“Estimates suggest a figure between 800,000 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants residing in the UK as of June 2023. A significant portion, 82%, initially entered the UK legally but overstayed their visas.”
Am I right in thinking that unlike most countries (or blocks as in Schengen) we don't track people in and out of the country? Given how much we spend on border security and available technology that seems a strange quirk.
Yes - it is interesting to see the resistance to counting in/out.
Interesting also that we count out at St Pancras but not at airports.
Thanks RB for an interesting piece. Just one quick question.
If KH is doing better in the Senate races, why is she drifting on Betfair?
Objectively she looks a buy at the current price of 2.14, but I smell a rat.
Wadyatink?
It seems to have tracked the Silver forecasts more than the polls. I would also caution that there is a not insignificant chance Harris "wins" but it still counts as Trump after shenanigans, which is worth a few percent imo. So if I had it 50/50 under a fair election, I would get to something like 1.9 Trump 2.1 Harris.
I'd "forget" about the polls when they are this close and consider three things:
State of the economy especially US stock market How mad can Trump get and will swing voters hear it on their news feeds How much difference can Musk and other social media make if they are all in with Trump
I still don't know the answer but I think those are more important questions than interpretation of latest polling.
I strongly mistrust the desire of the US media to portray every contest as close.
There are a whole slew of indicators around enthusiasm, registration, ballot initiatives and most importantly actual recent election results that have tilted substantially more democratic than prior polls had suggested to indicate this will not be as close as the polls would have us believe.
If Harris doesn’t win PA by >3% I will be very surprised.
I think Harris is currently more likely to win overall without PA than with it by holding Georgia with high African American turnout (and Michigan and Wisconsin and Nevada). Arizona likely switches back to Trump regardless.
Some wealthy suburban voters would have voted for Harris if she had Shapiro on the ticket but will otherwise vote Republican on the economy
I am delayed at Tivat airport. EasyJet to Luton. Possibly a severe delay 🤒
In this situation at what time is it permissible to start downing rajka - the local plum brandy?
For context the locals often have a few shots in the morning. Eg this was our boat at NINE A.M. heading out into Lake Skardar, yesterday
Local plum brandy sounds like the sort of thing you can't guarantee being able to access at a more convenient time, so I would advise taking advantage of any opportunity that presents itself, assuming you don't have to worry about driving in the foreseeable.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
It’s okay, I’ll change the Vanilla settings to stop that happening.
I am delayed at Tivat airport. EasyJet to Luton. Possibly a severe delay 🤒
In this situation at what time is it permissible to start downing rajka - the local plum brandy?
For context the locals often have a few shots in the morning. Eg this was our boat at NINE A.M. heading out into Lake Skardar, yesterday
When you're back at The Forge. How depressing would it be to get a bit tipsy, then have to do an EasyJet flight then an EMR train to STP and then on to home. It's grey and drizzly in London atm. So hold your horses.
re immigrants as someone, if I may say brilliantly, described the stop the boats dynamic on here recently, it is not about the numbers of people - tiny vs those who come by other means. It is about the government needing to show the voters that it is in control of our borders.
The boats are a very visible representation of the lack of control and hence why successive governments spend time and resources to address the problem.
As a service to PB, I have gone back and found the first direct reference to Kari Lake. It was indeed by me. July 2022. Here it is in full
“Last night, idly surfing, I came across the possible first female president of the USA, and, fuck me, she is scary
Her name is Kari Lake, she's a Trumpite running for the Arizona governorship. She's also an ex TV news anchor. Her views are extreme (to me) and often ugly. Yet she has an undeniable charisma and confidence
One thing that might tell against her is her age. She's in her mid 50s and when might she get a run at the White House? But she is good. She actually talks like Trump - identical cadences - yet delivered by an attractive, eloquent woman with presence, it is unsettling as heck
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
I am delayed at Tivat airport. EasyJet to Luton. Possibly a severe delay 🤒
In this situation at what time is it permissible to start downing rajka - the local plum brandy?
For context the locals often have a few shots in the morning. Eg this was our boat at NINE A.M. heading out into Lake Skardar, yesterday
When you're back at The Forge. How depressing would it be to get a bit tipsy, then have to do an EasyJet flight then an EMR train to STP and then on to home. It's grey and drizzly in London atm. So hold your horses.
Fair point. I’ll rein it in for now
If the delay goes over 90 minutes all bets are off
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
Indeed. It is one of the great myths of PB that she was some sort of sage. She was a lonely old woman who had gone down a very weird rabbit hole.
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
The Democratic candidates in the above races are all largely incumbent Senators which gives them an advantage. Remember too Trump gets a personal vote from some white working class voters who otherwise vote Democrat, see his outperformance of the GOP Senate candidate in Michigan in 2020 even if Biden narrowly won the state
I think we can be confident that either the Presidential polls are wrong and underestimating Harris, or the Senate polls are wrong and overestimating these Democrat senatorial candidates, or that both of them are wrong.
I am delayed at Tivat airport. EasyJet to Luton. Possibly a severe delay 🤒
In this situation at what time is it permissible to start downing rajka - the local plum brandy?
For context the locals often have a few shots in the morning. Eg this was our boat at NINE A.M. heading out into Lake Skardar, yesterday
When you're back at The Forge. How depressing would it be to get a bit tipsy, then have to do an EasyJet flight then an EMR train to STP and then on to home. It's grey and drizzly in London atm. So hold your horses.
Didn't the traditional breakfast of the Normandy farmer include a shot or two of Calvados? Seems like quite a good idea, especially if it's wet and cold, and/or you're fed up with hanging about.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
She’s just turned 55. Only 18 months older than Megyn Kelly, that other famous conservative news hottie.
Yes but for some reason Kari Lake needs youth. I don’t know why - but she does
I’ve just been thinking about age and political careers (it’s not that sad, I’m stuck in Kotor traffic)
It’s a complex relationship. Sometimes age works, sometimes youth. Depends on the candidate and the electorate
Take Corbyn. No way would he have got as far as he did if he was younger (at the time). He’d have been seen as a dangerous if eccentric radical. But because he was older = magic grandpa
Equally an old JFK would not have worked either. Just a pervy old man
Isn't sitting in traffic one of the best, most direct and authentic ways of observing and ingesting whatever culture you are in. I don't mean a halting conversation with the taxi driver, I mean looking out of the window at the place just going about its business.
Why drag yourself back to Stockport or restrict yourself to martinis by the pool.
