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As we approach the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    'New York statutory rape law is violated when a person has consensual sexual intercourse with an individual under age under age 17, who they are not married to.'
    https://www.ageofconsent.net/states/new-york
    Pretty sure that's not the case for sex trafficking across state lines which is what was allegedly engaged in. That's a minor until 18.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Farooq said:

    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy for China and the West.
    Didn’t the Arabs pinch most of their stuff from the Indus Valley civilisations?
    No
    “Arabic” numerals
    Astronomy
    Trigonometry
    Zero
    Lots in medicine and toxicology
    Rotation of the earth
    Cartography

    Bit more than just “no”
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587
    edited September 2021
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    I don't really want to defend Ann Sacoolas, but your analysis is very strange. What she allegedly did, i.e. "accidentally" driving on the wrong side of the road may be criminally negligent, and resulted in the death of an innocent motorcyclist, but it was an accident nonetheless.

    There was no accidental element to Andrew's alleged behaviour. Maybe he was confused by the different ages of consent in the three different jurisdictions, but you have already stated in Sacoolas' case the allegation of criminal negligence is no defence.

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited September 2021
    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    No surprise, the party was facing heavy losses in the local elections next year in the Home Counties unless they did
    It's disappointing a governing party, ahead in most polls and with a majority of 80, hasn't got the courage to pursue a course of action it clearly thinks necessary to improve or alleviate the housing crisis in this country.

    If you lose a few seats and a few Councillors, so what? Isn't it more important to do the right thing for the country even if you are damned for it than to constantly back away from any serious change at the first sign of electoral disadvantage?

    Let's have a debate about this - let's have the developers explain how they would resolve the issue - let's talk about land-banking, overdevelopment and the like. Let's talk about how new developments transform existing communities and what can be done to mitigate/alleviate this.

    To the outsider, it appears the Conservatives are the Party of the developer not the party of the local community. In truth, of course, the Conservative Party (and other parties too) should be looking at the bigger picture.
    There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.

    Locally losing councillors here in Epping Forest is a bigger matter than the general election, we have one of the safest Tory seats in the country at Westminster level but locally lots of councillors vulnerable to the LDs and Greens and Independents on a 'protect the greenbelt' platform which could mean we lose the Tory majority on the council and go to NOC.

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    kle4 said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    Alleged. And the evidence is very shaky. She has tried a number of legal routes without success to date.

    she clearly suffered hugely at the hands of Epstein and his associates and is a very damaged young women. That doesn’t mean Prince Andrew is guilty
    Of course it doesn't mean it, but there's a process to be followed to find out if he is or isn't and he shouldn't be above the law.
    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?
    He should go to court and clear his name if he can. Otherwise this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,088
    edited September 2021
    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy between China and the West.
    The game's not over though, it's just getting started. Much of the Chinese population is still dirt poor, they're facing the demographic challenge of vast numbers of decrepit old people coming round the corner that the West is also suffering from, only without the welfare systems in place to even try to cope with it, and they're still throwing up coal fired power stations hand over fist. A bit of tree planting in Inner Mongolia ain't going to save them from the consequences of global heating - especially as and when the Himalayan glaciers start to disappear and take a large chunk of China's water supply along with them - and the neighbours, as a collective, aren't powerless. Expect a Japanese nuclear deterrent to join the Indian one if the Xi personality cult continues to grow more assertive and aggressive.

    China's a great nation and it has a lot more going for it than it's sheer size, but hegemony - especially at a global rather than regional level - is very difficult to achieve and even harder to maintain. The British Empire probably had a reasonable claim to it for a century after Waterloo, albeit that the position came increasingly under pressure from 1871 onwards; the United States barely got started after the final defeat of the Soviet Union in 1991 before it got bogged down in neo-liberal interventionism, and China began to catch up with it economically. And that's it. So no, I'm not going to worry about China taking over the world just yet - and not just because, as with almost everything else we talk about on here, there's nothing that I personally can do about it.
  • Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    I simply wrote what he is accused of, which is across plenty of verified news sources. That's not libellous.

    I've not said whether he's guilty or not, but both Sacoolas and Andrew are innocent until proven guilty, both are accused of serious crimes, but neither possibly justifies or excuses the other.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    It was not a tragic car accident, if it was the CPS would not have charged her with causing death by dangerous driving
  • I absolutely will not be commenting about Andrew and think posters need to be very careful as to what they say to protect the site
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545
    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    Twenty years ago

    Agent (whispering): "Mr President, sir, America is under attack"
    Bush (holding a children's book upside down): "I know"

    Was it really upside down? If so I share something in common with Bush: I can read a book that is upside down perfectly well (depending on the typeface used; some serif fonts are more difficult).

    My cousin can do it as well; my brother and sister cannot. Mrs J cannot. It's not something I've practiced, just something I can do for some reason.

    A real Zeroes skill.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ewB6iUhAY
    My father taught himself to read as quickly upside down as normal. He used it in sales negotiations to read his opposite numbers position papers.
    I vaguely recall reading upside down was a required skill for newspaper editors and subeditors as the proofs came off the press upside down to where they were standing.
  • stodge said:

    Counterfactual historians tend to look at 9/11 a bit like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

    One school is that it changed everything, another is it changed nothing.

    The former build a timeline around 9/11 not happening having a chain reaction through Europe, the Middle East and beyond fundamentally altering British and American politics. The latter argue something like 9/11 would have happened sooner or later given the build up of AQ in Afghanistan.

    In terms of 1914, it's one thing to build a world with no great wars (though plenty of little ones) in the 20th Century but that bumps up against the argument war had become inevitable in 1914 because too many important players saw it as a possible solution to seemingly intractable problems or unstoppable trends.

    The immediate cause of the First World War was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. A subsequent causal factor was that Franz Ferdinand, having been assassinated, was dead. Because as heir to the throne, he would likely have been the statesman restraining the Austro-Hungarian empire from attacking Serbia.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    A while back, people started noticing that a few of the Tories' 2019 manifesto pledges were being broken.

    I think we've gone full circle now, and need to start identifying which, if any, of the Tories' 2019 manifesto pledges are being kept.

    So far, I've got Brexit on my list. Just about. (I'm not counting a new cancer wing as a new hospital, by the way).
    People say, but just one puny poll lead, millipeed had double digits for years. Ha ha.

    That was before the Torys gobbled up all UKIP including Red Brex. If it flips this time to double digits it could well be permanent.

    No you say, there will be swingback based on the fact the government knows what it wants to do, has communicated credible plans, and based on the competence and honesty of its leaders.
  • HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    It was not a tragic car accident, if it was the CPS would not have charged her with causing death by dangerous driving
    Of course they could. Innocent until proven guilty.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Charles said:

    Farooq said:

    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy for China and the West.
    Didn’t the Arabs pinch most of their stuff from the Indus Valley civilisations?
    No
    “Arabic” numerals
    Astronomy
    Trigonometry
    Zero
    Lots in medicine and toxicology
    Rotation of the earth
    Cartography

    Bit more than just “no”
    I didn't take the question seriously because you used the word "pinch".
    If you're arguing that a particular civilisation or group of realted polities learned some of their technology from their neighbours, then the answer is yes.
    The question of "most of" really depends on what you include in your survey. You can go pretty far into the nuance and detail of the contributions of hundreds of years' of Arab mathematicians, or you can can just lump it all into "maths", and get a different answer.

