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Starmer is expected to be better than Johnson et al – politicalbetting.com

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  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,374

    P

    A

    Donkeys said:

    Sandpit said:

    Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/police-threaten-jewish-man-arrest-palestine-protest-london/

    That is absolutely effing appalling. I can't believe I'd ever see anything like that in this country.

    Enough. This has to stop - and whatever you think about what's happening in Gaza (which has no relevance to the question) - it is time we all came together to oppose this upsurge in antisemitism in our own country.
    No. The dividing line should be accepted to be about Gaza. Here it is:

    Goodies: those who support the Palestinians against genocide, which includes many Jews.

    Baddies: those who support genocide against the Palestinians, which also includes many Jews.

    Jews aren't the issue. The Jewish supremacist regime that's carrying out the genocide is certainly the issue.

    You won't like this, @ThomasNashe, but the above way of looking at things directly implies "Don't hassle anyone for being Jewish".

    Of the Jews who support the Palestinians and oppose the existence of the supremacist regime, some organise putting their Jewish heritage up front, including some who are religious, some don't. All are welcome. See Neturei Karta for a religious group that, the last I heard, supported the IRM ("Hamas").
    Being Jewish very much is the issue as far as the Met is concerned. The message is if you’re Jewish don’t come into London when there is a demo happening.
    The police were unequivocally wrong to threaten arrest. However its not don't come into London, its dont try and walk through barracades to cross the street where people are marching. It would be the same if someone was trying to cross the street through barracades during the London marathon on Sunday.
    He said ‘you’re obviously Jewish’. That was the problem as far as plod was concerned. As I said effing appalling.
    During the latter stages of the Peace Process (TM) there was an issue with a school. A Catholic Primary School was located such that the way to school was down a road next to a Protestant area.

    Being offensively Catholic in front of Protestants put off the locals. Who threw things and shouted crap. There was full on rioting as well…

    The Police didn’t arrest the Catholic parents and their children for being Catholic in a built up area. Or for stepping on cracks in the pavement.

    They lined the road with armoured Land Rovers to form a protective wall. Then, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, in dress uniform*, led the group of parents and children to the school.

    Because, as he put it, “they were exercising their right to walk upon the Queens highway”

    That’s the stuff I pay my taxes for.

    *other ranks wore full riot gear, including fireproof boiler suits.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_dispute

    This? No mention of the dress uniform...
    It was rather famous at the time, in NI.

    The Chief Constable leading the walk was a big item in the news.

    Something to remember about Wikipedia - because it is community edited, you get pages taken over by partisans of one side or another. For NI, I would always recommend getting information elsewhere - at least additionally.
    I was hoping to find a photo. Perhaps I'll have another try later.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    Times Radio on Youtube:

    "In 1770, British explorer James Cook made a significant discovery during his voyage in the Pacific Ocean. What notable landmass did Captain Cook first sight during this expedition?"

    The options:
    Hawaii
    New Zealand
    Tahaiti
    Australia.

    They think the correct answer is Australia...

    According to wiki Captain Cook on his first Pacific voyage sighted

    Tahiti - April 1769
    New Zealand - October 1769
    Australia - April 1770

    Do agree the question is poorly written, as the ACTUAL question asked does NOT mention "1770" though the leadup does.
    Australia was discovered by the Dutch. Cook discovered the eastern/northeastern coast; but they knew *something* was in that rough area. So he did "first sight" Australia's eastern coast, but he did not discover Australia. A badly-written question, even leaving aside the existence of indigenous Australians.

    https://www.nla.gov.au/faq/who-was-the-first-european-to-land-on-australia#
    The (we agree badly drafted) question does NOT say that Cook was first to sight Australian landmass, rather that it was in 1770 and/or on his (first) expedition that HE first sighted it.