Five things I’m not gonna miss about Montenegro
1. The roads 2. The roads 3. The drivers 4. The traffic 5. The roads
Worst drivers I have ever encountered! What is the thing with accelerating around blind corners halfway up a mountain? And the traffic is a nightmare in Kotor, you can lose hours/days of your life there. You can't bike – because of the drivers, so you are limited to hiking – not easy in the Montenegrin heat. But, away from the cars, a great country. Interesting and fun.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
It's a long time ago, but wasnt everyone convinced that Plato was actually the less well known wife of Mr E Balls?
No. You are confusing her with another poster – Snowflake or some such?
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
Indeed. It is one of the great myths of PB that she was some sort of sage. She was a lonely old woman who had gone down a very weird rabbit hole.
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
I think it is a myth that there was a myth saying she was a sage. I don't recall anyone harping on her advice on events for betting. She was a rather loved, but obviously strange character.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
If you look back on Vanilla to the Monday of 2016 election eve, I asked her if Trump would win and she said she didn't think so. So not a very accurate canary.
We could all spot that Trump had a fan base and the polling. It was her (and Rod Crosby) who didn't just see that fan base but enthusiastically joined it.
Add one of the @WilliamGlenn s to that miserable list.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
She’s just turned 55. Only 18 months older than Megyn Kelly, that other famous conservative news hottie.
Yes but for some reason Kari Lake needs youth. I don’t know why - but she does
I’ve just been thinking about age and political careers (it’s not that sad, I’m stuck in Kotor traffic)
It’s a complex relationship. Sometimes age works, sometimes youth. Depends on the candidate and the electorate
Take Corbyn. No way would he have got as far as he did if he was younger (at the time). He’d have been seen as a dangerous if eccentric radical. But because he was older = magic grandpa
Equally an old JFK would not have worked either. Just a pervy old man
Isn't sitting in traffic one of the best, most direct and authentic ways of observing and ingesting whatever culture you are in. I don't mean a halting conversation with the taxi driver, I mean looking out of the window at the place just going about its business.
Why drag yourself back to Stockport or restrict yourself to martinis by the pool.
Five things I’m not gonna miss about Montenegro
1. The roads 2. The roads 3. The drivers 4. The traffic 5. The roads
Worst drivers I have ever encountered! What is the thing with accelerating around blind corners halfway up a mountain? And the traffic is a nightmare in Kotor, you can lose hours/days of your life there. You can't bike – because of the drivers, so you are limited to hiking – not easy in the Montenegrin heat. But, away from the cars, a great country. Interesting and fun.
When we were in Herceg Novi we took a bus from there to Kotor. It was an experience. Didn't find it any worse than a bus in Zante or Kefallonia to be honest. Although the "bus" we took was a transit van type of thing.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
As a service to PB, I have gone back and found the first direct reference to Kari Lake. It was indeed by me. July 2022. Here it is in full
“Last night, idly surfing, I came across the possible first female president of the USA, and, fuck me, she is scary
Her name is Kari Lake, she's a Trumpite running for the Arizona governorship. She's also an ex TV news anchor. Her views are extreme (to me) and often ugly. Yet she has an undeniable charisma and confidence
One thing that might tell against her is her age. She's in her mid 50s and when might she get a run at the White House? But she is good. She actually talks like Trump - identical cadences - yet delivered by an attractive, eloquent woman with presence, it is unsettling as heck
“Estimates suggest a figure between 800,000 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants residing in the UK as of June 2023. A significant portion, 82%, initially entered the UK legally but overstayed their visas.”
Am I right in thinking that unlike most countries (or blocks as in Schengen) we don't track people in and out of the country? Given how much we spend on border security and available technology that seems a strange quirk.
Yes - it is interesting to see the resistance to counting in/out.
Interesting also that we count out at St Pancras but not at airports.
In theory the airline will have your name and check your passport against the ticket, which they report back to immigration on international flights.
Plenty of wanted people get picked up by police at the airport trying to leave the country, so there’s obviously a system of sorts in place, even if passports don’t get stamped.
“Estimates suggest a figure between 800,000 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants residing in the UK as of June 2023. A significant portion, 82%, initially entered the UK legally but overstayed their visas.”
Am I right in thinking that unlike most countries (or blocks as in Schengen) we don't track people in and out of the country? Given how much we spend on border security and available technology that seems a strange quirk.
Yes - it is interesting to see the resistance to counting in/out.
14 yeats of Tory Home Secs weren't interested in bringing it back.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
She’s just turned 55. Only 18 months older than Megyn Kelly, that other famous conservative news hottie.
Yes but for some reason Kari Lake needs youth. I don’t know why - but she does
I’ve just been thinking about age and political careers (it’s not that sad, I’m stuck in Kotor traffic)
It’s a complex relationship. Sometimes age works, sometimes youth. Depends on the candidate and the electorate
Take Corbyn. No way would he have got as far as he did if he was younger (at the time). He’d have been seen as a dangerous if eccentric radical. But because he was older = magic grandpa
Equally an old JFK would not have worked either. Just a pervy old man
Isn't sitting in traffic one of the best, most direct and authentic ways of observing and ingesting whatever culture you are in. I don't mean a halting conversation with the taxi driver, I mean looking out of the window at the place just going about its business.
Why drag yourself back to Stockport or restrict yourself to martinis by the pool.
Five things I’m not gonna miss about Montenegro
1. The roads 2. The roads 3. The drivers 4. The traffic 5. The roads
Worst drivers I have ever encountered! What is the thing with accelerating around blind corners halfway up a mountain? And the traffic is a nightmare in Kotor, you can lose hours/days of your life there. You can't bike – because of the drivers, so you are limited to hiking – not easy in the Montenegrin heat. But, away from the cars, a great country. Interesting and fun.
Absolutely right. In the end I’ve been reduced to crawling along at 20kph almost anywhere just in case some drunk young farmer comes around the next mountain hairpin in his Yugo at 100kph on entirely the wrong side of the road
My new friend Milos (in that photo) blames it on the Yugos. The cars. He says they are so crap people don’t mind if they get “scratched”
Which is fine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about DYING
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
Indeed. It is one of the great myths of PB that she was some sort of sage. She was a lonely old woman who had gone down a very weird rabbit hole.
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
I think it is a myth that there was a myth saying she was a sage. I don't recall anyone harping on her advice on events for betting. She was a rather loved, but obviously strange character.
Actually, Plato's analysis was part of my rationale for backing Trump. Even though Plato thought Hillary the more likely winner, a 30 per cent likelihood of President Trump made low double figure odds great value.
Plato had, though, as others have said, disappeared down the American alt-right rabbit hole and would repost all sorts of rubbish here from Facebook or Twitter which she clearly had not read or watched herself, or she'd have seen almost all of it was either taken wildly out of context or was straight-up false.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
She’s just turned 55. Only 18 months older than Megyn Kelly, that other famous conservative news hottie.
