On Covid, there were two broad strategies on could follow that worked:
(1) Absolutely massive and total lockdowns designed to get rid of every last case, so that every last case is eliminated, and life could continue as normal. This is what the Antipodeans did. (The goal here is R=0, so we can reopen.)
(2) Relatively modest restrictions, that prevented high risk activities and kept R at a significantly lower level than would otherwise have been the case. (The goal here is keeping R at or around 1, so that the virus doesn't run out of control.) This probably included: masks on public transport, encouraging working from home, and temporary closure of concert venues, nightclubs and other places where people are going to be crammed in a poorly ventilated indoor space.
What was an absolutely stupid policy was having enormous restrictions that probably only had a modest impact on R, and which didn't wipe the disease out.
After 1st (March-April 2020) lockdown it was pretty clear that the transmission problem was mostly relating to crowded indoor venues. For most of the country the restrictions were fairly minor, and probably ineffective until the winter lockdown of Dec 2020.
The really stupid thing was to allow schools back for a single day in Jan 2021. The death rate peaked at the end of Jan 21 at around 4000 per day. It was totally grim to be helping on ICU then, with 3 times the number of patients to regular capacity, with no one over 60. Over 60% the hospital beds in Leicester occupied with covid patients. Oxygen capacity was significantly stretched. I never want to work in such a situation again.
This was concurrent with the vaccine rollout so there was real light at the end of the tunnel. The restrictions probably lasted too long, and should never have been applied to outdoor socially distanced activities, particularly after the over sixties
I suspect that the restrictions were counterproductive in that once one person from a household caught it, the lockdown pretty much ensured that entire household would get it with people spending 23+ hours a day shut away together.
Doesn't follow at all. Half an hour was more than enough with this really infections bug.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Hyperbolic though it may be, it is notable that e.g. Putin puts together a totally bullshit justification for invading Ukraine - but it is a justification. Likewise the imperial expansions of the 18th-20th centuries.
This sudden declaration of the intention to annexe Greenland, the Panama canal, and possibly Canada, without any kind of justification other than "because I want to" is novel.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
The Mooch got it even wronger but in an American accent.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
The Mooch got it even wronger but in an American accent.
Much wittier though. Sure, Scaramucci gets most things wrong but then so do most pundits; Scaramucci at least is interesting to listen to.
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
The latter I always assumed was dreamed up by the marketing departments of the supermarkets to get people into aisles they wouldn't normally visit (see also: periodic rearrangement of the shelves).
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyle or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
ISTR I had my run-ins with him. But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school... :
Classic for here, yeah, why not and Given I am 59 years old and four weeks off from retirement I clearly have 😂😂😂😂
Sometime in the next month there will be an unsolved murder, the chief will ask you for your gun, you will say you are too old for this shit and, at the end, throw your badge into the river.
I reached that point a few years ago. I’ve been, like Gillian McKeith in her channel 4 days, going through the motions.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyle or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
ISTR I had my run-ins with him. But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school... :
Classic for here, yeah, why not and Given I am 59 years old and four weeks off from retirement I clearly have 😂😂😂😂
Sometime in the next month there will be an unsolved murder, the chief will ask you for your gun, you will say you are too old for this shit and, at the end, throw your badge into the river.
I reached that point a few years ago. I’ve been, like Gillian McKeith in her channel 4 days, going through the motions.
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Bloody hell, that's a lot of anger 5 years on.
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Hang on, are we talking about Leon? Or is it acceptable when he drives people off the board because he's a right-winger?
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Bloody hell, that's a lot of anger 5 years on.
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Time to move on maybe?
One of the Yes, Prime Minister lines where the writers surely weren't joking was Jim Hacker's threshold for sacking a minister- when their messup could have been reasonably anticipated at the time, no just with hindsight.
On that basis, many of the horrible wrong things of early 2020 were excusable. The worst you can say is that the ineffective restrictions could have been undone sooner. The bit that's much harder to forgive was what went wrong as 2020 turned into 2021- plucking disaster from the jaws of a possible genuine triumph given the vaccine situation at that point.
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Bloody hell, that's a lot of anger 5 years on.
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Time to move on maybe?
Cookie is completely right, if anything he understates the mental nature of the bullshit that was foisted on us..💩 This is what all posters should focus on..not the origins of it..🤨
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
Two things can be simultaneously true - Rory Stewart is a laughing stock, and Trump is a dangerous lunatic whose return is going to end very badly for us all.
On Covid, there were two broad strategies on could follow that worked:
(1) Absolutely massive and total lockdowns designed to get rid of every last case, so that every last case is eliminated, and life could continue as normal. This is what the Antipodeans did. (The goal here is R=0, so we can reopen.)