    Sadly more and more journos have less-than-adequate command of the English language. And certainly NOT confined to BBC; for example the contents of The Seattle Times are increasingly quasi-incomprehensible.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,459
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    The Broccolis have total control over the Bond process and don't have to satisfy anyone but themselves. I think the delay is more their advancing age and lack of an obvious candidate, although I do like the ATJ rumours
    I think there are pressures in today's Hollywood that influence everything. I'm not suggesting that you couldn't possibly make a good film of the Bond type, but I do think it's very difficult.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    They don't work at desks. They weep. They sit at their desks weeping about the terribe fate of saintly career criminals on Fentanyl, for hour after hour, then sometimes they go and hug a perplexed genderqueer to show allyship, then they go home and worry if they said "noblesse oblige" and they weep all over again. And thus Britain is secured, by their brave and silent work
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    They don't work at desks. They weep. They sit at their desks weeping about the terribe fate of saintly career criminals on Fentanyl, for hour after hour, then sometimes they go and hug a perplexed genderqueer to show allyship, then they go home and worry if they said "noblesse oblige" and they weep all over again. And thus Britain is secured, by their brave and silent work
    Don’t forget the annual “I Spied for Pride” where the staff of GCHQ have their float and rainbow balaclavas at the Cheltenham pride festival. It’s really nice.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,374
    I can recommend A Bird In Winter by Louise Doughty if anyone is looking for a book to read.

    I didn't think the book was particularly woke, but then perhaps I've been so captured that I wouldn't have noticed if it was. The other book of hers that I've read, Platform Seven, was also really good.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    Let us not forget that one reason the Manchester Arena Bomber got through is because people were worried about being "racist"

    "Security guard avoided Manchester Arena bomber 'for fear of being called racist'

    Kyle Lawler had a ‘bad feeling’ about Salman Abedi but ‘did not have anything to justify that’"

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/27/security-guard-avoided-manchester-arena-bomber-for-fear-of-being-called-racist

    So this Woke shit has real and lethal consequences, and if it has completely poisoned our intelligence services that could be catastrophic. Will they feel comfortable investigating Muslim suspects? Or will they constantly be quizzing themselves over their white privilege and intrinsic racism and avoiding such difficult things? Who will want to be seen as KEEN to investigate Islamists, and thereby look a bit racist in an office where everyone is meditating on George Floyd and worrying about subconscious bias?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,625

    I sometimes wonder if the James Bond mythology has been an advantage to Britain's security services, or a millstone around their neck.

    I can't think why it should have affected them at all.
    People assuming that joining the security services involved sleeping with loads of women and shooting people.

    Instead of travelling the enemy's country to study the spires of cathedrals...
    Sources for anyone assuming that... ?
    Various; including books (David Nott's was one, from memory) and one personal acquaintance.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,792

    I sometimes wonder if the James Bond mythology has been an advantage to Britain's security services, or a millstone around their neck.

    I guess it depends if you're a boozy gambler or a desk-jockey.

    Or worse, working from home.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,664
    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    They do indeed, and they have to manage and collecitvely are responsible for a few people doing scary shit for us in places that aren’t nice so if the people in the not nice place need help they don’t need a lecture on crap and to be worried about saying and doing the “right things” from someone at a nice safe desk in Cheltenham or London.
    Do you really think MI6 assassins working undercover in Belarus are the focus of this training?

    Moreover does Britain’s, and the US’s, recent stellar success in intelligence not give the lie to this old (largely Russian propaganda) trope about woke decadent westerners being overwhelmed by macho musclemen from the Eastern bloc? It’s all a bit 1950s.

    I imagine some of our best operatives are somewhat “diverse”. Hard to go undercover in Niger if you’re a proud white Britain First marcher.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,664
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    edited April 19

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,664
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.

    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    Somebody seems to be reaching a Wokestacy Frenzy, that's clear.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,625
    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    IMO a significant issue is that, traditionally, the security services have recruited from far too narrow a pool, and this is a detriment to their work. All the Cambridge spies had vaguely similar backgrounds (obviously...). This harms their work, and they need to broaden their workforce away from upper-class, or upper-middle class university-educated men. And that means people who are not in that narrow band need to think: "they could employ me..." instead of: "my face won't fit."