Yes but for some reason Kari Lake needs youth. I don’t know why - but she does
I’ve just been thinking about age and political careers (it’s not that sad, I’m stuck in Kotor traffic)
It’s a complex relationship. Sometimes age works, sometimes youth. Depends on the candidate and the electorate
Take Corbyn. No way would he have got as far as he did if he was younger (at the time). He’d have been seen as a dangerous if eccentric radical. But because he was older = magic grandpa
Equally an old JFK would not have worked either. Just a pervy old man
Isn't sitting in traffic one of the best, most direct and authentic ways of observing and ingesting whatever culture you are in. I don't mean a halting conversation with the taxi driver, I mean looking out of the window at the place just going about its business.
Why drag yourself back to Stockport or restrict yourself to martinis by the pool.
Five things I’m not gonna miss about Montenegro
1. The roads 2. The roads 3. The drivers 4. The traffic 5. The roads
Worst drivers I have ever encountered! What is the thing with accelerating around blind corners halfway up a mountain? And the traffic is a nightmare in Kotor, you can lose hours/days of your life there. You can't bike – because of the drivers, so you are limited to hiking – not easy in the Montenegrin heat. But, away from the cars, a great country. Interesting and fun.
Absolutely right. In the end I’ve been reduced to crawling along at 20kph almost anywhere just in case some drunk young farmer comes around the next mountain hairpin in his Yugo at 100kph on entirely the wrong side of the road
My new friend Milos (in that photo) blames it on the Yugos. The cars. He says they are so crap people don’t mind if they get “scratched”
Which is fine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about DYING
That and there seems to be this idea that driving with a death wish is some sort of test of masculinity. I drove from Dubrovnik airport. Lovely, easy drive to the border. I had no idea what hell was to greet me on the other side…
“Estimates suggest a figure between 800,000 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants residing in the UK as of June 2023. A significant portion, 82%, initially entered the UK legally but overstayed their visas.”
Am I right in thinking that unlike most countries (or blocks as in Schengen) we don't track people in and out of the country? Given how much we spend on border security and available technology that seems a strange quirk.
Yes - it is interesting to see the resistance to counting in/out.
Interesting also that we count out at St Pancras but not at airports.
In theory the airline will have your name and check your passport against the ticket, which they report back to immigration on international flights.
Plenty of wanted people get picked up by police at the airport trying to leave the country, so there’s obviously a system of sorts in place, even if passports don’t get stamped.
That just shows a valid passport and wanted list. It doesn't show visa status, so overstayers are not flagged up to immigration for next time.
Sur topique bf says I can have 224 now or 670 if kamala wins. Call me timorous and sleekit if you will but we have had two shots at a Kamalagasm, Biden standing down and convention, and it hasn't happened. Unless the debate produces one on Tuesday I think I am out. Too close to call and too much hopecasting involved.
Of course KH is a pretty unknown quantity and not known for skill at unscripted stuff. Non zero chance she has a car crash on Tuesday.
EU lobbyists describe it as watered down, and have their own tougher AI regulation - which suggests this new Treaty is going to be good news for the US and UK. Another Brexit benefit.
Less regulation in not always a good thing, something that should be on our minds in the week of the Grenfell report.
Though for regulation to be effective it has to be both well written and enforced.
The Housing Minister in the Cameron government instituted a grotesquely named as it turned out "bonfire of red tape" in his department. It was a highly politicised campaign, the only effect of which was to remove safety protections. It was one of the factors in the death of 70 people in Grenfell Tower.
The same minister still represents the Conservatives on the House of Lords and told the inquiry to hurry up its questions because he had important people to see.
And people on here will say Starmer has the worst government of their life times.
No regulation is going to account for people lying and fabricating results.
It isn't but that hardly detracts from the despicableness of Eric Pickles playing with the safety of tenants, 70 of whom let us not forget lost their lives, in order to score political points.
And who by the way was also lying to the inquiry about what he was up to
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
Indeed. It is one of the great myths of PB that she was some sort of sage. She was a lonely old woman who had gone down a very weird rabbit hole.
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
I think it is a myth that there was a myth saying she was a sage. I don't recall anyone harping on her advice on events for betting. She was a rather loved, but obviously strange character.
Actually, Plato's analysis was part of my rationale for backing Trump. Even though Plato thought Hillary the more likely winner, a 30 per cent likelihood of President Trump made low double figure odds great value.
Plato had, though, as others have said, disappeared down the American alt-right rabbit hole and would repost all sorts of rubbish here from Facebook or Twitter which she clearly had not read or watched herself, or she'd have seen almost all of it was either taken wildly out of context or was straight-up false.
Her posts introduced me to some of the Alt-right wing posters which I then followed and found very interesting, although bonkers.
The most bizarre discussion for me was the one on news channels falsifying being at events. Whole roads with war going on around in the desert being recreated in studios. The best was a reporter on a boat reporting on an American destroyer going through the Dardanelles Straits and that the boat the reporter was on the bow of was created in a studio and he wasn't there filming the destroyer. Utterly mad.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
More and more like Laurence Fox....... (or indeed Donald Trump Jnr)
He actually said "It is a reality I'm afraid that London, New York, other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things. It means being vigilant, having a police force that is in touch with communities, it means the security services being ready, but also it means exchanging ideas and best practice"
But why miss an opportunity to smear 'dem muslims' ?
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
Brexit checks on fruit and vegetables have been delayed again . This was due to concerns that this would lead to higher inflation and put some companies out of business.
I expect these checks will never see the light of day.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
Indeed. It is one of the great myths of PB that she was some sort of sage. She was a lonely old woman who had gone down a very weird rabbit hole.
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
I think it is a myth that there was a myth saying she was a sage. I don't recall anyone harping on her advice on events for betting. She was a rather loved, but obviously strange character.
Actually, Plato's analysis was part of my rationale for backing Trump. Even though Plato thought Hillary the more likely winner, a 30 per cent likelihood of President Trump made low double figure odds great value.
Plato had, though, as others have said, disappeared down the American alt-right rabbit hole and would repost all sorts of rubbish here from Facebook or Twitter which she clearly had not read or watched herself, or she'd have seen almost all of it was either taken wildly out of context or was straight-up false.
Her posts introduced me to some of the Alt-right wing posters which I then followed and found very interesting, although bonkers.
The most bizarre discussion for me was the one on news channels falsifying being at events. Whole roads with war going on around in the desert being recreated in studios. The best was a reporter on a boat reporting on an American destroyer going through the Dardanelles Straits and that the boat the reporter was on the bow of was created in a studio and he wasn't there filming the destroyer. Utterly mad.