(2) Relatively modest restrictions, that prevented high risk activities and kept R at a significantly lower level than would otherwise have been the case. (The goal here is keeping R at or around 1, so that the virus doesn't run out of control.) This probably included: masks on public transport, encouraging working from home, and temporary closure of concert venues, nightclubs and other places where people are going to be crammed in a poorly ventilated indoor space.
What was an absolutely stupid policy was having enormous restrictions that probably only had a modest impact on R, and which didn't wipe the disease out.
After 1st (March-April 2020) lockdown it was pretty clear that the transmission problem was mostly relating to crowded indoor venues. For most of the country the restrictions were fairly minor, and probably ineffective until the winter lockdown of Dec 2020.
The really stupid thing was to allow schools back for a single day in Jan 2021. The death rate peaked at the end of Jan 21 at around 4000 per day. It was totally grim to be helping on ICU then, with 3 times the number of patients to regular capacity, with no one over 60. Over 60% the hospital beds in Leicester occupied with covid patients. Oxygen capacity was significantly stretched. I never want to work in such a situation again.
This was concurrent with the vaccine rollout so there was real light at the end of the tunnel. The restrictions probably lasted too long, and should never have been applied to outdoor socially distanced activities, particularly after the over sixties
The lockdowns would have been shorter if they hadn't insisted on "eat out to help out" and re-opening air travel too soon.
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Bloody hell, that's a lot of anger 5 years on.
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Time to move on maybe?
One of the Yes, Prime Minister lines where the writers surely weren't joking was Jim Hacker's threshold for sacking a minister- when their messup could have been reasonably anticipated at the time, no just with hindsight.
On that basis, many of the horrible wrong things of early 2020 were excusable. The worst you can say is that the ineffective restrictions could have been undone sooner. The bit that's much harder to forgive was what went wrong as 2020 turned into 2021- plucking disaster from the jaws of a possible genuine triumph given the vaccine situation at that point.
I remember a scientist saying that, as more information came through on the nature of the virus around mid-2020, Covid could have been a much more serious pandemic. It was actually a mid-level virus; many scientists had been concerned about something much worse. (I think her point was on how slowly it was mutating/evolving).
The only person I know who died of Covid died in early December 2020. Just as the vaccines were rolling out, but before it had got to his particular (elderly) age group. It was still a nasty bugger then, and the vaccine efficacy was uncertain for a fair few months AFAICR.
(My parents were very shocked by his death; not only because it was a friend who had died, but because they had been doing nothing differently to him. They started being much more careful afterwards.)
Fencing off kids playparks outside was just dark, really. One-way systems in supermarkets was peak futility.
Yes. And leaving them fenced off for the best part of a year after it was discovered that doing so was essentially pointless. Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Bloody hell, that's a lot of anger 5 years on.
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Time to move on maybe?
Now is the time to put in place a plan for the next pandemic that repudiates such nonsense.
On Covid, there were two broad strategies on could follow that worked:
(1) Absolutely massive and total lockdowns designed to get rid of every last case, so that every last case is eliminated, and life could continue as normal. This is what the Antipodeans did. (The goal here is R=0, so we can reopen.)
(2) Relatively modest restrictions, that prevented high risk activities and kept R at a significantly lower level than would otherwise have been the case. (The goal here is keeping R at or around 1, so that the virus doesn't run out of control.) This probably included: masks on public transport, encouraging working from home, and temporary closure of concert venues, nightclubs and other places where people are going to be crammed in a poorly ventilated indoor space.
What was an absolutely stupid policy was having enormous restrictions that probably only had a modest impact on R, and which didn't wipe the disease out.
After 1st (March-April 2020) lockdown it was pretty clear that the transmission problem was mostly relating to crowded indoor venues. For most of the country the restrictions were fairly minor, and probably ineffective until the winter lockdown of Dec 2020.
The really stupid thing was to allow schools back for a single day in Jan 2021. The death rate peaked at the end of Jan 21 at around 4000 per day. It was totally grim to be helping on ICU then, with 3 times the number of patients to regular capacity, with no one over 60. Over 60% the hospital beds in Leicester occupied with covid patients. Oxygen capacity was significantly stretched. I never want to work in such a situation again.
This was concurrent with the vaccine rollout so there was real light at the end of the tunnel. The restrictions probably lasted too long, and should never have been applied to outdoor socially distanced activities, particularly after the over sixties
The really dumb one was closing all the car parks in outdoor leisure areas, e.g. Cannock Chase.
I mean, it was very nice for me that it was so quiet, but shouldn't we have been *encouraging* people to use these big, beautiful, well-ventilated areas?
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Hang on, are we talking about Leon? Or is it acceptable when he drives people off the board because he's a right-winger?