    But there's a narrow line between that and going too far.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405
    Leon said:

    Times Radio on Youtube:

    "In 1770, British explorer James Cook made a significant discovery during his voyage in the Pacific Ocean. What notable landmass did Captain Cook first sight during this expedition?"

    The options:
    Hawaii
    New Zealand
    Tahaiti
    Australia.

    They think the correct answer is Australia...

    According to wiki Captain Cook on his first Pacific voyage sighted

    Tahiti - April 1769
    New Zealand - October 1769
    Australia - April 1770

    Do agree the question is poorly written, as the ACTUAL question asked does NOT mention "1770" though the leadup does.
    Australia was discovered by the Dutch. Cook discovered the eastern/northeastern coast; but they knew *something* was in that rough area. So he did "first sight" Australia's eastern coast, but he did not discover Australia. A badly-written question, even leaving aside the existence of indigenous Australians.

    https://www.nla.gov.au/faq/who-was-the-first-european-to-land-on-australia#
    It was "discovered" long before the Dutch by Muslim and Indonesian sailors trading sea cucumbers. They are depicted in the rock art of Arnhemland
    Who were themselves trading with the real discoverers of Australia.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306

    P

    A

    Donkeys said:

    Sandpit said:

    Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/police-threaten-jewish-man-arrest-palestine-protest-london/

    That is absolutely effing appalling. I can't believe I'd ever see anything like that in this country.

    Enough. This has to stop - and whatever you think about what's happening in Gaza (which has no relevance to the question) - it is time we all came together to oppose this upsurge in antisemitism in our own country.
    No. The dividing line should be accepted to be about Gaza. Here it is:

    Goodies: those who support the Palestinians against genocide, which includes many Jews.

    Baddies: those who support genocide against the Palestinians, which also includes many Jews.

    Jews aren't the issue. The Jewish supremacist regime that's carrying out the genocide is certainly the issue.

    You won't like this, @ThomasNashe, but the above way of looking at things directly implies "Don't hassle anyone for being Jewish".

    Of the Jews who support the Palestinians and oppose the existence of the supremacist regime, some organise putting their Jewish heritage up front, including some who are religious, some don't. All are welcome. See Neturei Karta for a religious group that, the last I heard, supported the IRM ("Hamas").
    Being Jewish very much is the issue as far as the Met is concerned. The message is if you’re Jewish don’t come into London when there is a demo happening.
    The police were unequivocally wrong to threaten arrest. However its not don't come into London, its dont try and walk through barracades to cross the street where people are marching. It would be the same if someone was trying to cross the street through barracades during the London marathon on Sunday.
    He said ‘you’re obviously Jewish’. That was the problem as far as plod was concerned. As I said effing appalling.
    During the latter stages of the Peace Process (TM) there was an issue with a school. A Catholic Primary School was located such that the way to school was down a road next to a Protestant area.

    Being offensively Catholic in front of Protestants put off the locals. Who threw things and shouted crap. There was full on rioting as well…

    The Police didn’t arrest the Catholic parents and their children for being Catholic in a built up area. Or for stepping on cracks in the pavement.

    They lined the road with armoured Land Rovers to form a protective wall. Then, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, in dress uniform*, led the group of parents and children to the school.

    Because, as he put it, “they were exercising their right to walk upon the Queens highway”

    That’s the stuff I pay my taxes for.

    *other ranks wore full riot gear, including fireproof boiler suits.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_dispute

    This? No mention of the dress uniform...
    It was rather famous at the time, in NI.

    The Chief Constable leading the walk was a big item in the news.

    Something to remember about Wikipedia - because it is community edited, you get pages taken over by partisans of one side or another. For NI, I would always recommend getting information elsewhere - at least additionally.
    I was hoping to find a photo. Perhaps I'll have another try later.
    I was trying for a video. The BBC covered it. The reporters was a bit gobsmacked by the vehemence with which the Chief Constable rejected a “compromise” and the Queens highway thing.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    TimS said:

    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.