Oh God, I remember that discussion vaguely. Utterly bonkers.
Isnt the US self-sufficient in oil and gas these days?
Yes, but they have enough export capacity that they still pay the global market price for oil and gas. Producers mostly aren't forced to accept a lower price in the US instead of taking a higher price abroad.
West Texas crude has been a couple of dollars lower than world price for a decade as their is a relative glut of oil in USA
Oil is at a 12 month low & all futures are a couple of $ lower
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
More and more like Laurence Fox....... (or indeed Donald Trump Jnr)
He actually said "It is a reality I'm afraid that London, New York, other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things. It means being vigilant, having a police force that is in touch with communities, it means the security services being ready, but also it means exchanging ideas and best practice"
But why miss an opportunity to smear 'dem muslims' ?
Wait. YOU are the one deliberately misquoting him to make him seem better. You just omitted “part and parcel”. Why did you do that?
Khan himself admits he said “part and parcel”. See here
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Which is the best predictor - voting intention or favourability?
Harris is over 9% ahead in favourability (-9.7% Trump, -0.3% Harris) but only 3% ahead in voting intention.
They are interlinked, those favouring a candidate will likely vote for them and the US is 2 party dominated so little tactical voting against a candidate either.
On those numbers Harris has only a 3% higher favourable rating than Trump, matching her popular vote lead. RCP has it even tigher with Harris 1.8% ahead in the national popular vote and ahead 273 to 265 in the EC
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
I’m sitting outside the tiny terminal at Tivat, in their surprisingly nice cafe, staring at the Mediterranean sun in the palms. If I am down a rabbit hole, then I must say it’s rather pleasant, and I have developed a new envy for rabbits
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Lots that can be said about that, but let's just take one:
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
Thanks for posting that interesting triggernometry episode.
I just listened to it.
This bit was brilliant;
Imran Ahmed;
“Don’t, for a second let Elon Musk persuade you that he’s in the game of trying to extend human consciousness, when it comes to twitter. He’s in the game of trying to make some money from advertising, and he’s failed catastrophically at it because he just didn’t peg that its not just about the number of eyeballs. He thought that if I can optimise the number of eyeballs, I can make even more money. If I turn this into an ever moving car crash, he thought, right, it’s a billboard company. I know what? I’ll have car crashes, I’ll put billboards on them, everyone will watch them, Bob’s your uncle, loadsa money!”
It turns out, people don’t want to put money on car crashes, and that’s what twitter has become. I’s become the equivalent of a billboard attached to a slowly unrolling, brutal car crash, in which the rights of thousands of innocent people, women, gay people, jews, muslims, black people are contantly being diminished to amplify the voices of a small fringe of, frankly, lunatics.
Konstantin Kisin;
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The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
This is dependent afaics on a Harris victory at the Election, on Chump being put away thereafter as due process will be able to proceed, and further squeezing.
My photo quota today is a graph of the USA vs the rest of the developed world for firearm homicide rates. Source wiki.
I think that for this to be fixed does require severe restrictions on gun availability, which may potentially be started if we have a Harris administration. I'd say that eventually it will require essentially a complete ban on handguns and semi-automatic and up rifles.
But that the more pernicious problem is the acceptance and toleration of violence as an acceptable tactic in the mass of the population, and that will take 3, 4 or 5 decades to be grown out of the national culture - even with consistent policy.
On a slightly less negative note, there does appear to be a modest drop in USA gun mass killings this year - down to 385 so far (to 5 September) from an annual average of ~620 each year since 2020, after a big jump in Trump's last year as President. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081
(Note that's the no of occasions on which 4 or more people have been killed with guns.)
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Lots that can be said about that, but let's just take one:
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
It's an interesting admission on your part.
Because I get bored easily and I like arguments. Also the site REALLY needs spicing up; I consider it a public service
Looks like another Boris legacy is crumbling to dust. Although in Aus, the shortcomings of AUKUS are being laid firmly at the door of poor old Scott Morrison:
While many people should hang their heads in shame, the principal architect of this monumental folly is Scott Morrison, whose reputation will be deservedly further diminished by the revelations contained in Fowler’s carefully researched volume. One question the book does not address in detail is the abysmal quality of political leadership in this country, especially, though not exclusively, on the conservative side of politics.
Whatever the reasons for this, the end result was that
'the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs but a great gift for secrecy and deception.'
The shift in question was the decision to abandon an agreement to buy much cheaper, arguably far more suitable and deliverable submarines from France, with the aim of “welding Australia’s military to the United States”. In retrospect, it is hard to believe how badly the French were misled, or how shortsighted the rationale for the switch actually was.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
I quite object to people invalidating Plato's life because she became right wing and then died - is it your medical diagnosis that she died of Trumpism? How does that work exactly? For all we know she could have been far happier in later life than she was in her earlier guise.
There's definitely something about how people if they have a weapon, be it a knife or a gun, will use it in a way they wouldn't if they didn't. It changes the fight or flight response. It's a very very dark nudge. Lots of psychotic, disturbed, desperate, aggressive, scared, sadistic or paranoid people would do something different without them.
So whilst it's that guns don't kill people, people kill people, it's that people are far more likely to kill people if they have a gun.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Lots that can be said about that, but let's just take one:
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
It's an interesting admission on your part.
Because I get bored easily and I like arguments. Also the site REALLY needs spicing up; I consider it a public service
Which says much more about your inadequacies than mine.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
It's a long time ago, but wasnt everyone convinced that Plato was actually the less well known wife of Mr E Balls?
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
Plato, the lady who was the canary in the coal mine in 2016, that Plato?
Her final 2016 prediction was that Clinton would win..
It's a long time ago, but wasnt everyone convinced that Plato was actually the less well known wife of Mr E Balls?
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
Ironic that Priti Patel, who introduced Rwanda, was first to be voted out of the leadership race.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Lots that can be said about that, but let's just take one:
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
It's an interesting admission on your part.
Because I get bored easily and I like arguments. Also the site REALLY needs spicing up; I consider it a public service
Which says much more about your inadequacies than mine.
I wouldn’t necessarily dispute that. My profound intolerance - borderline pathological - for boredom, and boring people and places, has led me into some insanely dangerous scrapes. It means I have lot of fun and I’ve got a mighty fund of stories, but others around me have suffered from my restlessness
What can you do? You play the hand you’re dealt, as best you can
I sometimes envy people who like the settled life. It must be restful. But I am simply not Homo domesticus
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
Calvin Robinson is one of Mansfield's more embarrassing exports, though since he was at the St Stephen's House Vicar Factory in Oxford, that makes him a graduate of the University of Oxford, I think. I don't know whether he also has the fake MA .