It's not his political.positions that make Leon a problematic poster. It is his aggression even- especially- when he is clearly and demonstrably wrong. Then there is the lack of common courtesy in the way he promotes an agenda which is shall we say, often extremely controversial. Aggressive gonzo doesn't necessarily make you into Hunter S Thompson, more often, it makes you a dick.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
Two things can be simultaneously true - Rory Stewart is a laughing stock, and Trump is a dangerous lunatic whose return is going to end very badly for us all.
Beg to differ. Rory remains well worth listening to; like others his predictive powers are not perfect, but he is rational, informed, polite and interesting. I don't think he is wrong at all in drawing attention to a new variety of moral (or non moral) outlook in a politics which closely concerns the interests of the free world.
I wish he was still in the House of Commons (he was my MP); I feel the same about Robin Cook but at least Rory is still with us.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Congratulations Nick. May your marriage always be more harmonious than Radiohead!
Many Congratulations @NP. I H T planning part of the decision ? If so .. very wise
In your earlier Substack about Agency, you mentioned the issue a 'face' with regards to how Asians approach the subject of agency. Have you looked at Poka-yoke as a means to ensure no loss of face.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Hang on, are we talking about Leon? Or is it acceptable when he drives people off the board because he's a right-winger?
I'm not sure you can talk.
You told someone to FOAD only earlier today and you can also be nasty when it suits you.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
Fair enough, perhaps you're less sensitive than me, but I still think his behaviour was beyond the pale.
I accept he may have had an anger management and alcohol problem and, for that, he has my sympathies.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
Two things can be simultaneously true - Rory Stewart is a laughing stock, and Trump is a dangerous lunatic whose return is going to end very badly for us all.
It's remarkable the number of intelligent, but slightly confidence lacking, people who feel the need for the approval of Alastair Campbell.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
Fair enough, perhaps you're less sensitive than me, but I still think his behaviour was beyond the pale.
I accept he may have had an anger management and alcohol problem and, for that, he has my sympathies.
Thing is the mods here did nothing about it so that behaviour was clearly deemed acceptable by the mods as they did nothing about it only banning him once he made a comment about a pollster which is a no no.
I concur with your sympathies for him. Sitting at home, boozing, and getting angry and abusive at random strangers on the internet for no good reason clearly is not healthy. I hope he finds some peace.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Hang on, are we talking about Leon? Or is it acceptable when he drives people off the board because he's a right-winger?
I'm not sure you can talk.
You told someone to FOAD only earlier today and you can also be nasty when it suits you.
Also made a snide dig at me for no good reason. Deeply unpleasant character underneath it all.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Hang on, are we talking about Leon? Or is it acceptable when he drives people off the board because he's a right-winger?
I'm not sure you can talk.
You told someone to FOAD only earlier today and you can also be nasty when it suits you.
Yes, but (hopefully!) generally that's far from being the case. And you can also be (ahem) rather nasty and forceful in your views. Including to me. But again, that's not the norm for you.
But for Leon, it seems to be an industrial-scale effort - and one he takes evident glee in.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
Because we decided to abolish the death penalty. Let's not forget why it was abolished.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
Two things can be simultaneously true - Rory Stewart is a laughing stock, and Trump is a dangerous lunatic whose return is going to end very badly for us all.
It's remarkable the number of intelligent, but slightly confidence lacking, people who feel the need for the approval of Alastair Campbell.
Rory Stewart was one. Craig Oliver another.
I imagine the paycheque is reasonable motivation. Though why so many people listen to a podcast that is tedious groupthink even if you agree with the general thrust of their views is beyond me.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
Two things can be simultaneously true - Rory Stewart is a laughing stock, and Trump is a dangerous lunatic whose return is going to end very badly for us all.
It's remarkable the number of intelligent, but slightly confidence lacking, people who feel the need for the approval of Alastair Campbell.
Rory Stewart was one. Craig Oliver another.
I imagine the paycheque is reasonable motivation. Though why so many people listen to a podcast that is tedious groupthink even if you agree with the general thrust of their views is beyond me.
Not only do they listen to it they will turn up and watch them live, in person, at the theatre.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
Because he wouldn't have qualified for a death sentence since 1933..
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
I left this site after you described all trans women as 'mutilated men', which would include my partner.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Done with this place - but please get off your high horse, you dish it out as much as anyone else.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Hyperbolic though it may be, it is notable that e.g. Putin puts together a totally bullshit justification for invading Ukraine - but it is a justification. Likewise the imperial expansions of the 18th-20th centuries.
This sudden declaration of the intention to annexe Greenland, the Panama canal, and possibly Canada, without any kind of justification other than "because I want to" is novel.
