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If the polls are right Macron is heading for victory – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 2,700

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    boulay said:

    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Love him or hate him, one has to admit that Boris has had a terrific week: lauded as the saviour of Ukraine whilst brilliantly portraying rival Rishi as the ultimate Citizen of Nowhere and cosmopolitan dandy, surely the ultimate insult amongst the Tory base. Boris is lord of all he surveys.
    Mm. He now has to fulfil his promises. For instance, are the AFVs the Mastiffs we've already heard about? And what's the British Army going to do for rides?
    NEW: Total UK aid to Ukraine announced today and yesterday;

    • 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missiles
    • $130m worth of Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes
    • $500 million in World Bank

    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1512842016920637444

    I ham reluctant to quibble over the government’s support for Ukraine.

    It’s not complicated. It’s entirely possible fully to support them on this, and to be determined to vote to kick them out at the next election.
    Nice of Total UK to help… shame that Total France is still grubbing for shekels in Russia
    Crikey, you left out “big nosed Total executives” and “pulling puppet strings” and a reference to using Rothschild’s bank to process the shekels.

    Could have just written Euros or Roubles if you weren’t making some point but there you go.
    I genuinely wasn’t… dollars and euros didn’t seem right as dollars were referenced in the original tweet and euros is a dull word and shekels was the currency I came up with in the moment.
    I wonder why.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,917
    Wait how do you get the correct link for the mini DALLE images? I posted a Starmer one upthread and I can't see it any more!

  • boulayboulay Posts: 3,773
    Endillion said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Love him or hate him, one has to admit that Boris has had a terrific week: lauded as the saviour of Ukraine whilst brilliantly portraying rival Rishi as the ultimate Citizen of Nowhere and cosmopolitan dandy, surely the ultimate insult amongst the Tory base. Boris is lord of all he surveys.
    Mm. He now has to fulfil his promises. For instance, are the AFVs the Mastiffs we've already heard about? And what's the British Army going to do for rides?
    NEW: Total UK aid to Ukraine announced today and yesterday;

    • 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missiles
    • $130m worth of Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes
    • $500 million in World Bank

    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1512842016920637444

    I ham reluctant to quibble over the government’s support for Ukraine.

    It’s not complicated. It’s entirely possible fully to support them on this, and to be determined to vote to kick them out at the next election.
    Nice of Total UK to help… shame that Total France is still grubbing for shekels in Russia
    I love the way you said shekels.

    Love it.
    I love the way that Israel is unambiguously standing behind Ukraine with full thrusted support about the illegal occupation of her land by an aggressive neighbour
    Dem 4 x 2s, eh?

    Why do you think Total France trades or accounts in shekels?
    I don’t, you idiot. It was a turn of phrase.
    It’s not a “turn of phrase” at all.

    It’s a pointed use of an anti-Semitic trope that taking “shekels” is linked to the evil joos and their worship of money.

    As I said - you could have written “euros” or “roubles” as they are the relevant currencies to the point you were making.
    Uh, this is complete nonsense. The shekel in its current form has only existed since 1980 (technically 1986, but that was effectively an adjustment to remove some zeros from the hyperinflated older version of the same currency). Before that, the Israeli currency was the Israeli Pound, and the next most recent version of an actual Shekel dates to around 2000 years ago, circa the Maccabee revolt.

    It is, to the best of my knowledge, untrue to state that there was ever been meaningful linkage between "shekels" and antisemitism. Accusations to Jewish money manipulation/worship would typically reference gold, if anything. Use of shekels as a general - and innocuous - term for money is perfectly valid.
    I’m assuming you are under about the age of twenty but the use of “shekels” in anti-Semitic jolly japes has been around for donkeys’ years. It was playground bollocks when I was a kid and a completely well known trope.

    I’m completely lost by your argument where using “shekels” is ok because the current numismatic use of shekel relates to the current shekel and then fuck your own argument by reminding everyone that shekels were otherwise most recently dated to around 2000 years ago and absolutely NOBODY raises the issues of joos 2000 years ago in any antisemitic ways!

