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Better Together: Olympic edition – politicalbetting.com
Better Together: Olympic edition – politicalbetting.com
There is support across the Home Nations, however, for the continuation of #TeamGB at the Olympics:??????? 62% support??????? 58%??????? 51%https://t.co/gRwmsN5pTH pic.twitter.com/EuXXLhML5d
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Primus inter pares.
I suppose the main question left for him is whether western societies actually go on in any form at all or whether they will completely collapse in the face of more powerful and coherant adverseries?
Certainly he had some optimism about Brexit and Trump representing the seeds of a viable post liberal society: yet this must have been severely dashed in 2020 by the woke transformation of society and the aggressive resurgence of progress as a religion.
I don't think he has much left to say - other than we're all fucked.
The Scotland sample size is 1,002.
Great to see and a wonderful example of how we are Better Together
HYUFD - “Scotland Act, Boris will deny a referendum anyway, tanks”
Dickson - “The English are BAD, it’s nice here In Sweden”
TUD - “something something…Scotch Expert…something something…”
Carlotta - “Here’s a nasty Twitter post from a ScotNat”
Malc - “Arse, bollox, turnip, arse, feck, arse”
Now we can move onto the weather maybe?
Robert (RCS1000) is Mike's son.
I'll just make my afternoon contribution to Scottish political aggression by noting I am rereading and very much enjoying Charles McKean's book 'Battle for the North: The Tay and Forth Bridges and the 19th-Century Railway Wars' - nice broad approach including boardroom struggles and town (dis)improvement as well as the more bridge-y stuff.
Play nicely with your train sets, everyone.
Gold 94
Silver 81
Bronze 97
TOTAL 272
EU** medal tally @Tokyo:
Gold 83
Silver 94
Bronze 107
TOTAL 284
(* USA, Eng+Sco+Wal+NI, Canada, Australia, NZ and Ireland)
(** excluding Ireland)
Care to do that on 'Scotch expert' for the last couple of weeks after having a wager on whether you or I have mentioned the term more?
‘It’s totally inexplicable,’ said one officer. ‘One minute, he seems to have been typing peacefully on a politics forum he was a member of, the next he was dead.
‘The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the top of his head, but no weapon could be found nearby.
‘The only slightly strange thing we found at the scene was a small turnip, which we couldn’t explain given he’d just been eating a pizza and was known to disapprove of weird toppings.’
The turnip of course came out of thin Ayr, accompanied by much loud swearing and talk of stupid bollox.
We shall see. The list of obvious gains from the Union (vaccines, furlough, economic growth) is pretty strong at the moment but there is a lot of emotion in play.
They've been involved in four really big ground wars:
Korea: won (or at least a score draw)
Vietnam: lost
Iraq: lost, narrowly
Afghanistan: lost
https://twitter.com/UmairJamal15/status/1426886799876579328
Country - Gold, Silver, Bronze
England - 33, 26, 49
Scotland - 3, 10, 3
Wales - 3, 2, 1
Anguilla - 0, 1, 0
That includes the 4x100 men's relay, which will probably be lost.
"Five minutes of firefight, five weeks of surfing!"
Oh, and Panama.
The unweighted sample for England was 1,414 and the weighted sample was 1,417.
Now I'm going to guess YouGov know their polls and weighting better than you.
https://twitter.com/juliamacfarlane/status/1426897973972242433?s=20
Which teaches a lesson. Have a clear objective, when you achieve it, leave. Do not attempt an occupation
So in Afghanistan America should have gone in, bombed Al Qaeda to bits and routed the Taliban, and then they should have got the hell out, leaving behind this warning: do whatever you like, throw gays off skyscrapers. we can't tell you how to live, much as we abhor it. But if there is any more exported terrorism, we will carpet bomb the entire country. Again and again
Ruthless but effective? A lot cheaper than trying to rebuild an unwilling nation
Revolution - baled out by the French
1812 - beaten by what is now Canada, although they continue to claim victory as a result of the Battle of New Orleans, which occurred in unofficial overtime after the peace treaty was signed.
Civil War - managed to beat themselves.
Their most constant successes come against Spanish speaking countries (Mexico, Spanish-American War etc)
Half measures cost just as much, and don't end well.