    Stop dismissing it. You are too intelligent for that. It is genuinely disturbing, for the reasons @darkage articulately explains
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,852
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    edited April 19

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    IMO a significant issue is that, traditionally, the security services have recruited from far too narrow a pool, and this is a detriment to their work. All the Cambridge spies had vaguely similar backgrounds (obviously...). This harms their work, and they need to broaden their workforce away from upper-class, or upper-middle class university-educated men. And that means people who are not in that narrow band need to think: "they could employ me..." instead of: "my face won't fit."

    But there's a narrow line between that and going too far.
    Absolutely. Many moons ago I got “the letter” while at university. Because, essentially, I ticked certain boxes, was at the right college and had done well in Civil Service entrance exams.

    I’d have been a shit spy. For a start I’m hopeless at keeping secrets, and an eye for detail was never my strong point.

    Though I do wish in hindsight I’d at least followed up with the interviews. For dining out opportunities if nothing else. I got half way through filling out the deeply personal questionnaire and decided I couldn’t be bothered.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,099
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    Somewhere in leafy Hampstead, the neighbours are puzzled by screams of "Woke!", "AI!", "Woke!", "AI!" "Aargh!", before the sounds of tissues being pulled from the box...😀.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,867

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    TimS said:

    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.

    It’s fun for a Friday night though.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.

    Stop dismissing it. You are too intelligent for that. It is genuinely disturbing, for the reasons @darkage articulately explains
    We all raise our eyebrows at excessive wokery (which my autocorrect just rewrote as winery). I just don’t manage to get the existential angst from it, because I’ve seen and experienced corporate I&D training and it’s generally got its heart in the right place.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    TimS said:

    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.

    The 'source material' is a bit unclear. But bias in the civil service is a massive problem.

    Not wanting to trigger another outrage loop but this was shocking.

    https://talk.tv/top-stories/42926/douglas-murray-joe-rogan-hamas-israel-government
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    This woke spies story is perfect outrage-bait. It’s the precise equivalent to lefty Twitter discovering a minister had a meeting with a private healthcare company and declaring there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS.

    Stop dismissing it. You are too intelligent for that. It is genuinely disturbing, for the reasons @darkage articulately explains
    We all raise our eyebrows at excessive wokery (which my autocorrect just rewrote as winery). I just don’t manage to get the existential angst from it, because I’ve seen and experienced corporate I&D training and it’s generally got its heart in the right place.
    That's because it hasn't come for you yet. It will
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,919
    This is the whole menu at the little restaurant under my hotel

    I'm having pulpo and pimientos


  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,664
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    The Trump trial self-immolator was calling for a revolution, albeit a woke one. Perhaps we’re in a pre-1789 or pre-1917 era.
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Charlotte Henry
    Why do Lib Dems want to crack down on smoking but legalise cannabis?"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-do-lib-dems-want-to-crack-down-on-smoking-but-legalise-cannabis/

    Quite a good question. I suppose the difference is that tobacco smoking is more harmful than cannabis, although I would have thought there wasn’t a lot of difference which burning vegetable smoke was inhaled.
    I hope the LibDems sort themselves out policy-wise well before the election! I’m still thinking I’ll have to hold my nose and vote for whoever’s got the best chance of beating the Tory.
    Smoking is dumb, and anyone who does it is dumb.

    But dumb and as filthy a habit as it might be, it shouldn't be illegal.

    Prohibition is illiberal and does not work.
    It's not being made illegal.
    Isn't that the policy? That it will be made illegal for any adults under an age.

    That's prohibition. And a pretty stupid form of prohibition.
    No that's not the policy. It will be difficult for people born after 2009 to ever obtain cigarettes but should they manage it they will commit no crime by smoking them.
    So they can only obtain it from criminals who sell it to them breaking the law, but its not prohibition?

    Come again?

    If its legal, it should be sold legally.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348

    This is the whole menu at the little restaurant under my hotel

    I'm having pulpo and pimientos


    Please keep the photos coming. I really enjoy your travelogues. they leaven a sometimes dark mood!