    “It is, to the best of my knowledge, untrue to state that there was ever been meaningful linkage between "shekels" and antisemitism.”

    The most fucking dumb thing I have ever read on PB - and this is a place where HYUFD says we should have nuked Argentina.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,054

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    Agreed. But there was a time that he was seen as 'good' to us, because he married a fruity westerner.

    As did Assad.
    Assad Jr married another Syrian. Dunno how fruity she is..
    Assad's wife has British citizenship and was born and raised in London.
    Are we confusing father and son here?
    Since Bashar al-Assad's wife was born in 1975, I really hope it was the son, not his father, who was born in 1930...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asma_al-Assad

    She was London born, raised and educated, so I think it's fair to say 'western'. She only moved to Syria and married Assad aged 25.
    Assad used to work in London, for the NHS, until the untimely death of his elder brother in a car accident (from memory) and he became the heir.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    edited April 2022
    Meanwhile, it is hard not to see a growing echo of fascism in Putin’s regime.

    The war at home has been symbolised with a lightning flash style ‘Z’, and the bitter Russian joke goes: where is the other half of the swastika? Oh, it’s been stolen.

    A mix of fascism and kleptocracy, after all, are becoming the last defining features of Putinism in its final, morbid stage.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrifying-neo-nazi-mercenaries-being-deployed-in-ukraine
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,917

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    Agreed. But there was a time that he was seen as 'good' to us, because he married a fruity westerner.

    As did Assad.
    Assad Jr married another Syrian. Dunno how fruity she is..
    Assad's wife has British citizenship and was born and raised in London.
    Are we confusing father and son here?
    Since Bashar al-Assad's wife was born in 1975, I really hope it was the son, not his father, who was born in 1930...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asma_al-Assad

    She was London born, raised and educated, so I think it's fair to say 'western'. She only moved to Syria and married Assad aged 25.
    Indeeed, but she has Syrian parents.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Leon said:

    It is the nuclear bomb of AI, it is so powerful it must - from the start - be ringfenced and regulated very fiercely

    Skynet says hi
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    CatMan said:

    "Essex counsellor driving tank up A1"


    Councillor rather than counsellor?

    Not much difference:

    https://hf.space/streamlit/dalle-mini/dalle-mini/+/media/3d6605fca23726d9008162873541ce5e7a9d4134f9852c9473c3ceca.jpeg

    And it fails on so many levels, not just on the faces. There is nothing to show why this is a 'councillor' - it's just a (literally) faceless person (and male, oddly - does it choose women from a non-gendered job title?) And that's certainly not the A1. And the scales are wrong for a picture. If it was a cartoon, fine. But it's a Babs - neither one thing or the other.

    And to be *really* pedantic, I don't think that's a 'tank' .... ;)

    It could just as easily be 'Cyclops subsumed by an IFV on his estate.'
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    If Boris was as popular in UK as he is in Ukraine, he'd walk the next election.

    Zelinskyy's Head of Office tweets:

    https://twitter.com/AndriyYermak/status/1512816224668901382

    "Leadership is the burden you take up voluntarily when the rest are dodging. True leaders are never many. And it's great Ukraine has true friends among them. Like @BorisJohnson who's been to Kyiv today..."

    It's nice to know Ukraine has a high regard for our government even if its one I didn't vote for myself.

    However it makes me uneasy. What does it say about our allies?

    Medvedev's comments if true are simply appalling. However I'm worried that we've become so used to such outrageous remarks being made that we are de-sensitised to it. We shouldn't be. It also calls into question the integrity of the United Nations. How can you have a situation where a permanent member of the security council denies the right of another UN member to exist? It's undermining the very foundational principles of the UN itself. We should insist that the Russian government disowns the remarks or try to pass a motion suspending Russia from the UN Security Council. It may be futile but we would at least see who's prepared to put their heads above the parapet.

    Why is Medvedev saying such things? Perhaps it is designed to make us think that Russia may be prepared to use nuclear weapons. Is that because they are seriously considering it or is it just sabre rattling? And how will we be able to tell?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,917

    Meanwhile, it is hard not to see a growing echo of fascism in Putin’s regime.

