excellent PM

    QED
    Then removed him in July despite the fact Johnson polled then far higher than Truss did and proved a much more capable PM than she did and also polled higher than Sunak is now
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,315
    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Ooh, how edgy.
  • Options
    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Are there any other war films where the protagonist's pet is even mentioned? Just leave it out completely (and yes, there is the related codeword). Dambusters is an odd film in that it is really two quite separate stories jammed together.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,994
    edited December 2022

    kle4 said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Isn't doing shit jobs for low pay the point of being a soldier?
    Public sector soldiers get high wages and gold-plated pensions.
    They don't actually soldiers in the ranks who are not officers get paid well below the public sector average and don't get as good a pension either unless they joined before 2015 and were on the final salary scheme.

    Though they do get accommodation, though only in barracks
  • Options
    Chris said:

    Sean_F said:

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

    That word has now achieved the unique status of "never to be pronounced under a circumstances whatsoever", unless spelled with a 'a'.
    "Trainingstag" mit Denzel Washington :lol:
  • Options
    Who could have predicted that the government giving 10%+ rises to pensioners and 3-5% to public sector workers might have caused problems in a cost of living crisis?
  • Options

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

    The mistake that gets made is saying that bombing “only reduced GDP by x%”

    Turnips and Tiger tanks can’t be substitute easily. Strangely the Allies tried to bomb Tiger tank factories, not turnip fields.

    It is quite informative to read the history from the other angle - from late 1943, nearly all German military production was hit by bombing effects.

    The belief that all Bomber Command did was firebomb cities is simply wrong.
    Not to mention that bombing raids were as close as we could get to a second front to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union.
  • Options

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    It’s very simple - if you treat employees badly enough for long enough they will do one of three things: quit, strike or lose all motivation. Making people less free, as the government is now proposing, will not change any of this, especially when there is a glut of jobs available.

    The problem in the UK is not that millions of ordinary men and women are trade union militants, it’s that we have a group of employers in the public and private sectors whose venality, complacency and downright incompetence make them unfit to hold the roles they do. Until that changes, we will all lose out.

  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,994
    edited December 2022

    Who could have predicted that the government giving 10%+ rises to pensioners and 3-5% to public sector workers might have caused problems in a cost of living crisis?

    Nurses don't want 10% they want 17%, the RMT want 11%, Royal Mail workers rejected 9%. The average worker is only getting 6%.

    Benefits also going up by 10% as is the minimum wage but none above inflation and state pensioners with no significant private pension and the unemployed and those on minimum wage earn far less than the average worker whether in the public or private sector
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 68,306
    edited December 2022

    Chris said:

    Nice to see the Peruvian ersatz version of Trump almost immediately detained by the police after attempting to dissolve Congress, while reportedly trying to flee to Mexico.

    He has proved to be an utter twat in nearly every dimension. Even by the standards of Peruvian politics. Where Lizz Truss would be a genius who towered over the tiny, tiny clowns around her.
    It's somewhat ironic to reflect that what's happened is roughly the plot of Servant of the People, and might well have been the fate of Volodymyr Zelensky himself given his situation twelve months ago.

    If Putin hadn't been so stupid as to invade Ukraine...
  • Options

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    It’s very simple - if you treat employees badly enough for long enough they will do one of three things: quit, strike or lose all motivation. Making people less free, as the government is now proposing, will not change any of this, especially when there is a glut of jobs available.

    The problem in the UK is not that millions of ordinary men and women are trade union militants, it’s that we have a group of employers in the public and private sectors whose venality, complacency and downright incompetence make them unfit to hold the roles they do. Until that changes, we will all lose out.

    People, especially politicians but also people generally, are way too tied up in ideology rather than pragmatism.

    Sound management of public sector pay and restricting pay rises is usually a good thing. But not when we can't recruit or retain staff, when workers are relying on food banks and we have millions waiting for operations.

    Sometimes a government just simply needs to accept that pay will have to rise faster than they want or expected it to. Today is such a time but the government is too wedded to their ideology of controlling and restricting wage growth.
  • Options
    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,295
    kle4 said:

    Army fury as soldiers told to give up their Christmas to cover striking workers
    'Not right’ to expect Armed Forces personnel to fill in for people in public sector who earn more than them, say senior military figures

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/07/army-fury-soldiers-told-give-christmas-cover-striking-workers/ (£££)

    Isn't doing shit jobs for low pay the point of being a soldier?
    I've never seen such bollocks. Everybody knows you're signing up to do shit things (scabbing, bludgeoning an Iraqi teenager with a shovel, flying a C-130, etc.) at no notice and at great detriment to your personal life.