And now he wants ethnic cleansing to deal with the Palestinian problem in Gaza.
The only reason people aren't freaking out about the insane stuff that Trump is proposing is that after 8+ years of his garbage people have become inured to it to a large degree.
Put the same words into Starmer's mouth today and he wouldn't be PM by Monday lunchtime.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
Because he wouldn't have qualified for a death sentence since 1933..
Not old enough for a full-life tariff, but old enough to vote... apparently.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I understand he had a drink problem? The quality of his invective varied with the time of day, moving from pointed earlier in the day to vicious and abusive late at night.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
I thought Konstantin Kisin had moved to the USA
Might as well, given literally everything he says now is to appeal to MAGA and CPAC. If he ever was '1990s social democrat' those days are long since gone.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
He just seemed to take a dislike to me and just attack me for whatever I posted. I don’t know why. I dont even recall ever discussing anything with him. It did cross my mind a few times what would happen if he knew who I was or where I lived.
I expect most people are far nicer in real life than when they are on a bulletin board. I don’t doubt what you say but him and I am sure, in the unlikely event I ever went to one if they happened, if I went to a PB meet up I’d get on with everyone.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
The Internet can bring out the worst in people, perhaps including myself at times. There are few of the nuances you get when talking irl: the smiles, the slightly jokey laugh, the frown that shows you have gone a bit too far.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
He just seemed to take a dislike to me and just attack me for whatever I posted. I don’t know why. I dont even recall ever discussing anything with him. It did cross my mind a few times what would happen if he knew who I was or where I lived.
I expect most people are far nicer in real life than when they are on a bulletin board. I don’t doubt what you say but him and I am sure, in the unlikely event I ever went to one if they happened, if I went to a PB meet up I’d get on with everyone.
I think because we have a lot of posters here who spend a lot of their lives on here, worrying amounts really, we get to experience people when they are going through all sorts of stages in lives, boredom, stress, anger, depression, over-exuberance, everything.
Some posters are just pretty much on a level but inevitably we can have explosions driven by something we believe in strongly/disagree with vehemently. Some of us are posting after a few drinks and can be punchy or silly.
This place is not just a site for debating ideas and arguing about politics and trains, it’s sometimes people’s escape or lifeline.
I’m amazed by the amount of time some posters spend on here and wonder if they could enjoy life more by going out socialising or working but if it’s where they need to be I can’t really judge.
I remember flipping out and wanting Russian leaders’ offspring despatched after the invasion as punishment - not my finest hour but probably wasn’t my finest few bottles of wine either.
Best thing seems to be to remember this isn’t real life and not to take it personally and enjoy the arguments, insights, debates, weird shit and the fact that Rishi Sunak will be looked back on as a truly great PM by all posters here one day, especially Lucky Guy.
The grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.
Post
See new posts Conversation Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
I thought Konstantin Kisin had moved to the USA
Might as well, given literally everything he says now is to appeal to MAGA and CPAC. If he ever was '1990s social democrat' those days are long since gone.
Well yes, but I thought he had actually relocated.
Ishmael, Tim, and Martin Coxall are three we’re well-rid of.
The last two were before my time.
Tim was the reason I didn't use my real name on here when I joined. But whilst he could be abrasive, he also had some good insights and, at times, was hilarious. I'd like to see him back, but can understand why others feel differently.
When I asked how to get mental health help for a friend who we were concerned about, he proved very helpful.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
He just seemed to take a dislike to me and just attack me for whatever I posted. I don’t know why. I dont even recall ever discussing anything with him. It did cross my mind a few times what would happen if he knew who I was or where I lived.
I expect most people are far nicer in real life than when they are on a bulletin board. I don’t doubt what you say but him and I am sure, in the unlikely event I ever went to one if they happened, if I went to a PB meet up I’d get on with everyone.
I think because we have a lot of posters here who spend a lot of their lives on here, worrying amounts really, we get to experience people when they are going through all sorts of stages in lives, boredom, stress, anger, depression, over-exuberance, everything.
Some posters are just pretty much on a level but inevitably we can have explosions driven by something we believe in strongly/disagree with vehemently. Some of us are posting after a few drinks and can be punchy or silly.
This place is not just a site for debating ideas and arguing about politics and trains, it’s sometimes people’s escape or lifeline.
I’m amazed by the amount of time some posters spend on here and wonder if they could enjoy life more by going out socialising or working but if it’s where they need to be I can’t really judge.
I remember flipping out and wanting Russian leaders’ offspring despatched after the invasion as punishment - not my finest hour but probably wasn’t my finest few bottles of wine either.
Best thing seems to be to remember this isn’t real life and not to take it personally and enjoy the arguments, insights, debates, weird shit and the fact that Rishi Sunak will be looked back on as a truly great PM by all posters here one day, especially Lucky Guy.