    The war at home has been symbolised with a lightning flash style ‘Z’, and the bitter Russian joke goes: where is the other half of the swastika? Oh, it’s been stolen.

    A mix of fascism and kleptocracy, after all, are becoming the last defining features of Putinism in its final, morbid stage.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrifying-neo-nazi-mercenaries-being-deployed-in-ukraine

    Why did they choose the first letter of the name of the Ukrainian leader they despise so much?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,762
    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Love him or hate him, one has to admit that Boris has had a terrific week: lauded as the saviour of Ukraine whilst brilliantly portraying rival Rishi as the ultimate Citizen of Nowhere and cosmopolitan dandy, surely the ultimate insult amongst the Tory base. Boris is lord of all he surveys.
    Mm. He now has to fulfil his promises. For instance, are the AFVs the Mastiffs we've already heard about? And what's the British Army going to do for rides?
    NEW: Total UK aid to Ukraine announced today and yesterday;

    • 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missiles
    • $130m worth of Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes
    • $500 million in World Bank

    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1512842016920637444

    I ham reluctant to quibble over the government’s support for Ukraine.

    It’s not complicated. It’s entirely possible fully to support them on this, and to be determined to vote to kick them out at the next election.
    Nice of Total UK to help… shame that Total France is still grubbing for shekels in Russia
    I love the way you said shekels.

    Love it.
    I love the way that Israel is unambiguously standing behind Ukraine with full thrusted support about the illegal occupation of her land by an aggressive neighbour
    Dem 4 x 2s, eh?

    Why do you think Total France trades or accounts in shekels?
    I don’t, you idiot. It was a turn of phrase.
    It’s not a “turn of phrase” at all.

    It’s a pointed use of an anti-Semitic trope that taking “shekels” is linked to the evil joos and their worship of money.

    As I said - you could have written “euros” or “roubles” as they are the relevant currencies to the point you were making.
    Let’s leave it there.

    It was a poor choice of word on my side, but you are wrong to read anything malign into it.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Like all those who had never met Diana before she died but descended into paroxysms of despair at her death.
    And as we will no doubt see when londonbridgeisdown
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Sandpit said:

    Entertainingly off-topic but we've decided we want to open a cafe. We own (one of) the former bank(s) in the village, there's a decent catchment, the previous cafe shut 6 years ago when the owners retired and is still talked about, and we've had a neb round various other similar establishments and looks like a good idea.

    OK so I'm going to be busy (I'm about to be London-based half the week managing my soon to be former client's new UK business) but figure that as no rent is payable can afford to employ people. Have started building the business plan and the profit margins on some of these items are daft.

    Just need to tackle the council's planning people. No physical alterations to the building needed inside or out, but its listed and the planning portal suggests even a change of use needs plans to show the non-work I plan on doing...

    The plans will need to show the internal layout - number of seats, kitchen equipment including vent ducting etc - and any external signage attached to the building. You might also need to show you have places for people to park, depending on the precise location and how anal the council are about these things. The margins can seem daft, but there’s lots of wastage and the staff costs can add up. That said, with no rent it should be possible to make a decent business out of it. Good luck! :+1:
    You should price a market rent into your analysis unless there is no alternative use for the property/ you can’t sell it. Otherwise it will just artificially inflate the cafes apparent profitability
    There will be rent payable. By my cafe business to the building owner. As with the rent paid by the current tenant (a management consultancy business) I just happen to be both the tenant and the landlord, albeit wearing different hats for tax purposes.

    Yes indeed, I am Mrs Sunak.
    You will need an experienced and good cafe/restaurant manager.

    Where do you live?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    If rumours are true he did possess a very impressive organ. (At least that’s how Billy Birmingham has Tony Greig describing him as hung like a rogue elephant...)
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Amazing what AI can do these days.






    This is what DALL.E mini produces
    How do you create stuff on DALLE? :curious:
    Go to
    https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini

    And enter text eg Boris or political betting and you get something like this

    The mona lisa with a hat



    Uncanny.
    I won't post the images, but "SeanT with a flint dildo" produces little of relevance.