    Also I am genuinely fascinated by the Saint James Way, and have often thought of doing part of it
  • IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    "Woke" can NOT die UNTIL its progenitors, namely Anti-Woke Wack-Jobs (for fun and/or profit) say so.

    Which AIN'T gonna happen until AFTER the upcoming US POTUS and UK GE.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,625
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    They do indeed, and they have to manage and collecitvely are responsible for a few people doing scary shit for us in places that aren’t nice so if the people in the not nice place need help they don’t need a lecture on crap and to be worried about saying and doing the “right things” from someone at a nice safe desk in Cheltenham or London.
    Do you really think MI6 assassins working undercover in Belarus are the focus of this training?

    Moreover does Britain’s, and the US’s, recent stellar success in intelligence not give the lie to this old (largely Russian propaganda) trope about woke decadent westerners being overwhelmed by macho musclemen from the Eastern bloc? It’s all a bit 1950s.

    I imagine some of our best operatives are somewhat “diverse”. Hard to go undercover in Niger if you’re a proud white Britain First marcher.
    What is a 'spy' ? we tend to automatically thing of James Bond or Alex Rider; but the best intelligence officers might be (to use a phrase used below) desk-jockeys who would as likely shoot their own toes off as an enemy in the forehead.

    Is someone working at GCHQ in signals intelligence a spy? Or is a 'spy' only someone who goes undercover? And how well would a 'traditional' spy such as Philby or Paddy Ashdown work undercover in (say) mainland China? Or Pakistan? They would stand out like a sore thumb. How easily can such a person recruit other useful operatives in another opposing country?

    Yes, it could go too far: but it is easy to see how the James Bond machismo stuff could be detrimental to their work. There may be a need for such people, but they would be rare.

    In one of his books, Tom Clancy has Clarke (a sorta spy) say "I never got laid on the job." Although in the same book, an agent undercover gets laid...
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,885
    edited April 19
    Tasman saw what we now know as New Zealand in 1642. His name lives on as does the name of the wife of his patron, Anthony van Diemen. Cape Maria van Diemen is at the very top of the North Island about five miles from Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Friday night: woke spies and the discovery of Australia.

    Saturday morning: Russian troll?

    Sunday (mark my words): Tory plot to depose Sunak
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306
    a

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    The Broccolis have total control over the Bond process and don't have to satisfy anyone but themselves. I think the delay is more their advancing age and lack of an obvious candidate, although I do like the ATJ rumours
    I think there are pressures in today's Hollywood that influence everything. I'm not suggesting that you couldn't possibly make a good film of the Bond type, but I do think it's very difficult.
    There’s a steady stream of B movies in the Bond theme - someone with plot armour using large amounts of violence to take out “the bad guys”
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,867
    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    Any prediction from such a person is therefore essentially worthless.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,099
    edited April 19
    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    There are sixty seconds in a minute. 60 can be divided by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 and 60. Trust you to pick a number that can't be divided evenly into 60.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    edited April 19
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    Any prediction from such a person is therefore essentially worthless.
    THE NECKLACE
  • viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    There are sixty seconds in a minute. 60 can be divided by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 and 60. Trust you to pick a number that can't be divided evenly into 60.
    Though he says 7 times a minute not an hour.

    Just as equally can't be divided neatly into 60, but also means he goes through more opinions in an hour than there are days in a year.

    Which actually sounds about right.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,885
    In case it's not been referenced, we have the monthly Survation poll:

    LAB: 44% (-1)
    CON: 26% (-)
    LDEM: 11% (+1)
    REF: 8% (-1)
    GRN: 4% (-)

    59-34 so in line with other pollsters. Survation seem to poll Reform and Green lower so I imagine they don't prompt for them. Oddly enough, those numbers "smell" about right currently.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306
    TimS said:

    Friday night: woke spies and the discovery of Australia.

    Saturday morning: Russian troll?

    Sunday (mark my words): Tory plot to depose Sunak

    You forgot - plot led by a “Senior MP” who no one has ever heard of.
  • TimS said:

    Friday night: woke spies and the discovery of Australia.