It might not be real life, but it's definitely a community.
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Rory Stewart made himself a laughing stock commenting on US politics over the election.
It's remarkable he still expects a hearing.
The Mooch got it even wronger but in an American accent.
Much wittier though. Sure, Scaramucci gets most things wrong but then so do most pundits; Scaramucci at least is interesting to listen to.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
The Internet can bring out the worst in people, perhaps including myself at times. There are few of the nuances you get when talking irl: the smiles, the slightly jokey laugh, the frown that shows you have gone a bit too far.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
No smiley on this needless shitty dig. ‘But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school.’
As for so called hooligans I have known a few and even worked for one, he was a finance manager in a medium sized engineering company supplying car parts.
They do it because they like a ruck, it’s an outlet for that side of them. And why not if they are not bothering people who are not interested in that.
I’m going to have a great thick slice of Thin Lizzy and say ‘if the boys want to fight you better let em’
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
He just seemed to take a dislike to me and just attack me for whatever I posted. I don’t know why. I dont even recall ever discussing anything with him. It did cross my mind a few times what would happen if he knew who I was or where I lived.
I expect most people are far nicer in real life than when they are on a bulletin board. I don’t doubt what you say but him and I am sure, in the unlikely event I ever went to one if they happened, if I went to a PB meet up I’d get on with everyone.
I think because we have a lot of posters here who spend a lot of their lives on here, worrying amounts really, we get to experience people when they are going through all sorts of stages in lives, boredom, stress, anger, depression, over-exuberance, everything.
Some posters are just pretty much on a level but inevitably we can have explosions driven by something we believe in strongly/disagree with vehemently. Some of us are posting after a few drinks and can be punchy or silly.
This place is not just a site for debating ideas and arguing about politics and trains, it’s sometimes people’s escape or lifeline.
I’m amazed by the amount of time some posters spend on here and wonder if they could enjoy life more by going out socialising or working but if it’s where they need to be I can’t really judge.
I remember flipping out and wanting Russian leaders’ offspring despatched after the invasion as punishment - not my finest hour but probably wasn’t my finest few bottles of wine either.
Best thing seems to be to remember this isn’t real life and not to take it personally and enjoy the arguments, insights, debates, weird shit and the fact that Rishi Sunak will be looked back on as a truly great PM by all posters here one day, especially Lucky Guy.
Yeah, and luckyguy is one of the posters I like reading here because he doesn’t follow the herd and says what he thinks and is happy to defend it. Also has a few rapier like put downs.
You’re right, it is not real life and best not to take it personally but sometimes when someone has a snide dig at you then, in my case, I won’t take it on the chin. As I didn’t last week when I told someone they were a condescending twat. But after that it’s pretty much forgotten by me.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Trump is quite different from almost all previous leaders since the early Middle Ages. He does not even pretend - with Greenland or Gaza or international aid - to be acting for just reasons. The impact of this naked abuse of power will be staggering.
Hyperbolic though it may be, it is notable that e.g. Putin puts together a totally bullshit justification for invading Ukraine - but it is a justification. Likewise the imperial expansions of the 18th-20th centuries.
This sudden declaration of the intention to annexe Greenland, the Panama canal, and possibly Canada, without any kind of justification other than "because I want to" is novel.
And now he wants ethnic cleansing to deal with the Palestinian problem in Gaza.
The only reason people aren't freaking out about the insane stuff that Trump is proposing is that after 8+ years of his garbage people have become inured to it to a large degree.
Put the same words into Starmer's mouth today and he wouldn't be PM by Monday lunchtime.
People should remain outraged by him. It's no sign of realism or sophistication not to be. It's a sign of moral and intellectual weakness.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
In the UK, they'd never even take off.
If they wont let the plane lands simply give the transportees parachutes and push them out
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Christ, he doesn't fuck around, does he?
It's very Chris Morris. "Do you want me to say the word?"
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Not at all off his head.
I'm intrigued by this idea of 'illegal criminals' though. It implies there are legal ones as well. Is it a reference to the likes of Giuliani, Cannon and Thomas?
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
The Internet can bring out the worst in people, perhaps including myself at times. There are few of the nuances you get when talking irl: the smiles, the slightly jokey laugh, the frown that shows you have gone a bit too far.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
No smiley on this needless shitty dig. ‘But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school.’
As for so called hooligans I have known a few and even worked for one, he was a finance manager in a medium sized engineering company supplying car parts.
They do it because they like a ruck, it’s an outlet for that side of them. And why not if they are not bothering people who are not interested in that.