He's a bit cross because he applied for a Curacy in the Diocese of London, and was not deemed suitable for any of the opportunites.
Having avoided both Robinson and Paula Vennells as Bishop, I'd say that someone in London Diocese is making the correct decisions on bullet-dodging.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
Aye, White-tailed Eagles have been munching on Blue Tits. Avian popcorn.
Afternoon all from the land of Hellas. Talking of crumbling legacies of Boris, something has to give with the Brexit debate. As an example, even my aged Gloucestershire cousins, green wellie types who voted for Brexit, are baffled by the lack of attention paid to it, given that that most of friends are farmers, most of whom now regret their choice. The under-50's in general seem similarly baffled, and there's seems barely any support for it in ahy of the big cities. Something will have to give, such as a vote on returning to the single market, because a very large number of people are not feeling represented, in the current situation.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
I strongly suspect the decline in garden birds is due not to cats or hawks but home owners paving over front gardens, and spraying pesticides around the back. No insects and worms means no bird food means no birds.
Pioneering London Mayor Ken Livingstone showed how this works when he banned pigeon-food sellers from Trafalgar Square, and soon there were no pigeons either.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
We did build them some costly new facilities, so seems a good idea to make use of them.
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
Harris should propose legislation to make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns by others if they fail to secure them.
Clearly it's impossible to ban guns in the US. But it ought to be possible to make gun owners and manufacturers legally obliged to behave responsibly. Which they currently aren't.
Plus mandatory insurance (though this SC would probably rule that unconstitutional.)
Not sure happy is the right word but I am happy to know that if in the UK there was a school shooting and a UK politician response was that it was a fact of life that would be the end of the politician's career.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Islamist terror attacks were just “part and parcel” of living in a big city like London
Presumably his career ended after that?
Actual Khan quote:
“Party and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The phrase “part and parcel” was grotesquely complacent - vis a vis brutal murderous terror attacks. It doesn’t really matter what he said afterwards (tho in fact what he said afterward doesn’t truly exonerate him)
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Leon, you're toying with the rabbit hole. We're used to (and enjoy) the endless stream of frenetic excitement, and appreciate you're testing ideas out before using them in more considered writing.
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Leon is the new Plato. It's a tale we have seen before.
I quite object to people invalidating Plato's life because she became right wing and then died - is it your medical diagnosis that she died of Trumpism? How does that work exactly? For all we know she could have been far happier in later life than she was in her earlier guise.
That is a weird post. What makes you think anyone thinks she died of Trumpism? I also hope she was happy, whatever part of her life she was in. What on earth has that got to do with anything?
People are just comparing @leon to @plato. A comparison I believe that does not hold, but fair enough to make it.
No one is invalidating her life. People are just making the point that she went very strange in her beliefs.
The fact she died is also irrelevant. It is very sad she did so and far too young, but it happens eventually to us all. Again what on earth has that got to do with comments about her very odd posts?
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
Aye, White-tailed Eagles have been munching on Blue Tits. Avian popcorn.
What do you think Sparrowhawks eat numnuts - fish finger sandwiches?
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
I’m afraid this is bollocks. Cats take 50 million wild birds a year in the UK
And as our population has expanded so has the cat population
It really isn’t hard to work out. Cats are extremely effective predators, but of course have no natural predators of their own, as they are kept by selfish wankers as pets, who also feed them: so the cats don’t even have the fear of starvation and they have plenty of energy for relaxed predation, for the lolz
It’s like we decided to introduce 12 million small leopards into the country, and then we act surprised when smaller wildlife weirdly dwindles
On topic - the big issue here is the quality of US polling. It is clear that (oddly) National US polls have a much better record than state polls. We are all in serious danger of a 'Garbage In Garbage Out' scenario.
Why? Turnout. There is evidence from 2016 and 2020 of a tendency to understate Trump turnout. Meanwhile, there is evidence from the only post-SCOTUS/abortion election of a big understating of young and female turnout. Last time out the US had a very big turnout of 66% and the Dems barely won. Can they possibly manage that again?
Meanwhile the recent polls have 10-15% in all battleground states either undecided or not certain. Most of them know all about Trump so it is Harris who they are undecided about. The debate will clearly be very important in this. But - as ever - how those largely younger and female voters break will decide the thing.
Trump has steadied the ship in the last 2 weeks. We are where we were in the run-in to 2016 and 2020 and the US electoral system remains heavily 'weighted' in favour of the Reps.
Good luck folks - working this one out we will need it.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
Calvin Robinson is one of Mansfield's more embarrassing exports, though since he was at the St Stephen's House Vicar Factory in Oxford, that makes him a graduate of the University of Oxford, I think. I don't know whether he also has the fake MA .
He's a bit cross because he applied for a Curacy in the Diocese of London, and was not deemed suitable for any of the opportunites.
Having avoided both Robinson and Paula Vennells as Bishop, I'd say that someone in London Diocese is making the correct decisions on bullet-dodging.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
I find that very difficult to believe. There are no gamekeepers in large parts of the country surely and they aren't protecting the same birds that are in gardens. The only introduced bird of prey, I believe, in my part of the world in the Red Kite and that doesn't take birds generally.
Happy to be proved wrong on this. Do you have any links (other than from the grouse-moor industry).
Looks like another Boris legacy is crumbling to dust. Although in Aus, the shortcomings of AUKUS are being laid firmly at the door of poor old Scott Morrison:
While many people should hang their heads in shame, the principal architect of this monumental folly is Scott Morrison, whose reputation will be deservedly further diminished by the revelations contained in Fowler’s carefully researched volume. One question the book does not address in detail is the abysmal quality of political leadership in this country, especially, though not exclusively, on the conservative side of politics.
Whatever the reasons for this, the end result was that
'the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs but a great gift for secrecy and deception.'
The shift in question was the decision to abandon an agreement to buy much cheaper, arguably far more suitable and deliverable submarines from France, with the aim of “welding Australia’s military to the United States”. In retrospect, it is hard to believe how badly the French were misled, or how shortsighted the rationale for the switch actually was.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
But I am superior to you in intellect and lifestyle. That’s just a fact. Also, you are endearingly easy to wind up
Lots that can be said about that, but let's just take one:
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
It's an interesting admission on your part.
Because I get bored easily and I like arguments. Also the site REALLY needs spicing up; I consider it a public service
Occasionally. More often, recently, it's just boorish.