    Which shows an issues with these so-called AI's. An 'intelligence' would know when it doesn't know, and say: "I'm sorry, what's a SeanT?" We know the many identities of SeanT; the AI does not. Instead it produces garbage output.
    If you are using mini-Dall-e, which you must be - as only 400 people in the world have access to Dall-e 2, then know this

    1. Mini-Dall-e is a ridiculous fraction of the reality, like basing your opinion of American comedy on a single mediocre episode of Friends

    2. Dall-e is explicitly designed to be near-useless with human faces. This is written into its code. Because the creators are shit-scared of its ability to do deepfakes (Boris fucking a wasp, say) or horrible Nazi porn (Boris in an SS uniform fucking a wasp that looks like Meghan Markle) so they have basically removed all functionality as regards real faces and, mostly, human bodies too

    This is why, inter Alia, all the best stuff produced so far involves toys and animals and cartoon characters or total fantasy. These have no in built restrictions

    There. Now you are educated
    If I have Boris/Wasp slash nightmares tonight, I'm holding you responsible.

    (But yes. The jobs being automated out of existence stuff... as a society, we have experience of that. Probably insufficient, but we have insight into what to do. But the deepfake stuff, the idea that we can't trust the evidence of our eyes... that's scary. Don't have nightmares, everyone.)
    Yep, It’s a real scary issue

    And when you see what Dall-e-2 can do with raccoons and chimps and cuddly dogs - totally convincing images that look real, yet are entirely contrived and unreal - then the idea you could apply this to actual humans: deepfakes, porn, atrocity videos, politicians, celebs, pedo stuff, Zelenskyy, yikes

    That’s why this tech is being rigidly policed, to an extraordinary extent

    It is the nuclear bomb of AI, it is so powerful it must - from the start - be ringfenced and regulated very fiercely
    Do you have direct access to Dall-e-2? Have you been able to directly enter statements in and get answers? If not, how do you know that these are not just cherry-picked results by people hyping up their own results?

    And BTW, allowing a small number of people 'exclusive' access is a good way of hyping. It gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of exclusivity that makes them want to say good things - particularly if you hand pick those people - whilst not risking dodgy ones getting out. especially if you control what they can say about the project through NDAs (*)

    Dall-e-2 *looks* impressive. But the history of AI is littered with things that looked amazing, but turned out to be just meh when it finally emerged. Tesla's self-driving being a classic case. we're still waiting for Musk's coast-to-coast drive...

    (*) I've no idea if that is the case here, but it is common and understandable.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Meanwhile, it is hard not to see a growing echo of fascism in Putin’s regime.

    The war at home has been symbolised with a lightning flash style ‘Z’, and the bitter Russian joke goes: where is the other half of the swastika? Oh, it’s been stolen.

    A mix of fascism and kleptocracy, after all, are becoming the last defining features of Putinism in its final, morbid stage.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrifying-neo-nazi-mercenaries-being-deployed-in-ukraine

    Why did they choose the first letter of the name of the Ukrainian leader they despise so much?
    iirc it was originally on the tanks that were heading to western Ukr. Z is letter at start of Russian word for 'West'.

  • boulayboulay Posts: 3,773

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Love him or hate him, one has to admit that Boris has had a terrific week: lauded as the saviour of Ukraine whilst brilliantly portraying rival Rishi as the ultimate Citizen of Nowhere and cosmopolitan dandy, surely the ultimate insult amongst the Tory base. Boris is lord of all he surveys.
    Mm. He now has to fulfil his promises. For instance, are the AFVs the Mastiffs we've already heard about? And what's the British Army going to do for rides?
    NEW: Total UK aid to Ukraine announced today and yesterday;

    • 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missiles
    • $130m worth of Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes
    • $500 million in World Bank

    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1512842016920637444

    I ham reluctant to quibble over the government’s support for Ukraine.

    It’s not complicated. It’s entirely possible fully to support them on this, and to be determined to vote to kick them out at the next election.
    Nice of Total UK to help… shame that Total France is still grubbing for shekels in Russia
    I love the way you said shekels.