    Saturday morning: Russian troll?

    Sunday (mark my words): Tory plot to depose Sunak

    You forgot - plot led by a “Senior MP” who no one has ever heard of.
    Everyone has heard of Senior MP.

    Senior MP is involved in every media story lately.

    How Senior MP does it, is beyond me. A lot of controversy for one individual.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,099
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    Any prediction from such a person is therefore essentially worthless.
    Or at least time limited to 8 and 4/7ths seconds.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    Or it has simply finally met its antithesis - "right wing woke". I don't think you can look at the EU at the moment and still think 'woke' is any way in an ascendency. The brakes are slammed on and it is all going rapidly going in reverse, only its proponents don't realise it, they are splitting hairs in purity wars.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,559
    stodge said:

    In case it's not been referenced, we have the monthly Survation poll:

    LAB: 44% (-1)
    CON: 26% (-)
    LDEM: 11% (+1)
    REF: 8% (-1)
    GRN: 4% (-)

    59-34 so in line with other pollsters. Survation seem to poll Reform and Green lower so I imagine they don't prompt for them. Oddly enough, those numbers "smell" about right currently.

    The Tories would most likely win about 150-175 seats with numbers like this.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    In case it's not been referenced, we have the monthly Survation poll:

    LAB: 44% (-1)
    CON: 26% (-)
    LDEM: 11% (+1)
    REF: 8% (-1)
    GRN: 4% (-)

    59-34 so in line with other pollsters. Survation seem to poll Reform and Green lower so I imagine they don't prompt for them. Oddly enough, those numbers "smell" about right currently.

    The Tories would most likely win about 150-175 seats with numbers like this.
    Good to see reform plateauing a bit.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,664
    O/T Anyone buying or selling a house at the moment? We are just about to put Pointer Towers on the market and I'm wondering if there is much of a market.

    Agents are telling us it's all picking up again but presumably MRD applies
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,885
    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    In case it's not been referenced, we have the monthly Survation poll:

    LAB: 44% (-1)
    CON: 26% (-)
    LDEM: 11% (+1)
    REF: 8% (-1)
    GRN: 4% (-)

    59-34 so in line with other pollsters. Survation seem to poll Reform and Green lower so I imagine they don't prompt for them. Oddly enough, those numbers "smell" about right currently.

    The Tories would most likely win about 150-175 seats with numbers like this.
    Electoral Calculus says 109 - the Conservative share is nearly five points below 1997 so it's hard to see how they could win a similar number of seats. That in turn boosts the LD total toward 1997 levels - Labour would be 25 above what Blair won in 1997 and an overall majority (assuming no tactical voting) of 238.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,099
    A society that confuses adults with children ends up with adultised children and infantilised adults. My quote, but James Marriott in the Times agrees with me so he is therefore right 😀

    https://x.com/AmandaPCraig/status/1780920713890677069#m
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Vanilla purge time
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,947

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,099
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    Garak is a very good character for Trek - they never turn him into a Good Guy. In The Pale Moon Light and all that.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    Funny, I know a Belgian called Norbert Norman. I used to be his banker a million years ago if he’s still alive.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,957
    edited April 19
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Excellent oysters at Sheekeys. Two dozen natives, Irish, and Fines de Claires. With a friend who, it turns out, is dating someone rather famous

    He's also ex SAS and has friends out in Ukraine and they say Ukraine is going to lose

    **** me, I keep accidentally tuning in to the musings of the love child of William Hickey and Lord Haw Haw.
    It's a trial, isn't it. I'd normally run a mile but here I can't. I'm trapped. We all are.
    I enjoyed your super-insecure and culturally nervous James Joyce joust with @TOPPING, if that's any help?
    Yes well who can blame me. People being snobby and supercilious and obnoxious. Wears you down.
    Man up, Princess.
    Can you fuck off maybe? There's a good boy.
    LOL. Pussy.