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Cats have been a fact of British life (thanks J D Vance), for good or ill, for centuries. The recent decline in garden birds has far more to do with the reintroduction of birds of prey, with clampdowns on what gamekeepers can do to eliminate them.
Aye, White-tailed Eagles have been munching on Blue Tits. Avian popcorn.
What do you think Sparrowhawks eat numnuts - fish finger sandwiches?
Pet owners need to grow up and own the truth. If you must have a pet cat or dog, accept what these animals are doing to our wildlife
“Cats kill in excess of 50 million birds each year as well as frogs, slow worms and various small mammals. Given these facts there are a few points to consider if you are thinking of bringing a cat into an area where birdlife is thriving”
Afternoon all from the land of Hellas. Talking of crumbling legacies of Boris, something has to give with the Brexit debate. As an example, even my aged Gloucestershire cousins, green wellie types who voted for Brexit, are baffled by the lack of attention paid to it, given that that most of friends are farmers, most of whom now regret their choice. The under-50's in general seem similarly baffled, and there's seems barely any support for it in ahy of the big cities. Something will have to give, such as a vote on returning to the single market, because a very large number of people are not feeling represented, in the current situation.
Brexit is a flop because David Cameron did not force the pro-Brexiteers to agree its shape before the referendum. This meant everyone could vote for their own, personal, unicorn Brexit, with no-one having a clue how to implement Brexit afterwards or even what they should be working towards. Singapore on Thames? Pro- or anti-immigration? More subsidies? No wonder David Davis had no folder!
It also means even the staunchest advocates of Brexit, like Nigel Farage, can distance themselves on the grounds the government clearly stuffed things up.
Turns out Brexit means Brexit was a slogan, not a policy, as was Take Back Control.
On topic, I hope you're right but I suspect it is down to the roasters the GOP have selected, they keep on picking utter bellends over the last few years for the senate.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Didn't Leon used to rate her ?
Yep. She was the next Trump and going to go all the way to the top iirc.
I spotted her when she was completely unknown, and said: she has charisma and will become a player. No one on PB had even heard of her
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
LOL A bit of selective memory there. You think you spot things before other people. A bit like the pet treatment getting into rivers. It was a great revelation to you and therefore it must be to everyone else on PB whereas it wasn't to quite a few of us and you found it too incredible to be true that others were aware years before you.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
I refer you to my prior reply involving the word “don’t give” and “fuck” and “tiny sperm of a”
I thought (unlike my post which really was a wind up, because I don't think you should get away with this nonsense, but your reply was fair because mine was not an argument, but just a dig for fun) that @Eabhal post was well considered and deserved a sensible reply from you.
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
But PB has been claiming this for a decade. “Ooh you’re turning into Plato” “you’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole”. Blah blah blah it’s so fucking boring
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
Not sure if that reply should have been to me or someone else. I certainly don't think you are turning into Plato and haven't said so.
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
@Leon sees himself as a self-styled 'alpha' male, a spiritual tech-bro who is superior to all of us in intellect and lifestyle. In his own mind, he is a genius who is irresistible to all women. We disagree with him only because we are jealous, because he knows he is right; even when he contradicts himself. His multiple identities on here only exist because his character is so big no one identity could contain it.
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I think you become what you act. (Aristotle?)
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
See also the sad stories of Colditz prisoners who feigned madness as part of their escape plans.
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
Calvin Robinson is one of Mansfield's more embarrassing exports, though since he was at the St Stephen's House Vicar Factory in Oxford, that makes him a graduate of the University of Oxford, I think. I don't know whether he also has the fake MA .
He's a bit cross because he applied for a Curacy in the Diocese of London, and was not deemed suitable for any of the opportunites.
Having avoided both Robinson and Paula Vennells as Bishop, I'd say that someone in London Diocese is making the correct decisions on bullet-dodging.
Calvin Robinson has now left the UK in protest at Starmer's new government and got another job abroad
The German ambassador has confirmed that even if they decide to use Rwanda this will be for processing . This will not be a send them there and leave them there UK policy .
Thought so. A key difference.
lol. Do you think the average British voter is going to think “Ah, yes, the clever Germans have a different policy of sending them to Rwanda compared to our policy of sending them to Rwanda. That’s why theirs has worked and Starmer was right to get rid of ours”
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
***
Actually quite a nice photo. Painterly
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
Afternoon all from the land of Hellas. Talking of crumbling legacies of Boris, something has to give with the Brexit debate. As an example, even my aged Gloucestershire cousins, green wellie types who voted for Brexit, are baffled by the lack of attention paid to it, given that that most of friends are farmers, most of whom now regret their choice. The under-50's in general seem similarly baffled, and there's seems barely any support for it in ahy of the big cities. Something will have to give, such as a vote on returning to the single market, because a very large number of people are not feeling represented, in the current situation.
In the way that they travelled from Section 28 to advocating gay marriage, I can foresee a future Tory leader fronting the campaign to rejoin.
Comments
I am delayed at Tivat airport. EasyJet to Luton. Possibly a severe delay 🤒
In this situation at what time is it permissible to start downing rajka - the local plum brandy?
For context the locals often have a few shots in the morning. Eg this was our boat at NINE A.M. heading out into Lake Skardar, yesterday
I'd "forget" about the polls when they are this close and consider three things:
State of the economy especially US stock market
How mad can Trump get and will swing voters hear it on their news feeds
How much difference can Musk and other social media make if they are all in with Trump
I still don't know the answer but I think those are more important questions than interpretation of latest polling.
Some wealthy suburban voters would have voted for Harris if she had Shapiro on the ticket but will otherwise vote Republican on the economy
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/punish-airport-louts-who-cant-handle-drink/
The boats are a very visible representation of the lack of control and hence why successive governments spend time and resources to address the problem.
“Last night, idly surfing, I came across the possible first female president of the USA, and, fuck me, she is scary
Her name is Kari Lake, she's a Trumpite running for the Arizona governorship. She's also an ex TV news anchor. Her views are extreme (to me) and often ugly. Yet she has an undeniable charisma and confidence
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/how-maga-darling-kari-lake-turned-from-obama-donor-to-a-trump-acolyte-144500805789
Chillingly effective on the podium. A demagogue
One thing that might tell against her is her age. She's in her mid 50s and when might she get a run at the White House? But she is good. She actually talks like Trump - identical cadences - yet delivered by an attractive, eloquent woman with presence, it is unsettling as heck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4uA-jtsGwI
It does feel like you have shifted since you have come back. Obviously the same style is there but @Eabhal comments seem fair. I have noticed that change also. Stuff posted out of context as @TheScreamingEagles picked up. There was the outrageous one the other day where you compared sentencing of two offenders and I thought you made a very good point re the person throwing a lump of concrete at Farage. Then we find out it was wet cement and the point collapses. That type of post is exactly what left and right wing propagandists do. Similarly you have twice in the last few days justified people doing wrong things because other people on the 'other side' do them. That is not logical and a route to anarchy.