    There's a seriously interesting topic of study here, but your question got the answer it deserved.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Charles said:

    Farooq said:

    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy for China and the West.
    Didn’t the Arabs pinch most of their stuff from the Indus Valley civilisations?
    No
    “Arabic” numerals
    Astronomy
    Trigonometry
    Zero
    Lots in medicine and toxicology
    Rotation of the earth
    Cartography

    Bit more than just “no”
    What? You must be pulling this stuff directly out of your own fundament. We haven't the first clue what the Indus Valley civilisations thought about any of that stuff because we can't read their language. Egypt, Ur and Greece are not in the Indus valley.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    Alleged. And the evidence is very shaky. She has tried a number of legal routes without success to date.

    she clearly suffered hugely at the hands of Epstein and his associates and is a very damaged young women. That doesn’t mean Prince Andrew is guilty
    Of course it doesn't mean it, but there's a process to be followed to find out if he is or isn't and he shouldn't be above the law.
    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?
    He should go to court and clear his name if he can. Otherwise this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
    Perhaps it will. But people are not required to actively seek to clear their names, nor is a failure to do so evidence of their guilt, and let us be quite honest, a lot of people presume that it is.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    HYUFD said:


    There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.

    You may be surprised I don't actually disagree.

    In my part of East London, there are any number of brownfield sites being developed though whether the flats being built are really the kind of housing required is questionable but there's no shortage of demand and thankfully some developers are looking at some more imaginative solutions including rental.

    Many towns are undergoing "regeneration" projects which involve the demolition of 60s and 70s commercial and retail premises with something more modern. The extent to which these new mixed use projects are being challenged by the new realities of declining High Street retail and hybrid working is varied.

    The concept of "Place" where people live, work and relax in the same space is one which is slowly gaining traction. The notion of working in one place, living in another, shopping in a third ang going for your entertainment in a fourth - all involving journeys, travel etc is being challenged in a number of places.
  • HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    So you're saying that everyone charged by the CPS is automatically guilty of whatever they're charged with even if not convicted?

    That sounds extremely libellous to me.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    It was not a tragic car accident, if it was the CPS would not have charged her with causing death by dangerous driving
    Of course they could. Innocent until proven guilty.
    Well she can come here to answer the charges then before we send Prince Andrew to the US to answer charges there
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    It was not a tragic car accident, if it was the CPS would not have charged her with causing death by dangerous driving
    Of course they could. Innocent until proven guilty.
    Well she can come here to answer the charges then before we send Prince Andrew to the US to answer charges there
    One does not justify or relate to the other.

    Road traffic accidents aren't some sick game of Top Trumps over alleged sex trafficking assault of a minor.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited September 2021
    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    As I have already said I will not comment on Andrew nor should anyone else

    I am sure the moderator's will not want this subject discussed
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited September 2021

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    As I have already said I will not comment on Andrew nor should anyone else

    I am sure the moderator's will not want this subject to discussed
    Nobody has said anything libellous about Andrew.

    Saying Sacoolas is guilty and its not an accident, without her being convicted of that is libellous though.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    So you're saying that everyone charged by the CPS is automatically guilty of whatever they're charged with even if not convicted?

    That sounds extremely libellous to me.
    I did not say she was proved guilty, however clearly the CPS had enough evidence to charge her with that criminal offence and that charge remains in force.

    You however said of Prince Andrew earlier 'So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident'
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545
    pigeon said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy between China and the West.
    The game's not over though, it's just getting started. Much of the Chinese population is still dirt poor, they're facing the demographic challenge of vast numbers of decrepit old people coming round the corner that the West is also suffering from, only without the welfare systems in place to even try to cope with it, and they're still throwing up coal fired power stations hand over fist. A bit of tree planting in Inner Mongolia ain't going to save them from the consequences of global heating - especially as and when the Himalayan glaciers start to disappear and take a large chunk of China's water supply along with them - and the neighbours, as a collective, aren't powerless. Expect a Japanese nuclear deterrent to join the Indian one if the Xi personality cult continues to grow more assertive and aggressive.

    China's a great nation and it has a lot more going for it than it's sheer size, but hegemony - especially at a global rather than regional level - is very difficult to achieve and even harder to maintain. The British Empire probably had a reasonable claim to it for a century after Waterloo, albeit that the position came increasingly under pressure from 1871 onwards; the United States barely got started after the final defeat of the Soviet Union in 1991 before it got bogged down in neo-liberal interventionism, and China began to catch up with it economically. And that's it. So no, I'm not going to worry about China taking over the world just yet - and not just because, as with almost everything else we talk about on here, there's nothing that I personally can do about it.
    I largely agree, although I do note that China moving the bulk of its extremely large population from bare subsistence to a pretty good living standard in 30 years or so, is remarkable.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    IshmaelZ said:

    Charles said:

    Farooq said:

    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy for China and the West.
    Didn’t the Arabs pinch most of their stuff from the Indus Valley civilisations?
    No
    “Arabic” numerals
    Astronomy
    Trigonometry
    Zero
    Lots in medicine and toxicology
    Rotation of the earth
    Cartography

    Bit more than just “no”
    What? You must be pulling this stuff directly out of your own fundament. We haven't the first clue what the Indus Valley civilisations thought about any of that stuff because we can't read their language. Egypt, Ur and Greece are not in the Indus valley.
    Wiki is somewhat larger than my fundament, even after a year of lockdown

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    “ Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.”.

    Excellent. We can move the big hand back away from midnight.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    As much as I wish that what you say were true, HYUFD is probably safe enough. Many years ago, the police stopped talking about RTAs (road traffic accidents) and replaced that term with RTC (collision). They thought RTA implied no one was to blame. So the police and CPS would probably agree with what HYUFD says.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,262

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    kle4 said:



    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?

    I haven't followed the case at all, or the Sacoolas case, but realistically I think it's rare to expose yourself to a foreign trial if you don't have to, even if you're entirely innocent. The upside is simply that you clear your name (but lots of people won't believe the verdict so you don't really), the downside is potentially prison.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,285
    New EKOS poll, Canada:

    CPC 33.2%
    LPC 29.7%
    NDP 16.7%
    PPC 11.7%
    BQ 4.3%
    GPC 3.8%

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Canadian_federal_election
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    Twenty years ago

    Agent (whispering): "Mr President, sir, America is under attack"
    Bush (holding a children's book upside down): "I know"

    Was it really upside down? If so I share something in common with Bush: I can read a book that is upside down perfectly well (depending on the typeface used; some serif fonts are more difficult).

    My cousin can do it as well; my brother and sister cannot. Mrs J cannot. It's not something I've practiced, just something I can do for some reason.

    A real Zeroes skill.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ewB6iUhAY
    My father taught himself to read as quickly upside down as normal. He used it in sales negotiations to read his opposite numbers position papers.
    I have never had to teach myself but for some reason I can read upside down quite easily.

    It has come in very handy in many business negotitations... especially as some people seem to assume it's impossible to read a page if it's not the right way round.
    Just tried it. No, I don't have the gift. I can do it but only very slowly.
    When I was a junior solicitor in the City I had a boss who claimed to have the gift, but didn't. So you'd go with him to meetings with other, opposing, solicitors and he'd be sitting across their desks from them squinting furiously with his neck hooked round at a more-than-90 degree angle, thinking he was invisibly practising his art, with everyone else too painfully embarrassed to point out what he was up to.
    Oh dear. Yes, this is one where you either do it well or you don't do it. Like the pole vault.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    gealbhan said:

    “ Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.”.