    All your fancy pants chat gone in a flash.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,667
    Has the bloke who set himself on fire outside the Trump courtroom fell victim to one of Trumps extra potent farts?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Exhibit A below.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,957
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Sounds good to me.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Exhibit A below.
    Yup, perfect, although Topping is sharp so waited like a panther in the forest to unleash the attack.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,852
    TimS said:

    Vanilla purge time

    Purge: Election Year.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    That fucker @kle4

    Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,957
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Exhibit A below.
    I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,947
    viewcode said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
    If you've ever watched the cartoon series Archer, it leans into the time/era question heavily. Archer dresses like a 1960s lounge lizard, knocks back martinis for breakfast, fights the KGB, yet also has to report in to a 21st century HR department and has access to contemporary tech like mobile phones and cryptocurrency.

    First three or four seasons of Archer are comedy gold, diminishing returns from there.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Exhibit A below.
    Yup, perfect, although Topping is sharp so waited like a panther in the forest to unleash the attack.
    So, other nemesis pairings?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,876
    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    Do we have nemesis here? I can think of one poster I never read because they are an idiot...sure there are some might say the same of me. I wouldn't call (favoured pronoun) a nemesis though just someone where I have never found any worthwhile substance to their posts but plenty of absolute lies
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,852
    stodge said:

    In case it's not been referenced, we have the monthly Survation poll:

    LAB: 44% (-1)
    CON: 26% (-)
    LDEM: 11% (+1)
    REF: 8% (-1)
    GRN: 4% (-)

    59-34 so in line with other pollsters. Survation seem to poll Reform and Green lower so I imagine they don't prompt for them. Oddly enough, those numbers "smell" about right currently.

    Broken, sleazy Labour and Reform on the slide!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,853

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
    It couldn't happen because a) no serious political party would put that in its manifesto and b) the British population wouldn't vote for it.
    Nah, you just promise to "moderate it" and "make it work better" and then in office you basically repeal it in all but name, and fuck the Wokerati
    You might well dream of doing that but fortunately you are never getting elected.
    Not me, but in the end someone will do this. The pendulum always swings

    I remember in the late nineties and noughties being a very lonely eurosceptic, and predicting that if we didn't have a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht or whatever, then in the end the dam would burst and we would end up leaving altogether. I was regarded as a nutter
    "was"??

    (just kiddin'!)
    Leon rewriting history again. Not long before the referendum he (or Sean or whoever he was back then) was a remainer; the day after the referendum he wished he’d been a remainer. Flip flopper throughout
    It didn't vary by day, it varied by hour.

    Before-lagershed or post-lagershed.
    Fuck off. Hour by Hour?

    I can change my mind and mood seven times A MINUTE
    There are sixty seconds in a minute. 60 can be divided by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 and 60. Trust you to pick a number that can't be divided evenly into 60.
    Though he says 7 times a minute not an hour.

    Just as equally can't be divided neatly into 60, but also means he goes through more opinions in an hour than there are days in a year.

    Which actually sounds about right.
    7 times a minute means once every ten seconds ... so 36 times an hour.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,226
    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    Best evidence for that is the poor buggers Vlad sends us to play with every Saturday.

  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,667
    Democrats are panicking after RFK Jr gets on the ballot in Michigan. Great news for President Trump!

    I have a £50 bet with Robert who says Biden will increase his % margin over Trump in Michigan
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,559
    Pet Shop Boys special on BBC4 atm.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    That fucker @kle4

    Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
    There’s me thinking it’d be @Ianb2. But maybe that’s more like a familial quarrel between two very different brothers.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306
    kyf_100 said:

    viewcode said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
    If you've ever watched the cartoon series Archer, it leans into the time/era question heavily. Archer dresses like a 1960s lounge lizard, knocks back martinis for breakfast, fights the KGB, yet also has to report in to a 21st century HR department and has access to contemporary tech like mobile phones and cryptocurrency.

    First three or four seasons of Archer are comedy gold, diminishing returns from there.
    Is this Tactical Turtleneck in black, blacker black or blue black?