I know you enjoy outraging us, but you didn't used to do this.
Magic it is.
I used to have a swig every breakfast time.
If the delay goes over 90 minutes all bets are off
Edit: the delay is nearly FOUR HOURS
FUCKSAKE
*orders rajka*
It was sad to see her descent into obvious mental health problems, which some of us raised at the time.
🤬
Seems like quite a good idea, especially if it's wet and cold, and/or you're fed up with hanging about.
Have a drink and chill.
And still you keep saying it, perhaps even more persistently. But not because I’ve changed - because PB has got ever narrower and crabbier and stupider with only a narrow range of centrist woke dad opinions deemed acceptable (plus trains and housing development regulations) so that anything outside this, from any angle, seems increasingly outrageous and unhinged
The bubble is YOU. It is YOU GUYS. Not I
Perhaps this is inevitable. PB has been around for 20+ years. We’ve all got old. Old people have narrow minds and they are boring
But you know what? I’m not going gentle into that good night. I’m still out here travelling and exploring and welcoming new ideas and new places and new people because I’d die of tedium without them
And the irony after your reply to @noneoftheabove . Pot and kettle comes to mind.
A good banter.
Have a good trip back. Hope you are not delayed too long. It is the one thing I hate about travelling by plane - boredom.
Plenty of wanted people get picked up by police at the airport trying to leave the country, so there’s obviously a system of sorts in place, even if passports don’t get stamped.
My new friend Milos (in that photo) blames it on the Yugos. The cars. He says they are so crap people don’t mind if they get “scratched”
Which is fine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about DYING
However your posts since returning have been different to when you left and it was only about what, 2 weeks or so. Could be wrong, time does fly, so it is easy to see that difference in your posts. Not the style. That is the same, but the content.
Plato had, though, as others have said, disappeared down the American alt-right rabbit hole and would repost all sorts of rubbish here from Facebook or Twitter which she clearly had not read or watched herself, or she'd have seen almost all of it was either taken wildly out of context or was straight-up false.
I don’t believe this is a good sign
Of course KH is a pretty unknown quantity and not known for skill at unscripted stuff. Non zero chance she has a car crash on Tuesday.
And who by the way was also lying to the inquiry about what he was up to
The most bizarre discussion for me was the one on news channels falsifying being at events. Whole roads with war going on around in the desert being recreated in studios. The best was a reporter on a boat reporting on an American destroyer going through the Dardanelles Straits and that the boat the reporter was on the bow of was created in a studio and he wasn't there filming the destroyer. Utterly mad.
Harris is over 9% ahead in favourability (-9.7% Trump, -0.3% Harris) but only 3% ahead in voting intention.
He actually said "It is a reality I'm afraid that London, New York, other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things. It means being vigilant, having a police force that is in touch with communities, it means the security services being ready, but also it means exchanging ideas and best practice"
But why miss an opportunity to smear 'dem muslims' ?
He is possibly the only person in the universe to see himself in that manner, and quite possibly many see him as exactly the opposite; but that's how he sees himself.
If you view all his posts through that perspective, it makes some sense...
I expect these checks will never see the light of day.
Hobson's choice.
Oil is at a 12 month low & all futures are a couple of $ lower
I think Leon originally acted alt-right to stir up controversy, as he like to do, because he's bored. But he's grown into the part and now believes it, unlike the rest of us.
Did the same happen to Plato the PBer?
Khan himself admits he said “part and parcel”. See here
https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/terror-attacks
Why do you deliberately misquote him to make him seem better?
On those numbers Harris has only a 3% higher favourable rating than Trump, matching her popular vote lead. RCP has it even tigher with Harris 1.8% ahead in the national popular vote and ahead 273 to 265 in the EC
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college
F1: in not very shocking news, Bearman will take Magnussen's place for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/bearman-to-replace-banned-magnussen-at-haas-for-azerbaijan-grand.AkCoDVRDHBHPpNdlyqMzv
Or someone like Calvin Robinson who seemed like palusible enough clergy material when he visited the vicar school.
It's probably the fault of liberal centrists, though. By not taking right-wingers seriously, we force them down the rabbit hole. Or something.
Well, I've been pondering the latest Triggernometry episode and I really think Kisin is onto something BIG.
I mean, what if he actually has discovered alchemy?
This changes everything.
Why do you think it is necessary to wind people up? Why do you take pride in winding people up?
It's an interesting admission on your part.
---
@Andy_JS
Thanks for posting that interesting triggernometry episode.
I just listened to it.
This bit was brilliant;
Imran Ahmed;
“Don’t, for a second let Elon Musk persuade you that he’s in the game of trying to extend human consciousness, when it comes to twitter. He’s in the game of trying to make some money from advertising, and he’s failed catastrophically at it because he just didn’t peg that its not just about the number of eyeballs. He thought that if I can optimise the number of eyeballs, I can make even more money. If I turn this into an ever moving car crash, he thought, right, it’s a billboard company. I know what? I’ll have car crashes, I’ll put billboards on them, everyone will watch them, Bob’s your uncle, loadsa money!”
It turns out, people don’t want to put money on car crashes, and that’s what twitter has become. I’s become the equivalent of a billboard attached to a slowly unrolling, brutal car crash, in which the rights of thousands of innocent people, women, gay people, jews, muslims, black people are contantly being diminished to amplify the voices of a small fringe of, frankly, lunatics.
Konstantin Kisin;
“Monetary metals provides a true alternative to saving in fiat currency by making it possible to save - AND EARN – in gold and silver. Monetary metals has been paying interest in gold and silver for over eight years. Right now, accredited investors can earn 12% annual interest on silver, paid in silver in monetary metals latest silver bond offering. For example, if you had a thousand ounces of silver in the deal, you’d receive 120 ounces of silver, interest, paid to your account in the first year. Go to the link in the description, or head to monetarymetals.com/triggernometry to learn more about how to participate and start earning a return on HONEST MONEY, again, with monetary metals.”
About 29 mins in.
https://open.spotify.com/show/1JH26td5UtmKQWHLv0NCZp
Can anyone think of examples of struthiousness in modern British politics?
@susie_dent
Word of the day is ‘struthious’ (18th century): prone to ignoring unwelcome facts and letting a situation worsen without any intervention.