    Love it.
    I love the way that Israel is unambiguously standing behind Ukraine with full thrusted support about the illegal occupation of her land by an aggressive neighbour
    Dem 4 x 2s, eh?

    Why do you think Total France trades or accounts in shekels?
    I don’t, you idiot. It was a turn of phrase.
    It’s not a “turn of phrase” at all.

    It’s a pointed use of an anti-Semitic trope that taking “shekels” is linked to the evil joos and their worship of money.

    As I said - you could have written “euros” or “roubles” as they are the relevant currencies to the point you were making.
    Let’s leave it there.

    It was a poor choice of word on my side, but you are wrong to read anything malign into it.
    Absolutely fair play to you, it wasn’t fit for purpose……
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited April 2022

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080

    Meanwhile, it is hard not to see a growing echo of fascism in Putin’s regime.

    The war at home has been symbolised with a lightning flash style ‘Z’, and the bitter Russian joke goes: where is the other half of the swastika? Oh, it’s been stolen.

    A mix of fascism and kleptocracy, after all, are becoming the last defining features of Putinism in its final, morbid stage.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrifying-neo-nazi-mercenaries-being-deployed-in-ukraine

    Why did they choose the first letter of the name of the Ukrainian leader they despise so much?
    The best suggestion I have heard is that it is an abbreviation of the Russian "for victory", or a similar phrase, or for 'west' for forces from he Western Military District.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Nigelb said:

    So much of what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is deeply hideous and scary. I'm finding it harder and harder to accept us not doing more, and halting all purchases of anything from Russia, and perhaps even fighting alongside Ukraine.

    “Russia to Fast-Track Adoption of Deported Ukraine Orphans: Kyiv Officials”

    Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

    E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

    https://un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml


    https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1512798107276296196

    … As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at at the moment those actions become public knowledge. From a legal perspective, the existence of such a text (in the larger context of similar statements and Vladimir Putin's repeated denial that Ukraine exists) makes the charge of genocide far easier to make. Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.
    https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?s=r
    A carbon copy of what the Nazis did with Aryan looking children.
    Roger said:

    At a handshake distance. @BorisJohnson and @ZelenskyyUa walked through the center of Kyiv and talked to ordinary Kyivans. This is what democracy looks like. This is what courage looks like. This is what true friendship between peoples and between nations looks like.

    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1512867082932793347

    If that's courage they should seek out Jeremy Bowen. He has been visiting some seriously dangerous war zones and sending back some exceptional stories.
    You forget Orla Guerin and Lyse Doucet who have been there for far longer than Jeremy Bowen. They are brilliant journalists.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,246

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Amazing what AI can do these days.






    This is what DALL.E mini produces
    How do you create stuff on DALLE? :curious:
    Go to
    https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini

    And enter text eg Boris or political betting and you get something like this

    The mona lisa with a hat



    Uncanny.
    I won't post the images, but "SeanT with a flint dildo" produces little of relevance.

    Which shows an issues with these so-called AI's. An 'intelligence' would know when it doesn't know, and say: "I'm sorry, what's a SeanT?" We know the many identities of SeanT; the AI does not. Instead it produces garbage output.
    If you are using mini-Dall-e, which you must be - as only 400 people in the world have access to Dall-e 2, then know this

    1. Mini-Dall-e is a ridiculous fraction of the reality, like basing your opinion of American comedy on a single mediocre episode of Friends

    2. Dall-e is explicitly designed to be near-useless with human faces. This is written into its code. Because the creators are shit-scared of its ability to do deepfakes (Boris fucking a wasp, say) or horrible Nazi porn (Boris in an SS uniform fucking a wasp that looks like Meghan Markle) so they have basically removed all functionality as regards real faces and, mostly, human bodies too

    This is why, inter Alia, all the best stuff produced so far involves toys and animals and cartoon characters or total fantasy. These have no in built restrictions

    There. Now you are educated
    If I have Boris/Wasp slash nightmares tonight, I'm holding you responsible.