I’m going to have a great thick slice of Thin Lizzy and say ‘if the boys want to fight you better let em’
I dunno. People complain when I use smileys; people complain when I don't. It's almost as though some people look for reasons to snipe at posters they don't like...
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
In the UK, they'd never even take off.
If they wont let the plane lands simply give the transportees parachutes and push them out
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Not at all off his head.
I'm intrigued by this idea of 'illegal criminals' though. It implies there are legal ones as well. Is it a reference to the likes of Giuliani, Cannon and Thomas?
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
In the UK, they'd never even take off.
If they wont let the plane lands simply give the transportees parachutes and push them out
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Ishmael, Tim, and Martin Coxall are three we’re well-rid of.
The last two were before my time.
Tim was the reason I didn't use my real name on here when I joined. But whilst he could be abrasive, he also had some good insights and, at times, was hilarious. I'd like to see him back, but can understand why others feel differently.
When I asked how to get mental health help for a friend who we were concerned about, he proved very helpful.
I can't remember Martin Coxall at all.
Tim was occasionally funny but posted too much dross in between. When the Vanilla numbering system was introduced he hit 15k in the first year. That's over 40 a day. Not at all healthy. But some of his lost causes (school buses, British Winter Time) were at least arguable. He felt he'd been doxxed by SeanT who in turn believed he had merely repeated information posted by Plato who in turn averred that Tim's identity and even his home address had been exposed on another forum. Welcome to the internet.
Some posters are much more relaxed than others about concealing their biosphere identity. Charles was innocently open about his, and he provided a unique insight into the exotic worlds of banking, big pharma and patrician Toryism. Ishmael drove him away by implying they had mutual acquaintances with whom he would share Charles' comments from here. That was inexcusable.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
The Internet can bring out the worst in people, perhaps including myself at times. There are few of the nuances you get when talking irl: the smiles, the slightly jokey laugh, the frown that shows you have gone a bit too far.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
No smiley on this needless shitty dig. ‘But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school.’
As for so called hooligans I have known a few and even worked for one, he was a finance manager in a medium sized engineering company supplying car parts.
They do it because they like a ruck, it’s an outlet for that side of them. And why not if they are not bothering people who are not interested in that.
I’m going to have a great thick slice of Thin Lizzy and say ‘if the boys want to fight you better let em’
I dunno. People complain when I use smileys; people complain when I don't. It's almost as though some people look for reasons to snipe at posters they don't like...
Ishmael, Tim, and Martin Coxall are three we’re well-rid of.
The last two were before my time.
Tim was the reason I didn't use my real name on here when I joined. But whilst he could be abrasive, he also had some good insights and, at times, was hilarious. I'd like to see him back, but can understand why others feel differently.
When I asked how to get mental health help for a friend who we were concerned about, he proved very helpful.
I can't remember Martin Coxall at all.
Tim was occasionally funny but posted too much dross in between. When the Vanilla numbering system was introduced he hit 15k in the first year. That's over 40 a day. Not at all healthy. But some of his lost causes (school buses, British Winter Time) were at least arguable. He felt he'd been doxxed by SeanT who in turn believed he had merely repeated information posted by Plato who in turn averred that Tim's identity and even his home address had been exposed on another forum. Welcome to the internet.
Some posters are much more relaxed than others about concealing their biosphere identity. Charles was innocently open about his, and he provided a unique insight into the exotic worlds of banking, big pharma and patrician Toryism. Ishmael drove him away by implying they had mutual acquaintances with whom he would share Charles' comments from here. That was inexcusable.
I still miss Charles. He was one of the more erudite posters.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Presumably a warning shot across the bows of the Mexican Government?
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Christ, he doesn't fuck around, does he?
That's why he got the votes.
It'd be like the Tories or Reform actually doing something, here.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Really unnecessary.
@JosiasJessop and I have our disagreements. I don't think he particularly likes me but he is civil and I hope I am the same back. Some of his posts I agree with. No-one is right all the time and no-one agrees with others all the time. Abuse does nothing for this site, frankly. Rather detracts from it.
Oh give over
We lay into each other all the time. We’d all die of pious boredom otherwise. @moonshine put the boot in with skill. His insult is deft, not randomly nasty, it’s the OPPOSITE of pointless abuse
Parse it
“Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here”
Why is that effective? Because it’s economical, it scans, it’s got rhythm and punch, and it feels fresh. And ALSO - importantly - it tells a truth, with a dash of hyperbole. We all love @JosiasJessop but he’s not one of the site’s intellectual titans, is he? Indeed he’d be the first to admit that, in his simple, affable, good natured provincial way. He IS self aware, even if he’s really not very bright
It would be like me saying
“Often I come to the site looking for pithy and concise headers. And other times, @Cyclefree is the writer”
Which you've said ad nauseam over the years.