    Excellent. We can move the big hand back away from midnight.

    When the big hand touches the little hand, (something libellous)
  • tlg86 said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    As much as I wish that what you say were true, HYUFD is probably safe enough. Many years ago, the police stopped talking about RTAs (road traffic accidents) and replaced that term with RTC (collision). They thought RTA implied no one was to blame. So the police and CPS would probably agree with what HYUFD says.
    No that's an all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs fallacy.

    All such accidents are collisions, but a collision may or may not be an accident.

    So the Police say collision because that is neutral on the subject of whether it is or is not an accident. A collision may have been an accident, or it may not have been.

    HYUFD is explicitly saying it is not an accident, which has not been determined. That seems pretty libellous to me, that is saying guilty without a conviction. That's like if I said (and I'm not saying) that someone in a sexual encounter was a rapist without it having been convicted, as opposed to an alleged rapist.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy between China and the West.
    If you are suggesting that the West is Andulucia, and China Renaissance Europe, it does seem rather a stretch. China is very willing to learn from outsiders though.
    I am suggesting technoligical invention does not necessarily drive ascendancy, contrary to the implication of @Benpointer's question, if you have a desire to learn. China is learning lots from the West, while the West is learning nothing at all from China. Just as Europe in the Middle Ages learnt everything it subsequently knew from the Arabs, while the Arabs learnt nothing from the Europe.
    It's not the total picture with Europe in the middle ages though. Europe learnt from China at that time and also from it's own classical past.

    However, I suspect the biggest advantage Eurpoe had was the invention of the metal movable type, coupled with the fortuitous use of a simple alphabet.
    It is a very big part of the picture though. Also China isn't just learning from America and Europe.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,285
    edited September 2021

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    It was 17 until this year.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited September 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    New EKOS poll, Canada:

    CPC 33.2%
    LPC 29.7%
    NDP 16.7%
    PPC 11.7%
    BQ 4.3%
    GPC 3.8%

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Canadian_federal_election

    Though Mainstreet now have the Liberals ahead and Nanos give a smaller 2% Conservative lead
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    edited September 2021
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it was a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Charles said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Charles said:

    Farooq said:

    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy for China and the West.
    Didn’t the Arabs pinch most of their stuff from the Indus Valley civilisations?
    No
    “Arabic” numerals
    Astronomy
    Trigonometry
    Zero
    Lots in medicine and toxicology
    Rotation of the earth
    Cartography

    Bit more than just “no”
    What? You must be pulling this stuff directly out of your own fundament. We haven't the first clue what the Indus Valley civilisations thought about any of that stuff because we can't read their language. Egypt, Ur and Greece are not in the Indus valley.
    Wiki is somewhat larger than my fundament, even after a year of lockdown

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science
    Yes, but you are 1,500 years and 1,000 miles out between the Indian influences claimed in that piece and the Indus valley civilizations. And the claims are pretty tendentious anyway.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745

    stodge said:


    In terms of 1914, it's one thing to build a world with no great wars (though plenty of little ones) in the 20th Century but that bumps up against the argument war had become inevitable in 1914 because too many important players saw it as a possible solution to seemingly intractable problems or unstoppable trends.

    The immediate cause of the First World War was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. A subsequent causal factor was that Franz Ferdinand, having been assassinated, was dead. Because as heir to the throne, he would likely have been the statesman restraining the Austro-Hungarian empire from attacking Serbia.
    Yes, indeed but an argument is if it had not been his assassination, it would have been something else sooner or later. Another Balkan crisis or Morocco or something else which would have allowed those wanting or needing war to have their opportunity.

    Let's not forget there was widespread popular support FOR war - incredible as it may seem. Indeed, I'd go further and say August 1914 was an example of some mass psychosis. War, patriotism and glory were seen as the way forward - any voices urging caution were simply ignored.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    kle4 said:



    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?

    I haven't followed the case at all, or the Sacoolas case, but realistically I think it's rare to expose yourself to a foreign trial if you don't have to, even if you're entirely innocent. The upside is simply that you clear your name (but lots of people won't believe the verdict so you don't really), the downside is potentially prison.
    Quite. We're under no obligation to make things easier for those making serious accusations by doing more than is necessary, if we are guilty, and there's significant risk and hassle to go through if you are innocent, even if you are very confident of escaping conviction or some other adverse finding.

    The 'You should voluntarily go to court to clear your name' approach strikes me as a very cavalier attitude or possibly even disingenous. Why roll the dice like that if you don't have to?

    It's like the classic TV procedural device where someone forgoes a lawyer and/or decides to talk to police and answer questions they don't have to because they are trying to be 'helpful' or don't want to look guilty, because we need to catch them in the 40-60 minutes of the episode, but in real life even the innocent would be well advised not to do more when they are facing very serious allegations.
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Princess Diana's death was an odd one for me. I'd been clubbing in Cambridge, and got a taxi back in the early hours. The taxi driver told me that Princess Diana had been injured in a car crash. When I got back to my digs, I turned on the TV and (from memory) there was nothing about it on (*): it was annoying, and something that we wouldn't dream of in the modern 24-hour news cycle. I stayed up, and after a while it appeared on the BBC, saying she'd been injured. I guess at that stage they knew she'd died, and were just waiting for confirmation.

    People's reactions were very odd. I am generally a royalist, and whilst I thought it was sad, it didn't really affect me deeply. My then-GF's dad was German, and a vehement republican; he apparently cried his eyes out.

    (*) I've just checked, and the BBC News 24 channel started a couple of months after her death.

    That was the day I learnt I was pregnant with one of my children. I woke early, wondered why the World Service was doing a documentary about Diana, went to do the test and it was only later that I learnt about the accident. Much more interested in my news TBH.

    I found the whole candles and votive offerings that week a huge overreaction. It was as if Britain had rediscovered its inner Catholicism. Reminiscent of nothing so much as those shrines to the Madonna you see all over Southern Italy.
    I didn't feel it, thought the reaction OTT, but I think I can understand it. She was top royalty - a public figure of great standing - plus at the same time a young and glamorous, A* list modern world celebrity. So a JFK type event.
    The People's Princess, even. Almost as good a slogan as Get Brexit Done.
    That was peak Tony, no question.
    The People's Princess was a direct lift from Bill Clinton who had used The People's House for the White House.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited September 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
    It you are charged by the CPS with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death you are charged with committing a criminal offence not an accident even if you did not commit a deliberate murder either.

    As far as I can see Prince Andrew has only faced a civil action, not criminal charges like Anne Sacoolas
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited September 2021
    stodge said:

    stodge said:


    In terms of 1914, it's one thing to build a world with no great wars (though plenty of little ones) in the 20th Century but that bumps up against the argument war had become inevitable in 1914 because too many important players saw it as a possible solution to seemingly intractable problems or unstoppable trends.

    The immediate cause of the First World War was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. A subsequent causal factor was that Franz Ferdinand, having been assassinated, was dead. Because as heir to the throne, he would likely have been the statesman restraining the Austro-Hungarian empire from attacking Serbia.
    Yes, indeed but an argument is if it had not been his assassination, it would have been something else sooner or later. Another Balkan crisis or Morocco or something else which would have allowed those wanting or needing war to have their opportunity.