    You forgot all the coworkers.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,853

    This is the whole menu at the little restaurant under my hotel

    I'm having pulpo and pimientos


    Ooh, do let us see a pic please. I do like cephalopods for dinner.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    viewcode said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
    Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker

    This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    TOPPING said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.

    In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
    I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
    Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
    Exhibit A below.
    I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
    We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.

    It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.

    So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,667

    Zoë Billingham
    @zoe_billingham_
    Latest
    @BestForBritain
    MRP mega-poll in South Cotswolds:

    🔵 Tories: 34.9%
    🔴 Labour: 29.2%
    🟡 Lib Dem: 19.6%
    🟢 Green: 4.5%

    Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    That fucker kle4

    Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
    It's because you see through my facade.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,559
    Leon said:

    The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity

    The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power

    Either that or let the machines take over

    "Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess
    It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories

    CAMILLA TOMINEY"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/fourteen-years-of-tory-rule-have-left-britain-a-lazy-mess/
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,310
    Sandpit said:

    Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/police-threaten-jewish-man-arrest-palestine-protest-london/

    This is the Met's response.



    Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    That fucker @kle4

    Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
    There’s me thinking it’d be @Ianb2. But maybe that’s more like a familial quarrel between two very different brothers.
    No, I have people that I know I provoke, and I confess I like to do it. @IanB2 and @Heathener are two, I love their anguish, but they are both quite laughable figures - I mean, a guy with a dog as his only friend and literal travel companion? and she hoards warmed water in thermoses when she's not a postwoman writing award-winning books? That's not very scary, TBH

    I occasionally pick on @kinabalu but he seems quite robust, I am surprised he is so emotionally allergic to @TOPPING, but class is at play here

    The only PB-er that really got to me was Liverpudlian Tim, late of this selfsame parish. He was fucking good. He knew how to humiliate me but do it in a funny way so others quietly laughed. That's the worst. But I also admired his elan

    Actually also @JackW also once beat me up quite deftly, in a sort of straightforward way. Gave me a dressing down. But he's gone, sadly
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,306


    Zoë Billingham
    @zoe_billingham_
    Latest
    @BestForBritain
    MRP mega-poll in South Cotswolds:

    🔵 Tories: 34.9%
    🔴 Labour: 29.2%
    🟡 Lib Dem: 19.6%
    🟢 Green: 4.5%

    Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote

    I thought you wanted Sir Kid Starver (Tory) defeated?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
    Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker

    This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
    It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.

    There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,667


    Zoë Billingham
    @zoe_billingham_
    Latest
    @BestForBritain
    MRP mega-poll in South Cotswolds:

    🔵 Tories: 34.9%
    🔴 Labour: 29.2%
    🟡 Lib Dem: 19.6%
    🟢 Green: 4.5%

    Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote

    I thought you wanted Sir Kid Starver (Tory) defeated?
    Are you talking about Labours PPC Zoe Billingham or me?

    We have differing views

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/police-threaten-jewish-man-arrest-palestine-protest-london/

    This is the Met's response.



    Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
    "It's absolutely not the basis on which we make decisions...except it was in this case since it was said, and could be the basis again if we think it is 'provocative'".
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits

    The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
    Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
    Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.

    Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
    See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?

    I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
    Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker

    This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
    It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.

    There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
    It really really really does. They are a massive issue for anyone writing a novel/play/movie which requires danger and mystery, and that is probably most of them

    Imagine Pride and Prejudice with google and the iPhone. Liz Bennett would have the real persona of Darcy cracked in 15 seconds. End of novel
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,348
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    Leon said:

    darkage said:

    TimS said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd

    The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.

    Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of. ;)
    This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.

    We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
    I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
    Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.

    Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.



    That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
    I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
    I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing

    Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
    I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.

    Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
    When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
    We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
    That fucker kle4

    Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
    It's because you see through my facade.
    You do actually possess a latent power. Because you are so unfeasible well-mannered, polite, centrist and reasonable, if you ever came out and got angry, it would be explosive. You could destroy a PB-er with one tart paragraph. Use this power sparingly!
This discussion has been closed.