I don't lay into people BTL here. If I did, I can assure you I'd make @moonshine look like a rank amateur.
It makes PB and social media generally incredibly tedious.
Still I enjoy you using 7 (SEVEN) paragraphs to analyse 16 words. And you accuse me of being prolix ....
Moonshine certainly is a rank amateur, although his burn of JJ was a classic, when compared to Ishmael who could be bludgeon or rapier dependent on the ABV of his blood at the time.
A comment that says more about you than it does about me.
Not really, and when people like myself, Gin, Kyf or any of the others who were on the receiving end of Ishmaels invective, which could be rather barbed, where were people like you exactly to object to it ? Keeping your heads down in case he had a go at you, no doubt.
I rather miss Ishmael.
He may have been abusive but he had class with it.
Moonshines barb at you was uncalled for and unfair but was witty. Your response was just rude and unsophisticated.
No, Ishmael was a bully. He got deeply personal and made unfounded accusations against others, that drove several off the board.
The site is well shot of him.
Mate, I was on the receiving end from him far worse than most people he locked horns with. For no good reason either.
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
He was a repeatedly deeply unpleasant bully to me. I left the site for a a few months because of it.
He seems to have stopped posting as Mercator and not posted since, it seems, under any alias.
I keep in touch with him by email for certain reasons. He’s on good form and travelling a lot.
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
The Internet can bring out the worst in people, perhaps including myself at times. There are few of the nuances you get when talking irl: the smiles, the slightly jokey laugh, the frown that shows you have gone a bit too far.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
No smiley on this needless shitty dig. ‘But if you think that burn was a 'classic', then you've obviously not progressed past year two in primary school.’
As for so called hooligans I have known a few and even worked for one, he was a finance manager in a medium sized engineering company supplying car parts.
They do it because they like a ruck, it’s an outlet for that side of them. And why not if they are not bothering people who are not interested in that.
I’m going to have a great thick slice of Thin Lizzy and say ‘if the boys want to fight you better let em’
I dunno. People complain when I use smileys; people complain when I don't. It's almost as though some people look for reasons to snipe at posters they don't like...
Indeed, as you proved with that dig at me for no good reason. Yet you act all butthurt and play the victim when you receive a minor doing back. 🤷♂️
I’m getting the word……..hypocrite.
Oh and your use of smileys is something I care nothing about and have never offered an opinion on.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Comments
This sudden declaration of the intention to annexe Greenland, the Panama canal, and possibly Canada, without any kind of justification other than "because I want to" is novel.
The site is well shot of him.
Fuck those people. Fuck the misanthropes from the council, fuck the civil servants who decided the right course of action was to frighten people to death, fuck the busybodies chalking ' this is 2m' on the paths of parks. Fuck the police preventing people from sitting on benches or walking with coffee. Fuck the whole puritan lot of them. Turned a crisis into a dystopia.
Oh, hang on...
It's as if everyone needs to be taught a lesson.
https://youtu.be/FmLSjwam26E?si=1IkAWxQqQ2apiNnP&t=75
I subscribe to the view it was people doing their best, some are more risk-averse than I like to be and I am sure there are many who made decisions that with hindsight they would take differently.
Time to move on maybe?
On that basis, many of the horrible wrong things of early 2020 were excusable. The worst you can say is that the ineffective restrictions could have been undone sooner. The bit that's much harder to forgive was what went wrong as 2020 turned into 2021- plucking disaster from the jaws of a possible genuine triumph given the vaccine situation at that point.
The only person I know who died of Covid died in early December 2020. Just as the vaccines were rolling out, but before it had got to his particular (elderly) age group. It was still a nasty bugger then, and the vaccine efficacy was uncertain for a fair few months AFAICR.
(My parents were very shocked by his death; not only because it was a friend who had died, but because they had been doing nothing differently to him. They started being much more careful afterwards.)
I mean, it was very nice for me that it was so quiet, but shouldn't we have been *encouraging* people to use these big, beautiful, well-ventilated areas?
But can they service the debts?
Aggressive gonzo doesn't necessarily make you into Hunter S Thompson, more often, it makes you a dick.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/26/greenland-denmark-keir-starmer-donald-trump-arctic-maga-us/
He made crude comments about my relationship with my wife more than once, our lovemaking activities are no one’s concern but ours, and accused me of wishing to orally attend to Leon more than once. 🤮
I have more reasons to dislike him than most.
However in his final incarnation he seemed to have calmed down and was capable of rapier like wit.
I wish he was still in the House of Commons (he was my MP); I feel the same about Robin Cook but at least Rory is still with us.
In your earlier Substack about Agency, you mentioned the issue a 'face' with regards to how Asians approach the subject of agency. Have you looked at Poka-yoke as a means to ensure no loss of face.