    Let's not forget there was widespread popular support FOR war - incredible as it may seem. Indeed, I'd go further and say August 1914 was an example of some mass psychosis. War, patriotism and glory were seen as the way forward - any voices urging caution were simply ignored.

    Psychosis is a bit strong. The public of various countries were reacting in environments where the supply of objective information was poor.

    Also, the calculations of military planners were constantly changing. Russia was building itself back up after its disastrous eastern adventures, and had a similar spark to Ferdinand's assassination come, say, three years later instead, there may have been considerably more reluctance to do anything to antagonise the Tsar and the Russian people over matters Balkan.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    'New York statutory rape law is violated when a person has consensual sexual intercourse with an individual under age under age 17, who they are not married to.'
    https://www.ageofconsent.net/states/new-york

    AIUI Andrew is not facing any criminal charges at all. He is facing a civil suit. We don't know the precise claims being made. But if the events complained of occurred in the UK, it is hard to see how NY state law is relevant. There is an obvious jurisdictional issue.

    The other point is this: Giuffre may well have a claim against Epstein and Maxwell for trafficking. But that does not mean that Andrew knew of - or was involved in it. He may well have genuinely thought that the sex was consensual (I am aware that he denies having sex at all with her). Proving involvement in trafficking will be very much harder than proving sex, especially if the allegation is that they made her behave as if she was willing. There are plenty of men who think themselves irresistible - even to girls much younger than themselves.

    Of course since we don't know what the claims being made are all of this could be wrong. The fact that Epstein was a grade A bastard does not mean that all his friends and associates also were. Though some seem to have been remarkably uncurious about him, especially after his plea bargain.

    If Giuffre does have evidence of rape and/or trafficking by Andrew, why has this not been reported to the UK criminal authorities? That is the proper route for such serious allegations - not a civil suit for damages.

    Criminal behaviour should be punished by the criminal law. Not by the payment of money.

    Oh - and for @HYUFD - the position of Anne Scoolas is totally irrelevant.
  • Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    It was 17 until this year.
    For standard consensual sex that's the age.

    For alleged sex trafficking across state lines its 18.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Plenty of ifs and buts about it, actually. Having sex with a minor in New York is having sex with a minor in New York. The ludicrous American legal system can call it statutory rape if it wants, just as it can say a cat is a statutory dog or a car is a statutory train. OK it's a bit naughty, but given that it's legal in the UK it's a bit hard to get overly excited about the offence in itself, surely? Though of course there may be other circumstances which make a particular instance of it, something to get very excited about it. Excited being praps the wrong word here.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    It was 17 until this year.
    For standard consensual sex that's the age.

    For alleged sex trafficking across state lines its 18.
    There's an age of consent for sex trafficking?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    edited September 2021
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    Twenty years ago

    Agent (whispering): "Mr President, sir, America is under attack"
    Bush (holding a children's book upside down): "I know"

    Was it really upside down? If so I share something in common with Bush: I can read a book that is upside down perfectly well (depending on the typeface used; some serif fonts are more difficult).

    My cousin can do it as well; my brother and sister cannot. Mrs J cannot. It's not something I've practiced, just something I can do for some reason.

    A real Zeroes skill.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ewB6iUhAY
    My father taught himself to read as quickly upside down as normal. He used it in sales negotiations to read his opposite numbers position papers.
    I have never had to teach myself but for some reason I can read upside down quite easily.

    It has come in very handy in many business negotitations... especially as some people seem to assume it's impossible to read a page if it's not the right way round.
    Just tried it. No, I don't have the gift. I can do it but only very slowly.
    Works better on brief handwritten notes (assuming legibility) as likely to be more spaced out for a start, than pulling out key bits from blocks of text.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,262
    FF43 said:

    pigeon said:

    FF43 said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    People who are interested in cultures point to Al Andalus and note how much more civilised the Arabs were compared with the Europeans. Europe learnt everything from the Arabs: medicine, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, sofas, ice cream, romantic poetry, universities, castle design, irrigation...

    The Arabs learnt not one single thing from Europe. A couple of centuries later Europe was ascendant and the Arab lands a backwater from which they have never recovered.

    That's the analogy between China and the West.
    The game's not over though, it's just getting started. Much of the Chinese population is still dirt poor, they're facing the demographic challenge of vast numbers of decrepit old people coming round the corner that the West is also suffering from, only without the welfare systems in place to even try to cope with it, and they're still throwing up coal fired power stations hand over fist. A bit of tree planting in Inner Mongolia ain't going to save them from the consequences of global heating - especially as and when the Himalayan glaciers start to disappear and take a large chunk of China's water supply along with them - and the neighbours, as a collective, aren't powerless. Expect a Japanese nuclear deterrent to join the Indian one if the Xi personality cult continues to grow more assertive and aggressive.

    China's a great nation and it has a lot more going for it than it's sheer size, but hegemony - especially at a global rather than regional level - is very difficult to achieve and even harder to maintain. The British Empire probably had a reasonable claim to it for a century after Waterloo, albeit that the position came increasingly under pressure from 1871 onwards; the United States barely got started after the final defeat of the Soviet Union in 1991 before it got bogged down in neo-liberal interventionism, and China began to catch up with it economically. And that's it. So no, I'm not going to worry about China taking over the world just yet - and not just because, as with almost everything else we talk about on here, there's nothing that I personally can do about it.
    I largely agree, although I do note that China moving the bulk of its extremely large population from bare subsistence to a pretty good living standard in 30 years or so, is remarkable.
    China has done the hard yards. Sheer demography means it will now dominate the next 3-4 decades, as America retreats (relatively) in agitated confusion. Beyond that, who knows. India? A pan-western alliance (Anglosphere-EU?)

    Or AI or UAPs will render the future utterly imponderable

    But for the mid term foreseeable, now until the mid 2030s, the rise and supremacy of China is a certainty, at least as a talking point
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    edited September 2021
    On subject of the law I see Richard Henriques wrote a book last year, looks quite interesting given I recall reading his report on the police.

    From Crime to Crime: Harold Shipman to Operation Midland - 17 cases that shocked the world

    Edit: Incidentally, Amazon's algorithms suggest I should buy it along with Fake Law by The Secret Barrister and the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.

    Now, fair play to them I do own both of those (though the latter was bought from a shop) but quite what connects the Osman one I have no idea - Amazon seems to recommend I buy it with practically any other book. It was ok, but why it has been such a sensation I am not sure.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    As much as I wish that what you say were true, HYUFD is probably safe enough. Many years ago, the police stopped talking about RTAs (road traffic accidents) and replaced that term with RTC (collision). They thought RTA implied no one was to blame. So the police and CPS would probably agree with what HYUFD says.
    No that's an all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs fallacy.

    All such accidents are collisions, but a collision may or may not be an accident.

    So the Police say collision because that is neutral on the subject of whether it is or is not an accident. A collision may have been an accident, or it may not have been.

    HYUFD is explicitly saying it is not an accident, which has not been determined. That seems pretty libellous to me, that is saying guilty without a conviction. That's like if I said (and I'm not saying) that someone in a sexual encounter was a rapist without it having been convicted, as opposed to an alleged rapist.
    Different points. I thought what KJH was getting at was that HYUFD might be implying that she meant to kill Harry Dunn. I don’t think anyone would believe that to be the case.