    I got sent (back) to Iraq on the 23rd December when I was on leave. 'Merry Christmas' said the chortling voice from Yeovilton on the end of the phone.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,880

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

    The mistake that gets made is saying that bombing “only reduced GDP by x%”

    Turnips and Tiger tanks can’t be substitute easily. Strangely the Allies tried to bomb Tiger tank factories, not turnip fields.

    It is quite informative to read the history from the other angle - from late 1943, nearly all German military production was hit by bombing effects.

    The belief that all Bomber Command did was firebomb cities is simply wrong.
    The other belief that seems widespread is that Dresden was an outlier. It wasn't. Harris wanted to destroy ALL German cities in this way (see also Hamburg). It was just that on most occasions it didn't work quite as well. Harris wanted to win the war from the air, without a single British soldier needing to fight on the beaches and through to Berlin. Its fine to be squeamish/horrified/whatever about civilian deaths. But the context of the holocaust and a war of annihilation in Eastern Europe is key to this. The Germans captured millions of Russian soldiers - how many do you think made it home again? How many people died in the holocaust?

    And someone on here that I respect equates Chastise with what Putin's army is doing in Ukraine? Unbelievable.

    BTW - I note that the latest BBC radio reports have stopped calling 617 'infamous'. I suspect complaints have been made.
  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    Who could have predicted that the government giving 10%+ rises to pensioners and 3-5% to public sector workers might have caused problems in a cost of living crisis?

    Nurses don't want 10% they want 17%, the RMT want 11%, Royal Mail workers rejected 9%. The average worker is only getting 6%.

    Benefits also going up by 10% as is the minimum wage but none above inflation and state pensioners with no significant private pension and the unemployed and those on minimum wage earn far less than the average worker whether in the public or private sector
    Well, if you can convince the public sector to work at those rates (you clearly can't) then fine. But if not your party will be held accountable for the complete failure to deliver the services it is supposed to.
  • Options
    Lovely to see unity of thought among the non dirty commie train drivers.


  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,880

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Are there any other war films where the protagonist's pet is even mentioned? Just leave it out completely (and yes, there is the related codeword). Dambusters is an odd film in that it is really two quite separate stories jammed together.
    The dog was an element of the story, partly because of its death before the raid. I worry that we have become a society that cannot handle the fact that things in the past were different.
  • Options
    M45M45 Posts: 216

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

    The mistake that gets made is saying that bombing “only reduced GDP by x%”

    Turnips and Tiger tanks can’t be substitute easily. Strangely the Allies tried to bomb Tiger tank factories, not turnip fields.

    It is quite informative to read the history from the other angle - from late 1943, nearly all German military production was hit by bombing effects.

    The belief that all Bomber Command did was firebomb cities is simply wrong.
    The other belief that seems widespread is that Dresden was an outlier. It wasn't. Harris wanted to destroy ALL German cities in this way (see also Hamburg). It was just that on most occasions it didn't work quite as well. Harris wanted to win the war from the air, without a single British soldier needing to fight on the beaches and through to Berlin. Its fine to be squeamish/horrified/whatever about civilian deaths. But the context of the holocaust and a war of annihilation in Eastern Europe is key to this. The Germans captured millions of Russian soldiers - how many do you think made it home again? How many people died in the holocaust?

    And someone on here that I respect equates Chastise with what Putin's army is doing in Ukraine? Unbelievable.

    BTW - I note that the latest BBC radio reports have stopped calling 617 'infamous'. I suspect complaints have been made.
    It may be language drift, if you Google infamous you find people asking if it means famous. Cf fulsome, refute etc
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,797

    ydoethur said:

    Good luck with Pete Buttigieg. Is Bernie Sanders running again as a Dem spoiler, and if not, who inherits his wing of the party?

    I would really like to see Buttigieg make a serious run this time around. Time for a new generation of US leaders with some new ideas.
    Although even a new generation of leaders won't solve the problem that their constitutional arrangements are stuck in about the sixteenth century.
    Although one of Buttigieg's campaigns is to end the Electoral College system.
    Constitutional amendment, however minor, is now virtually an impossibility in the US given the 2/3 requirement for it and the 50/50 divisions of politics there. For roughly a century amendments to the US Constitution used to happen relatively regularly, on average one a decade or two since the 13th in 1865, until 1971. Since then there’s been only one, the 27th, ratified in 1992, after having been first proposed in 1789. And it’s not as if one or two bits don’t need, at the very least, clarification.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,297
    Chris said:

    Sean_F said:

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

    That word has now achieved the unique status of "never to be pronounced under a circumstances
    whatsoever", unless spelled with a 'a'.
    It’s become like Voldemort.