The text is:
Julia Macfarlane Flag of IndonesiaFlag of Scotland
@juliamacfarlane
Struck by something. In 2014, the Western world was hell bent on preventing the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Syria.
In 2021 the Western world stood aside to allow the establishment of an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan. One that may, in time, be airborne.
In 1994, the widget thing in the Guinness can won invention of the year (based on a public vote in the UK) beating out THE INTERNET to the award.
I actually agree with the British public there. I mean, pedantry aside (the internet was not invented in 1994) I think the widget in Guinness cans has had a net benefit to humankind. Jury’s out on the internet.
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1426903473115783176
Winnie Winthorpe
@WinnieWinthorpe
Replying to
@transscribe
The Taliban know exactly what a woman is without having to ask for preferred pronouns. Why do you think that is?
12:57 pm · 15 Aug 2021·Twitter for Android
We could stay longer. We could have not gone in. We could have done things differently over the 20 years. All of those would make a difference, the manner of the departure does not.
https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person/
The first Gulf War was a clear win in removing Saddam from Kuwait
Paying for the American Revolution led to the French Revolution.
Paying for the French Revolution led, ultimately, to Waterloo.
However, Trump announced the withdrawal last year so Biden was an is in a complete no win situation.
Keep the troops there and the GOP would criticise everyday hand injury, leave and suffer the pain and embarrassment of leaving.
By doing it now through it will be forgotten before the next election comes along.
But my god - he is useless. All the criticism levelled at him in the past coming back to bite.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/newcastle-confirm-away-fans-not-14386184
Personally I think Newcastle should have been kicked out of the PL for not fulfilling this requirement.
I'm not sure how having away fans in the upper tier can ever be described as the safe option.
Those photos will define Biden’s presidency, it’s reminiscent of the fall of Saigon five decades ago, as the American troops fled Vietnam in defeat.
Think of the emissions if we had to keep flying all those troops and ordnance in and out of the country.
The logistics of installing charging points so that our battery operated tanks and personnel carriers could keep moving would also be a nightmare.
And of course mass troop movements would be difficult to manage with social distancing, masks, vaccination checks and quarantining so that Afghanistan's health service isn't overwhelmed.
At the time The Times used to commission a monthly Populus phone poll (which Mike rated highly), every Sunday there'd be an extended YouGov on most of the week's events, and a regular Ipsos MORI phone poll on Scotland so I used to email them to Mike when they appeared.
He and I then started discussing the polls and other stories, via email and phone, The Times did some excellent work on Chris Huhne, I pointed out to Mike that Huhne was screwed and his defence was rubbish but the CPS works slower than the media expects which led to kerching time.
Then in March 2012 Mike rang me and said he was going on holiday in a couple of months and would I like to edit PB in his absence.
So really you can thank Rupert Murdoch and Chris Huhne for me getting the gig.
NYTimes blog.
Confusion is one word for it I suppose.
@lewis_goodall
33m
Boris Johnson remarks to the Commons 8th July: “I am sure they will be aware that there is no military path to victory for the Taliban...I do not believe that the Taliban are guaranteed the kind of victory that we sometimes read about.”
Except possibly one thing. Which is to cut a deal with the Taleban on exit terms: we will leave you to it, now, if you allow certain things. Or you will be fighting us all the way.
Well done 👍
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan
That said, for those translators who directly aided us, I would be inclined to be generous; I can't imagine there's more than a few thousand.
Longer-term our solution to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan and Syria can't simply be to take ever greater numbers of those who want to flee their dastardly regimes - it's why I've always been bullish on nation building in the Middle-East and SSA, even if that's had decidedly mixed results, because I think that's a far better political objective to have.
I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," Mr Trump added. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51689443
The Taleban haven't kept a single line of that agreement, but not only did Trump not change his mind on withdrawal, four weeks ago he was criticising Biden for withdrawing too slowly.
The simple truth is that we kept soldiers there or we handed the country to the Taleban. The failure to build a functioning civil society since 2001 meant there were no other options.
CNN really indignant and roasting Blinken this morning. I guess they don't care what ice cream Joe eats any more.
A little over-written at times
One is a vitally important match which is going very badly. The batsmen are lashing the bowling all round the ground like you can't believe it.
The other is the Test match.