    You’re saying that she might not be convicted if tried, which is very true, but the authorities are very pious when it comes to this sort of thing.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    stodge said:

    stodge said:


    In terms of 1914, it's one thing to build a world with no great wars (though plenty of little ones) in the 20th Century but that bumps up against the argument war had become inevitable in 1914 because too many important players saw it as a possible solution to seemingly intractable problems or unstoppable trends.

    The immediate cause of the First World War was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. A subsequent causal factor was that Franz Ferdinand, having been assassinated, was dead. Because as heir to the throne, he would likely have been the statesman restraining the Austro-Hungarian empire from attacking Serbia.
    Yes, indeed but an argument is if it had not been his assassination, it would have been something else sooner or later. Another Balkan crisis or Morocco or something else which would have allowed those wanting or needing war to have their opportunity.

    Let's not forget there was widespread popular support FOR war - incredible as it may seem. Indeed, I'd go further and say August 1914 was an example of some mass psychosis. War, patriotism and glory were seen as the way forward - any voices urging caution were simply ignored.

    Is there any fact to the gun that carried out the assassination was from the French, and the French were training the Serb terrorists?

    Is there any mileage to the idea, having secured an entrante cordial with both UK and Russia, the French were actively engineering war to reverse 1870?
  • Well its started from the telegraph tonite
    Mandatory face masks could return if virus cases surge in autumn

    Tens of millions of adults will be ordered to wear face coverings indoors if Covid-19 infections increase dramatically

    How this squares with open nightclubs is anyone's guess
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
    It you are charged by the CPS with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death you are charged with committing a criminal offence not an accident even if you did not commit a deliberate murder either.

    As far as I can see Prince Andrew has only faced a civil action, not criminal charges like Anne Sacoolas
    I give up. I'm just trying to stop you getting into serious trouble. I am not taking sides on the argument. I am just saying you need to be careful what you say and by specially stating it was not an accident you are accusing somone of murder and that may put you in very hot water.

    I suggest you clarify.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Farooq said:

    gealbhan said:

    “ Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.”.

    Excellent. We can move the big hand back away from midnight.

    When the big hand touches the little hand, (something libellous)
    That was sharp.
    And pervy

    I was thinking of the Doomsday clock
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
    Morrisons to cut sick pay for unvaccinated workers
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    Twenty years ago

    Agent (whispering): "Mr President, sir, America is under attack"
    Bush (holding a children's book upside down): "I know"

    Was it really upside down? If so I share something in common with Bush: I can read a book that is upside down perfectly well (depending on the typeface used; some serif fonts are more difficult).

    My cousin can do it as well; my brother and sister cannot. Mrs J cannot. It's not something I've practiced, just something I can do for some reason.

    A real Zeroes skill.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ewB6iUhAY
    My father taught himself to read as quickly upside down as normal. He used it in sales negotiations to read his opposite numbers position papers.
    I have never had to teach myself but for some reason I can read upside down quite easily.

    It has come in very handy in many business negotitations... especially as some people seem to assume it's impossible to read a page if it's not the right way round.
    Just tried it. No, I don't have the gift. I can do it but only very slowly.
    Keep practising by reading a classic novel upside down on the train/tube each day ;-)
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    There's hundreds of thousands, at least, of Chinese scientists, many of them trained at Western universities, so if they aren't competent innovators that must be because both 1. they are genetically incapable of it and 2. Western universities are glossing over the fact when giving them degrees. There's a tiny tinge of racism in both those claims. They have done some pretty cool shit like landing on the far side of the moon, and I was told by a bloke the other day who seemed to know what he was on about, that all the advances in rechargeable batteries are coming from China, which would sorta make sense as they are all made there.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,262

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
  • HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    No surprise, the party was facing heavy losses in the local elections next year in the Home Counties unless they did
    It's disappointing a governing party, ahead in most polls and with a majority of 80, hasn't got the courage to pursue a course of action it clearly thinks necessary to improve or alleviate the housing crisis in this country.

    If you lose a few seats and a few Councillors, so what? Isn't it more important to do the right thing for the country even if you are damned for it than to constantly back away from any serious change at the first sign of electoral disadvantage?

    Let's have a debate about this - let's have the developers explain how they would resolve the issue - let's talk about land-banking, overdevelopment and the like. Let's talk about how new developments transform existing communities and what can be done to mitigate/alleviate this.

    To the outsider, it appears the Conservatives are the Party of the developer not the party of the local community. In truth, of course, the Conservative Party (and other parties too) should be looking at the bigger picture.
    There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.

    Locally losing councillors here in Epping Forest is a bigger matter than the general election, we have one of the safest Tory seats in the country at Westminster level but locally lots of councillors vulnerable to the LDs and Greens and Independents on a 'protect the greenbelt' platform which could mean we lose the Tory majority on the council and go to NOC.

    The fix for landbanking is to keep issuing planning permission at such a rate developers can't sit on land to constrain supply, as if they do, it just means other houses are built instead.

    That said, given the lead-time to get planning permission, I'm not surprised there are a million houses with planning issued and not yet built - developers don't want peaks and troughs in building (they have to lay off and take on staff etc). If we're building 250k houses a year, that's a four year buffer - that's probably the sort of size of one would want as a developer, given planning for any particular development can take literally take years to approve, and the whole playing field might be tilted in any direction without much warning by government decree.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Andy_JS said:

    New EKOS poll, Canada:

    CPC 33.2%
    LPC 29.7%
    NDP 16.7%
    PPC 11.7%
    BQ 4.3%
    GPC 3.8%

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Canadian_federal_election

    EKOS are showing the biggest Tory leads. Out of line with others.
    BUT. There is 11.7% for the PPC. No one else is anywhere near that at all. It is over double their average and a fair amount of that average comes from EKOS themselves.
    Suggesting they may have a sampling issue. Or everyone else is wrong.
    Or they are being played.
    Whatever. They are throwing some excitement into what has been a static if knife edge campaign of late.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited September 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
    It you are charged by the CPS with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death you are charged with committing a criminal offence not an accident even if you did not commit a deliberate murder either.

    As far as I can see Prince Andrew has only faced a civil action, not criminal charges like Anne Sacoolas
    I give up. I'm just trying to stop you getting into serious trouble. I am not taking sides on the argument. I am just saying you need to be careful what you say and by specially stating it was not an accident you are accusing somone of murder and that may put you in very hot water.

    I suggest you clarify.
    It was PT saying Prince Andrew is facing rape allegations, as far as I can see he is only facing a civil action not criminal charges.

    Anne Sacoolas however has been charged with a criminal offence by the CPS that led to the death of Harry Dunn, there is no question about that. You do not have to have committed murder and intended to kill someone to have caused someone's death in a criminal way as Anne Sacoolas is charged with doing via the charge of causing death by dangerous driving
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
    It you are charged by the CPS with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death you are charged with committing a criminal offence not an accident even if you did not commit a deliberate murder either.

    As far as I can see Prince Andrew has only faced a civil action, not criminal charges like Anne Sacoolas
    I give up. I'm just trying to stop you getting into serious trouble. I am not taking sides on the argument. I am just saying you need to be careful what you say and by specially stating it was not an accident you are accusing somone of murder and that may put you in very hot water.

    I suggest you clarify.
    It was PT saying Prince Andrew is facing rape allegations, as far as I can see he is only facing a civil action not criminal charges.