    There was an excellent US civil war film called Ride with the Devil which fared badly, due to its liberal use of that word, despite the fact that Southern guerillas would have used it as routine.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,880
    M45 said:

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    Those power plants and that infrastructure were being used to wage a war of aggression that later became a war of extermination.

    Ukraine was not trying to invade Russia or kill Russians.

    Germany had to be stopped, and it couldn't be
    stopped using clean methods precisely because it was so brutal. It is hard to make the same argument for Ukraine.
    I’m just reading The End by Ian Kershaw. It seems plain that the bombing, by late 1944, was severely degrading Germany’s capacity to wage war.

    The mistake that gets made is saying that bombing “only reduced GDP by x%”

    Turnips and Tiger tanks can’t be substitute easily. Strangely the Allies tried to bomb Tiger tank factories, not turnip fields.

    It is quite informative to read the history from the other angle - from late 1943, nearly all German military production was hit by bombing effects.

    The belief that all Bomber Command did was firebomb cities is simply wrong.
    The other belief that seems widespread is that Dresden was an outlier. It wasn't. Harris wanted to destroy ALL German cities in this way (see also Hamburg). It was just that on most occasions it didn't work quite as well. Harris wanted to win the war from the air, without a single British soldier needing to fight on the beaches and through to Berlin. Its fine to be squeamish/horrified/whatever about civilian deaths. But the context of the holocaust and a war of annihilation in Eastern Europe is key to this. The Germans captured millions of Russian soldiers - how many do you think made it home again? How many people died in the holocaust?

    And someone on here that I respect equates Chastise with what Putin's army is doing in Ukraine? Unbelievable.

    BTW - I note that the latest BBC radio reports have stopped calling 617 'infamous'. I suspect complaints have been made.
    It may be language drift, if you Google infamous you find people asking if it means famous. Cf fulsome, refute etc
    Langauge drift for people in the street. Not the national broadcaster please. As I note above, they have stopped doing it now.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,797
    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    As hot takes go that last paragraph takes some beating. Wow.
  • Options
    Highly unusual and unpopular to have a late sitting on contentious legislation before Christmas recess at this stage of parliament’s term. Someone somewhere is very keen to get this done and over. A lot of pressure for a small administrative change…

    https://twitter.com/JennyMarra/status/1600157986118598657

    That someone is @NicolaSturgeon who can’t risk the political fallout from her Finance Secretary voting against the GRR bill. From 4 January MSPs have a proxy vote. They can therefore vote whether they are in Holyrood or not. Nicola must now get her bill through before Christmas.
    https://twitter.com/JennyMarra/status/1600558243772010496
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,880
    DougSeal said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and terrorist.
    As hot takes go that last paragraph takes some beating. Wow.
    Yep. I respect the poster a lot, but that is a craven pathetic interpretation of the world.
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,855
    M45 said:

    Sean_F said:

    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Rewriting history as they did with

    BBC reporting the death of Johnnie Johnson. They keep calling 617 squadron ‘infamous’. WTAF? Famous, surely? Infamous implies something else, to my ears at least. What are they trying to say?

    Damn the BBC.

    Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lived in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer in the 617 Squadron, which destroyed key damns in the industrial heartland of Germany in World War Two.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-63899393
    They are re-writing history just as they did with Guy Gibson's dog.
    Winston realised he had always loved Big Brother....and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

    Another good reason to end the license tax.

    Recent versions of the Dambusters films have cut the scenes of workers (many presumably forced labour) drowning in the factories after the dams burst.

    Interesting how times have changed. When our brave boys bomb water infrastructure and power plants they are heroes. When Putin does the same in Ukraine , he is a war criminal and
    terrorist.
    And it’s wrong to cut those scenes. History should not be sanitised, and it should be made plain that innocents die in war.

    As to the distinction between then and now, Nazi Germany was the aggressor. Ukraine is not.

    Agree. How do you feel about the name of the dog? Not critical to the story so could argue it is right to change it. On balance however I feel it should not have been edited but simply a warning
    about 'the times' be made before being aired as I have seen on other broadcasts.
    Keep it in, but add a warning.

    Politically impossible these days. You would lose a job in US academia and for all I know UK just for saying in quotes that "the dog in the film was called ******." And the times may not be much of an excuse; racism was offensive in wartime (with English pubs objecting to attempts to impose colour bars) and in 1955 when the film was made.
    I'm not suggesting racism wasn't offensive in WWII and when the film was made, but the dogs name was fact and when the film was made it was possible to use the word so it should be left in and a warning given. We shouldn't edit history (although I have no idea how accurate the film is).
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