From the Latin for ‘ostrich-like’.
https://x.com/susie_dent/status/1831970082505068736
FPT: This is dependent afaics on a Harris victory at the Election, on Chump being put away thereafter as due process will be able to proceed, and further squeezing.
My photo quota today is a graph of the USA vs the rest of the developed world for firearm homicide rates. Source wiki.
I think that for this to be fixed does require severe restrictions on gun availability, which may potentially be started if we have a Harris administration. I'd say that eventually it will require essentially a complete ban on handguns and semi-automatic and up rifles.
But that the more pernicious problem is the acceptance and toleration of violence as an acceptable tactic in the mass of the population, and that will take 3, 4 or 5 decades to be grown out of the national culture - even with consistent policy.
On a slightly less negative note, there does appear to be a modest drop in USA gun mass killings this year - down to 385 so far (to 5 September) from an annual average of ~620 each year since 2020, after a big jump in Trump's last year as President.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081
(Note that's the no of occasions on which 4 or more people have been killed with guns.)
While many people should hang their heads in shame, the principal architect of this monumental folly is Scott Morrison, whose reputation will be deservedly further diminished by the revelations contained in Fowler’s carefully researched volume. One question the book does not address in detail is the abysmal quality of political leadership in this country, especially, though not exclusively, on the conservative side of politics.
Whatever the reasons for this, the end result was that
'the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs but a great gift for secrecy and deception.'
The shift in question was the decision to abandon an agreement to buy much cheaper, arguably far more suitable and deliverable submarines from France, with the aim of “welding Australia’s military to the United States”. In retrospect, it is hard to believe how badly the French were misled, or how shortsighted the rationale for the switch actually was.
https://theconversation.com/the-aukus-submarine-deal-has-been-exposed-as-a-monumental-folly-is-it-time-to-abandon-ship-236873
If the Germans really do this (I have doubts, they might even need EU agreement I think) and it actually works, that will be disastrous for Starmer. The boats will still be coming, because he scrapped Rwanda
So whilst it's that guns don't kill people, people kill people, it's that people are far more likely to kill people if they have a gun.
Which is the complete opposite meaning to what everyone discussing it is suggesting.
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1831861963187519518
(Also note the edit in the middle of the clip).
AP News have deleted their Tweet with the misleading headline. After 2.5m people viewed it.
https://x.com/stclairashley/status/1831874464755413111
I’m afraid I have become even more anti-cat however. If I have gone down any rabbit hole it is in my sincere loathing for domesticated predators
I was recently in a lovely “eco-camp” on the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It’s an Edenic place, beautiful river, great canoeing, it’s where I nearly died in the rapids, good beer
But their gorgeous al fresco riverside bar and bistro was haunted by about 10 young stray cats, sort of fed and cared for by the staff. A few years ago I would have found them endearing, now I have read the science I kept thinking: fuck, how many tiny birds and wild mammals are these cats devouring. Probably dozens a week, slowly depleting the beautiful forests of all their wildlife
it’s tragic. Once you have the petophobophany, and you understand this, you don’t come back. We need to get rid of all pets, and people that keep pets are - generally, not always - selfish wankers
What can you do? You play the hand you’re dealt, as best you can
I sometimes envy people who like the settled life. It must be restful. But I am simply not Homo domesticus
He's a bit cross because he applied for a Curacy in the Diocese of London, and was not deemed suitable for any of the opportunites.
Having avoided both Robinson and Paula Vennells as Bishop, I'd say that someone in London Diocese is making the correct decisions on bullet-dodging.
FWIW I find neither his nor Khan's phrasing troubling, just blunt.
Talking of crumbling legacies of Boris, something has to give with the Brexit debate.
As an example, even my aged Gloucestershire cousins, green wellie types who voted for Brexit, are baffled by the lack of attention paid to it, given that that most of friends are farmers, most of whom now regret their choice.
The under-50's in general seem similarly baffled, and there's seems barely any support for it in ahy of the big cities.
Something will have to give, such as a vote on returning to the single market, because a very large number of people are not feeling represented, in the current situation.
Pioneering London Mayor Ken Livingstone showed how this works when he banned pigeon-food sellers from Trafalgar Square, and soon there were no pigeons either.
People are just comparing @leon to @plato. A comparison I believe that does not hold, but fair enough to make it.
No one is invalidating her life. People are just making the point that she went very strange in her beliefs.
The fact she died is also irrelevant. It is very sad she did so and far too young, but it happens eventually to us all. Again what on earth has that got to do with comments about her very odd posts?
And as our population has expanded so has the cat population
It really isn’t hard to work out. Cats are extremely effective predators, but of course have no natural predators of their own, as they are kept by selfish wankers as pets, who also feed them: so the cats don’t even have the fear of starvation and they have plenty of energy for relaxed predation, for the lolz
It’s like we decided to introduce 12 million small leopards into the country, and then we act surprised when smaller wildlife weirdly dwindles
Why? Turnout. There is evidence from 2016 and 2020 of a tendency to understate Trump turnout. Meanwhile, there is evidence from the only post-SCOTUS/abortion election of a big understating of young and female turnout. Last time out the US had a very big turnout of 66% and the Dems barely won. Can they possibly manage that again?
Meanwhile the recent polls have 10-15% in all battleground states either undecided or not certain. Most of them know all about Trump so it is Harris who they are undecided about. The debate will clearly be very important in this. But - as ever - how those largely younger and female voters break will decide the thing.
Trump has steadied the ship in the last 2 weeks. We are where we were in the run-in to 2016 and 2020 and the US electoral system remains heavily 'weighted' in favour of the Reps.
Good luck folks - working this one out we will need it.
Happy to be proved wrong on this. Do you have any links (other than from the grouse-moor industry).
More often, recently, it's just boorish.
And boring.
🌳 CON: 37.9% (+11.2)
🌹 LAB: 20.4% (-25.9)
🙋 INDs: 11.8%, 10.4%, 4.9% (+0.1)
➡️ RFM: 10.7% (New)
🔶 LDM: 4.0% (New)
Conservative GAIN from Labour.
Changes w/ 2023.
“Cats kill in excess of 50 million birds each year as well as frogs, slow worms and various small mammals. Given these facts there are a few points to consider if you are thinking of bringing a cat into an area where birdlife is thriving”
https://community.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/f/ask-an-expert/96132/ask-an-expert-cats-and-wild-birds
It also means even the staunchest advocates of Brexit, like Nigel Farage, can distance themselves on the grounds the government clearly stuffed things up.
Turns out Brexit means Brexit was a slogan, not a policy, as was Take Back Control.
https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/calvin-robinson-leaves-uk-in-protest-of-satanic-keir-starmer