    Anne Sacoolas however has been charged with a criminal offence by the CPS that led to the death of Harry Dunn, there is no question about that. You do not have to have committed murder to have caused someone's death in a criminal way as Anne Sacoolas is charged with doing via the charge of causing death by dangerous driving
    It just hasn't been proven yet. That's what the court case is for.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    Morrisons to cut sick pay for unvaccinated workers

    That sounds dodgy. Can a regular employer demand vaccination status of their employees?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    There's hundreds of thousands, at least, of Chinese scientists, many of them trained at Western universities, so if they aren't competent innovators that must be because both 1. they are genetically incapable of it and 2. Western universities are glossing over the fact when giving them degrees. There's a tiny tinge of racism in both those claims. They have done some pretty cool shit like landing on the far side of the moon, and I was told by a bloke the other day who seemed to know what he was on about, that all the advances in rechargeable batteries are coming from China, which would sorta make sense as they are all made there.
    As others have said, it's possible that the Chinese system doesn't engender innovation. Alternatively, maybe it's just the stage they're at in their indutrialisation.

    Who knows. We'll find out in time.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Farooq said:

    stodge said:


    Let's not forget there was widespread popular support FOR war - incredible as it may seem. Indeed, I'd go further and say August 1914 was an example of some mass psychosis. War, patriotism and glory were seen as the way forward - any voices urging caution were simply ignored.

    Psychosis is a bit strong. The public of various countries were reacting in environments where the supply of objective information was poor.

    Also, the calculations of military planners were constantly changing. Russia was building itself back up after its disastrous eastern adventures, and had a similar spark to Ferdinand's assassination come, say, three years later instead, there may have been considerably more reluctance to do anything to antagonise the Tsar and the Russian people over matters Balkan.
    So they went to war because they were told to and didn't know any better? Well, perhaps and we have the grainy old films of young men queuing up to enlist.

    The first two months of open warfare were brutal - oddly enough, the trenches saved lives. Before that, troops advancing over open country were mown down by the thousand. Half a million casualties on both sides at the First Battle of the Marne for example.

    As @gealbhan has pointed out, nearly everyone wanted war albeit for different reasons. The casus belli might have been the bullets fired by Princip but this was a conflict long in the making. It was as much about regimes wishing to survive against political change as it was those trying to achieve that change.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Cyclefree said:

    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    Alleged. And the evidence is very shaky. She has tried a number of legal routes without success to date.

    she clearly suffered hugely at the hands of Epstein and his associates and is a very damaged young women. That doesn’t mean Prince Andrew is guilty
    Of course it doesn't mean it, but there's a process to be followed to find out if he is or isn't and he shouldn't be above the law.
    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?
    He should go to court and clear his name if he can. Otherwise this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
    No. We have the burden of proof for a reason. He is innocent - until proven guilty. He is not facing criminal charges, as far as I know.

    He may be a pompous arse for all I know. But even pompous arses are entitled to the benefit of the presumption of innocence. No-one should be forced to prove their innocence. And no-one should be forced to answer to a foreign court if those courts do not have jurisdiction.
    Quite right. Clear his name? He shouldn't have to do anything of the sort. It's the job of the prosecutor to make their case and prove it. Not vice versa.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,285
    Why do the Americans seem to think their legal system has jurisdiction in the UK?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited September 2021
    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    It was 17 until this year.
    For standard consensual sex that's the age.

    For alleged sex trafficking across state lines its 18.
    There's an age of consent for sex trafficking?
    IANAL but my understanding is if it crosses state or international lines then:

    Under 18 its trafficking a minor
    Over 18 its trafficking

    The two are separate crimes, and the minor element is until 18 regardless of state consent age.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Well its started from the telegraph tonite
    Mandatory face masks could return if virus cases surge in autumn

    Tens of millions of adults will be ordered to wear face coverings indoors if Covid-19 infections increase dramatically

    How this squares with open nightclubs is anyone's guess

    Good to have a plan, but ‘if’ is doing the heavy lifting. Schools back, workplaces back, cases in England flat or dropping. Vaccines and infection acquired immunity rising all the time. I’d suggest calming yourself, assuming you are not the latest troll to emerge and start posting crap about how Covid is going wrong again...
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

    Italy has the highest average IQ of any Western country, at 102. And it has also been a terrible economic laggard. Japan - like China - comes in at 105. And that's also been a pretty seriously poor performer.

    Indeed, it seems that with high IQ comes low birth rates.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    gealbhan said:

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    A while back, people started noticing that a few of the Tories' 2019 manifesto pledges were being broken.

    I think we've gone full circle now, and need to start identifying which, if any, of the Tories' 2019 manifesto pledges are being kept.

    So far, I've got Brexit on my list. Just about. (I'm not counting a new cancer wing as a new hospital, by the way).
    People say, but just one puny poll lead, millipeed had double digits for years. Ha ha.

    That was before the Torys gobbled up all UKIP including Red Brex. If it flips this time to double digits it could well be permanent.

    No you say, there will be swingback based on the fact the government knows what it wants to do, has communicated credible plans, and based on the competence and honesty of its leaders.
    UKIP got 13%, up from 3% five years earlier , I don’t think you can say Tories gobbled them all up

    I won money off someone on here who bet me EVS they’d get less than 10%
  • Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    China is also not hamstrung by woke causes unlike the west which increasingly obsessed about diversity over merit
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    MaxPB said:

    Starmer calling for higher taxes on unearned income to replace the tax on workers. Done right it could make the Tories very uncomfortable as they will have to leap to the defence of landlords and personal service tax dodgers.

    I'm wondering if they are going to be clobbered in the autumn statement. This probably wasn't the first tax rise...
  • Andy_JS said:

    Why do the Americans seem to think their legal system has jurisdiction in the UK?

    For the same reason the Dunn's can file civil suits in America, because we have Treaties mutually agreeing to permit that.
  • RobD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Starmer calling for higher taxes on unearned income to replace the tax on workers. Done right it could make the Tories very uncomfortable as they will have to leap to the defence of landlords and personal service tax dodgers.

    I'm wondering if they are going to be clobbered in the autumn statement. This probably wasn't the first tax rise...
    If they go after personal service companies, i reccomend getting some ear plugs as the media screeching will be deafening....
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

    Italy has the highest average IQ of any Western country, at 102. And it has also been a terrible economic laggard. Japan - like China - comes in at 105. And that's also been a pretty seriously poor performer.

    Indeed, it seems that with high IQ comes low birth rates.
    Switzerland second highest IQ in Europe though and it has a very high gdp per capita.

  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723

    Morrisons to cut sick pay for unvaccinated workers

    Mind you they are doing a full English for £2.75 for the whole of September (half price) so .......
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Andy_JS said:

    Why do the Americans seem to think their legal system has jurisdiction in the UK?

    Arrogance. They try to do the same in financial services. The number of conversations I have had with the SEC and US lawyers pointing out that US law does not apply outside the US - well, it gets awful wearisome.
  • Cyclefree said:

    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    Alleged. And the evidence is very shaky. She has tried a number of legal routes without success to date.

    she clearly suffered hugely at the hands of Epstein and his associates and is a very damaged young women. That doesn’t mean Prince Andrew is guilty
    Of course it doesn't mean it, but there's a process to be followed to find out if he is or isn't and he shouldn't be above the law.
    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?
    He should go to court and clear his name if he can. Otherwise this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
    No. We have the burden of proof for a reason. He is innocent - until proven guilty. He is not facing criminal charges, as far as I know.