You told someone to FOAD only earlier today and you can also be nasty when it suits you.
I accept he may have had an anger management and alcohol problem and, for that, he has my sympathies.
Rory Stewart was one. Craig Oliver another.
I concur with your sympathies for him. Sitting at home, boozing, and getting angry and abusive at random strangers on the internet for no good reason clearly is not healthy. I hope he finds some peace.
But for Leon, it seems to be an industrial-scale effort - and one he takes evident glee in.
grifterbloke who claimed he never left the left, "the left left me", wants the death penalty brought back.Post
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Konstantin Kisin
@KonstantinKisin
Axel Rudakubana was given a 52-year sentence. Average cost to keep someone in prison is £50,000+ a year. So, in addition to murdering and injuring dozens of people, he will cost the British taxpayer over £2.5 million. Not only that, given the level of security he will require to avoid "prison justice" the cost is likely to be much higher.
Why are we paying to keep this monster alive?
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Done with this place - but please get off your high horse, you dish it out as much as anyone else.
The only reason people aren't freaking out about the insane stuff that Trump is proposing is that after 8+ years of his garbage people have become inured to it to a large degree.
Put the same words into Starmer's mouth today and he wouldn't be PM by Monday lunchtime.
Hammer-wielding gangs attacked Pudsey man's home after he posted TikTok video insulting Islamic faith
I can see why he could upset but he actually is a very genuinely nice, warm, intelligent individual in real life. It probably doesn’t feel like it but it’s as much the cut and thrust on here rather than any personal animosity.
I’m not his mum btw.
I expect most people are far nicer in real life than when they are on a bulletin board. I don’t doubt what you say but him and I am sure, in the unlikely event I ever went to one if they happened, if I went to a PB meet up I’d get on with everyone.
That's one reason I use smileys; but some/many people don't like them.
I'm intrigued that many of the people who get done for saying some awful things online seem perfectly ordinary irl. A bit like some football hooligans having good jobs...
Some posters are just pretty much on a level but inevitably we can have explosions driven by something we believe in strongly/disagree with vehemently. Some of us are posting after a few drinks and can be punchy or silly.
This place is not just a site for debating ideas and arguing about politics and trains, it’s sometimes people’s escape or lifeline.
I’m amazed by the amount of time some posters spend on here and wonder if they could enjoy life more by going out socialising or working but if it’s where they need to be I can’t really judge.
I remember flipping out and wanting Russian leaders’ offspring despatched after the invasion as punishment - not my finest hour but probably wasn’t my finest few bottles of wine either.
Best thing seems to be to remember this isn’t real life and not to take it personally and enjoy the arguments, insights, debates, weird shit and the fact that Rishi Sunak will be looked back on as a truly great PM by all posters here one day, especially Lucky Guy.
When I asked how to get mental health help for a friend who we were concerned about, he proved very helpful.
I can't remember Martin Coxall at all.
I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
As for so called hooligans I have known a few and even worked for one, he was a finance manager in a medium sized engineering company supplying car parts.
They do it because they like a ruck, it’s an outlet for that side of them. And why not if they are not bothering people who are not interested in that.
I’m going to have a great thick slice of Thin Lizzy and say ‘if the boys want to fight you better let em’
Martin Day?
Miss him.
You’re right, it is not real life and best not to take it personally but sometimes when someone has a snide dig at you then, in my case, I won’t take it on the chin. As I didn’t last week when I told someone they were a condescending twat. But after that it’s pretty much forgotten by me.
https://x.com/skynews/status/1883585462188601826?s=61
I'm intrigued by this idea of 'illegal criminals' though. It implies there are legal ones as well. Is it a reference to the likes of Giuliani, Cannon and Thomas?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/09/sir-keir-labour-deported-record-number-migrants-rwanda/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War
Some posters are much more relaxed than others about concealing their biosphere identity. Charles was innocently open about his, and he provided a unique insight into the exotic worlds of banking, big pharma and patrician Toryism. Ishmael drove him away by implying they had mutual acquaintances with whom he would share Charles' comments from here. That was inexcusable.
The whole continent is ours.
Therefore, we'll do what we fucking like with it.
Anyone who resists we either shoot them, invade them, or slap massive tariffs on them so they can't trade with us.
This is why it was absolute lunacy to vote him in as President, particularly given first time around he was no good.
It'd be like the Tories or Reform actually doing something, here.
NEW THREAD
What if Trump puts on a trade war and the invited guests decide to give it a miss?
I’m getting the word……..hypocrite.
Oh and your use of smileys is something I care nothing about and have never offered an opinion on.
The equivalent here would be getting the flights off to Rwanda - and elsewhere - in days.