    He may be a pompous arse for all I know. But even pompous arses are entitled to the benefit of the presumption of innocence. No-one should be forced to prove their innocence. And no-one should be forced to answer to a foreign court if those courts do not have jurisdiction.
    True for both Andrew and Sacoolas.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited September 2021
    MaxPB said:

    Starmer calling for higher taxes on unearned income to replace the tax on workers. Done right it could make the Tories very uncomfortable as they will have to leap to the defence of landlords and personal service tax dodgers.

    Is a teacher with 1 home she lets out in addition to her marital home making more in 'unearned income' than a hedge fund manager?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,285
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New EKOS poll, Canada:

    CPC 33.2%
    LPC 29.7%
    NDP 16.7%
    PPC 11.7%
    BQ 4.3%
    GPC 3.8%

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Canadian_federal_election

    EKOS are showing the biggest Tory leads. Out of line with others.
    BUT. There is 11.7% for the PPC. No one else is anywhere near that at all. It is over double their average and a fair amount of that average comes from EKOS themselves.
    Suggesting they may have a sampling issue. Or everyone else is wrong.
    Or they are being played.
    Whatever. They are throwing some excitement into what has been a static if knife edge campaign of late.
    One of the other pollsters has them on about 8% which is much higher than a few weeks ago from the same firm.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

    Italy has the highest average IQ of any Western country, at 102. And it has also been a terrible economic laggard. Japan - like China - comes in at 105. And that's also been a pretty seriously poor performer.

    Indeed, it seems that with high IQ comes low birth rates.
    Malaysia 92 and Singapore 108. Curious.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Starmer calling for higher taxes on unearned income to replace the tax on workers. Done right it could make the Tories very uncomfortable as they will have to leap to the defence of landlords and personal service tax dodgers.

    Is a teacher with 1 home she lets out in addition to her marital home making more in 'unearned income' than a hedge fund manager?
    Yes. She's a landlord, however you try and dress it up.
  • theProle said:

    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    No surprise, the party was facing heavy losses in the local elections next year in the Home Counties unless they did
    It's disappointing a governing party, ahead in most polls and with a majority of 80, hasn't got the courage to pursue a course of action it clearly thinks necessary to improve or alleviate the housing crisis in this country.

    If you lose a few seats and a few Councillors, so what? Isn't it more important to do the right thing for the country even if you are damned for it than to constantly back away from any serious change at the first sign of electoral disadvantage?

    Let's have a debate about this - let's have the developers explain how they would resolve the issue - let's talk about land-banking, overdevelopment and the like. Let's talk about how new developments transform existing communities and what can be done to mitigate/alleviate this.

    To the outsider, it appears the Conservatives are the Party of the developer not the party of the local community. In truth, of course, the Conservative Party (and other parties too) should be looking at the bigger picture.
    There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.

    Locally losing councillors here in Epping Forest is a bigger matter than the general election, we have one of the safest Tory seats in the country at Westminster level but locally lots of councillors vulnerable to the LDs and Greens and Independents on a 'protect the greenbelt' platform which could mean we lose the Tory majority on the council and go to NOC.

    The fix for landbanking is to keep issuing planning permission at such a rate developers can't sit on land to constrain supply, as if they do, it just means other houses are built instead.

    That said, given the lead-time to get planning permission, I'm not surprised there are a million houses with planning issued and not yet built - developers don't want peaks and troughs in building (they have to lay off and take on staff etc). If we're building 250k houses a year, that's a four year buffer - that's probably the sort of size of one would want as a developer, given planning for any particular development can take literally take years to approve, and the whole playing field might be tilted in any direction without much warning by government decree.
    Very well said.

    Planning is the issue.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,262
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    There's hundreds of thousands, at least, of Chinese scientists, many of them trained at Western universities, so if they aren't competent innovators that must be because both 1. they are genetically incapable of it and 2. Western universities are glossing over the fact when giving them degrees. There's a tiny tinge of racism in both those claims. They have done some pretty cool shit like landing on the far side of the moon, and I was told by a bloke the other day who seemed to know what he was on about, that all the advances in rechargeable batteries are coming from China, which would sorta make sense as they are all made there.
    This racist Sinophobia reminds me of western attitudes to japanese soldiers in WW2. The westerners couldn’t quite dismiss the Japs as spear-chucking natives so they reverted to weirder stereotypes. ‘Oh they are all bow-legged, short-sighted and bespectacled, they can’t win’.

    Then Singapore fell

    China is hindered, I believe, by its stifling autocracy, and would have done better to stay more liberal. But this need not hinder their economy, compared to us, after all we are crippling our own ‘liberal’ education system with Woke-ism

    The Chinese have no such problems. They’ve already overtaken the US in sheer trading power, I’m not sure what stops them adding to that
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    theProle said:

    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:

    TIMES FRONT: Ministers drop shake-up of planning laws

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1436425928889016324?s=20

    No surprise, the party was facing heavy losses in the local elections next year in the Home Counties unless they did
    It's disappointing a governing party, ahead in most polls and with a majority of 80, hasn't got the courage to pursue a course of action it clearly thinks necessary to improve or alleviate the housing crisis in this country.

    If you lose a few seats and a few Councillors, so what? Isn't it more important to do the right thing for the country even if you are damned for it than to constantly back away from any serious change at the first sign of electoral disadvantage?

    Let's have a debate about this - let's have the developers explain how they would resolve the issue - let's talk about land-banking, overdevelopment and the like. Let's talk about how new developments transform existing communities and what can be done to mitigate/alleviate this.

    To the outsider, it appears the Conservatives are the Party of the developer not the party of the local community. In truth, of course, the Conservative Party (and other parties too) should be looking at the bigger picture.
    There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.

    Locally losing councillors here in Epping Forest is a bigger matter than the general election, we have one of the safest Tory seats in the country at Westminster level but locally lots of councillors vulnerable to the LDs and Greens and Independents on a 'protect the greenbelt' platform which could mean we lose the Tory majority on the council and go to NOC.

    The fix for landbanking is to keep issuing planning permission at such a rate developers can't sit on land to constrain supply, as if they do, it just means other houses are built instead.

    That said, given the lead-time to get planning permission, I'm not surprised there are a million houses with planning issued and not yet built - developers don't want peaks and troughs in building (they have to lay off and take on staff etc). If we're building 250k houses a year, that's a four year buffer - that's probably the sort of size of one would want as a developer, given planning for any particular development can take literally take years to approve, and the whole playing field might be tilted in any direction without much warning by government decree.
    According to the Times 244,000 homes were built in 2019-20 anyway, the highest number since the 1980s, with the current planning rules
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    China is also not hamstrung by woke causes unlike the west which increasingly obsessed about diversity over merit
    Damn! Those bloody wokists ruining everything again, eh?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,285
    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.

    The way they reacted to 9/11 was almost exactly what the terrorists were hoping for.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.


    Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?

    China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.

    Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?

    Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
    The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
    I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.

    What have the Chinese ever done for us?
    Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...

    Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
    Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.

    Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
    I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.

    China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
    It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.

    I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
    Racist drivel
    Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!

    I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.

    Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.

    Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
    China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’


    It will invent again

    Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

    Italy has the highest average IQ of any Western country, at 102. And it has also been a terrible economic laggard. Japan - like China - comes in at 105. And that's also been a pretty seriously poor performer.

    Indeed, it seems that with high IQ comes low birth rates.
    Switzerland second highest IQ in Europe though and it has a very high gdp per capita.

    I think my point was more about birth rates.

    If you charted national IQ against birth rates, you might find a surprisingly high correlation.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited September 2021
    RobD said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    Alleged. And the evidence is very shaky. She has tried a number of legal routes without success to date.

    she clearly suffered hugely at the hands of Epstein and his associates and is a very damaged young women. That doesn’t mean Prince Andrew is guilty
    Of course it doesn't mean it, but there's a process to be followed to find out if he is or isn't and he shouldn't be above the law.
    Yet it seems very common that people imply him using legal processes, or not doing anything more than is strictly required, is indeed suggestive of guilt, or indeed indicates he is above the law in some fashion.

    It seems unpleasant to stick up for the man, Andrew that is, but is not Charles right about this one? If he is not very helpful (despite saying he would be helpful) that is not being above the law is it?
    He should go to court and clear his name if he can. Otherwise this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
    No. We have the burden of proof for a reason. He is innocent - until proven guilty. He is not facing criminal charges, as far as I know.

    He may be a pompous arse for all I know. But even pompous arses are entitled to the benefit of the presumption of innocence. No-one should be forced to prove their innocence. And no-one should be forced to answer to a foreign court if those courts do not have jurisdiction.
    Quite right. Clear his name? He shouldn't have to do anything of the sort. It's the job of the prosecutor to make their case and prove it. Not vice versa.
    And as yet there is no prosecutor because no criminal charges have been brought.

    The civil suit has a different burden and standard of proof. But the first question to be decided is whether, depending on the claims made, the US courts have any jurisdiction at all ie what acts has Andrew done in the US which trigger the jurisdiction of the US courts.

    There will be lots for his lawyers to get their teeth into.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Today is the end of my stint as editor of PB and I was thinking it had been a quiet stint.

    Prince Andrew has been served with the legal papers for a lawsuit in which he is accused of sexual abuse, according to a court document.

    Lawyers representing Virginia Giuffre, who is suing the Duke of York, say in the document that the civil lawsuit was handed to a Metropolitan Police officer on duty at the main gates of the The Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, on 27 August at 9.30am.

    Sources close to the prince say he has not been served the papers in person.

    The source couldn't confirm if security had received the papers.


    https://news.sky.com/story/prince-andrew-lawyers-for-woman-suing-duke-of-york-claim-he-was-served-with-legal-papers-12404352

    Well until they send Anne Sacoolas over here they are not getting Prince Andrew
    What a weird thing to say considering the allegations
    Whatever Prince Andrew is alleged to have done he did not kill someone as Anne Sacoolas is alleged to have killed Harry Dunn.

    She is protected by US diplomatic immunity and unless they remove that we of course must not send Prince Andrew to the US
    Ah right he wasn't involved in a tragic accident like Sacoolas, where she stood by Dunn's side and waited for the Police and Ambulance to get there before he tragically died . . . he is only accused of raping a child instead.

    So much better to rape a minor, than to be involved in a tragic fatal accident.
    The accuser was 17, not really a child and above the age of consent here and she is still alive to tell her tale, unlike Harry Dunn.

    It was also not an accident, the CPS charged her with causing death by dangerous driving in absentia
    18 is the age of consent in New York and she was a minor. Having sex with a minor in New York is rape, no ifs and no buts about that.

    Accidents can happen even if they're by dangerous driving. You don't accidentally rape a 17 year old.
    Can I suggest you lay off this topic? You clearly feel very strongly and we wouldn’t want OGH to get in trouble by accident
    I'm happy to lay off the topic if you say the same to HYUFD first.

    I wasn't going to say a word on the topic but to have his actions dismissed as inconsequential compared to a tragic car accident . . . of course innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz but accusations of sexual assault are not anything to be waved away as inconsequential. That is what got me annoyed.
    I doubt he will write something libellous. You might by accident
    HYUFD has already said 'it wasn't an accident'. I'm no lawyer but that sounds libelous to me, even if there is little chance of being sued.
    The CPS has charged her with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death, that is not a mere tragic accident even if not a deliberate murder either
    You are puttting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't a mere tragic accident did I. I simply pointed out you were wrong to refer to it as not an accident, which it clearly was. It was not deliberate. If it were that would be murder.

    I believe you are putting yourself at serious risk here.
    It you are charged by the CPS with criminally dangerous driving leading to a death you are charged with committing a criminal offence not an accident even if you did not commit a deliberate murder either.

    As far as I can see Prince Andrew has only faced a civil action, not criminal charges like Anne Sacoolas
    I give up. I'm just trying to stop you getting into serious trouble. I am not taking sides on the argument. I am just saying you need to be careful what you say and by specially stating it was not an accident you are accusing somone of murder and that may put you in very hot water.

    I suggest you clarify.
    It was PT saying Prince Andrew is facing rape allegations, as far as I can see he is only facing a civil action not criminal charges.

    Anne Sacoolas however has been charged with a criminal offence by the CPS that led to the death of Harry Dunn, there is no question about that. You do not have to have committed murder to have caused someone's death in a criminal way as Anne Sacoolas is charged with doing via the charge of causing death by dangerous driving
    You are impossible. I don't give a damn about the arguement you are having with others. I am not involved so stop trying to argue with me.

    All that you say in your 2nd para is true. So what.

    All that matters is you said it wasn't an accident. It was (no matter that there might be criminal negligence). If not an accident then it is deliberate. In such a case that is murder so you should be very careful what you say.

    Can one of the many lawyers on the site clarify please?
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    edited September 2021
    stodge said:

    Farooq said:

    stodge said:


    Let's not forget there was widespread popular support FOR war - incredible as it may seem. Indeed, I'd go further and say August 1914 was an example of some mass psychosis. War, patriotism and glory were seen as the way forward - any voices urging caution were simply ignored.

    Psychosis is a bit strong. The public of various countries were reacting in environments where the supply of objective information was poor.

    Also, the calculations of military planners were constantly changing. Russia was building itself back up after its disastrous eastern adventures, and had a similar spark to Ferdinand's assassination come, say, three years later instead, there may have been considerably more reluctance to do anything to antagonise the Tsar and the Russian people over matters Balkan.
    So they went to war because they were told to and didn't know any better? Well, perhaps and we have the grainy old films of young men queuing up to enlist.

    The first two months of open warfare were brutal - oddly enough, the trenches saved lives. Before that, troops advancing over open country were mown down by the thousand. Half a million casualties on both sides at the First Battle of the Marne for example.

    As @gealbhan has pointed out, nearly everyone wanted war albeit for different reasons. The casus belli might have been the bullets fired by Princip but this was a conflict long in the making. It was as much about regimes wishing to survive against political change as it was those trying to achieve that change.
    The Germans felt pressed into going earlier before their opponents got stronger, and needed to take Paris in about a month to remove that front before the East got serious. The French had been arranging this from the moment Napoleon 3rd got surrounded. The sealed train carrying Lenin had German writing on it. The Germans felt it was their turn for Empire.
    And the English were enjoying the cricket season, so our historians write outbreak of war as a “bit of a shock, I was actually down to be next in on something of a flat track.”
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