    (But yes. The jobs being automated out of existence stuff... as a society, we have experience of that. Probably insufficient, but we have insight into what to do. But the deepfake stuff, the idea that we can't trust the evidence of our eyes... that's scary. Don't have nightmares, everyone.)
    Yep, It’s a real scary issue

    And when you see what Dall-e-2 can do with raccoons and chimps and cuddly dogs - totally convincing images that look real, yet are entirely contrived and unreal - then the idea you could apply this to actual humans: deepfakes, porn, atrocity videos, politicians, celebs, pedo stuff, Zelenskyy, yikes

    That’s why this tech is being rigidly policed, to an extraordinary extent

    It is the nuclear bomb of AI, it is so powerful it must - from the start - be ringfenced and regulated very fiercely
    Do you have direct access to Dall-e-2? Have you been able to directly enter statements in and get answers? If not, how do you know that these are not just cherry-picked results by people hyping up their own results?

    And BTW, allowing a small number of people 'exclusive' access is a good way of hyping. It gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of exclusivity that makes them want to say good things - particularly if you hand pick those people - whilst not risking dodgy ones getting out. especially if you control what they can say about the project through NDAs (*)

    Dall-e-2 *looks* impressive. But the history of AI is littered with things that looked amazing, but turned out to be just meh when it finally emerged. Tesla's self-driving being a classic case. we're still waiting for Musk's coast-to-coast drive...

    (*) I've no idea if that is the case here, but it is common and understandable.
    The hype about GPT3 turned out to be real. And this is exactly the same process. There are people super-critical of its inherent bias, who have access, who are nonetheless saying: Yes, it is amazing, magical, etc

    They do not all work for OpenAI, and have no financial interest in it succeeding, as far as I can see (tho I suppose they could be secretly in the pay of Microsoft)

    Also, there is no sign of Microsoft trying to monetize it. They haven’t even tried to monetize GPT3 yet, they are still too concerned by its innate yet unknown power

    Incidentally there is ALREADY a subculture growing, on social media, of people who flatly disbelieve that a computer can do all this: they reckon it is all theatre, and these things are actually being carefully digitized by teams of super clever slave coders in Malaysia, or wherever (it is generally Asia)

    The Third World War won’t be fought with missiles (I hope). It will be fought with different versions of the “facts”. Perhaps we are already fighting it
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    To expand on a point I hinted at below: these AIs are sexist.

    Enter 'nurse with gun', and you get images of women (well, sort-of, given how bad the AI is - but they don't look male).

    Enter 'firefighter with child' and you get a man (although in this case, they look more like the product of a drunken Edvard Munch).

    Yet the more interesting answers are when you get a male nurse, or a female firefighter.

    There is a real issue with 'AIs' from real-world datasets stereotyping people wrongly by gender or race because of dataset bias.

    Too many AIs encode bias.

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/ai-machine-learning-bias-discrimination/
    https://www.ibm.com/blogs/journey-to-ai/2022/02/we-must-check-for-racial-bias-in-our-machine-learning-models/
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
  • boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997
    MattW said:

    Meanwhile, it is hard not to see a growing echo of fascism in Putin’s regime.

    The war at home has been symbolised with a lightning flash style ‘Z’, and the bitter Russian joke goes: where is the other half of the swastika? Oh, it’s been stolen.

    A mix of fascism and kleptocracy, after all, are becoming the last defining features of Putinism in its final, morbid stage.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrifying-neo-nazi-mercenaries-being-deployed-in-ukraine

    Why did they choose the first letter of the name of the Ukrainian leader they despise so much?
    The best suggestion I have heard is that it is an abbreviation of the Russian "for victory", or a similar phrase, or for 'west' for forces from he Western Military District.
    I think it was just a field sign, they chose letters from the Latin alphabet 'cos the Ukrainians use Cyrillic too.
  • boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Leon said:

    I offer this as a special gift to @Theuniondivvie

    Amazing what AI can do these days.






    This is what DALL.E mini produces
    How do you create stuff on DALLE? :curious:
    Go to
    https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini

    And enter text eg Boris or political betting and you get something like this

    The mona lisa with a hat



    Uncanny.
    I won't post the images, but "SeanT with a flint dildo" produces little of relevance.

    Which shows an issues with these so-called AI's. An 'intelligence' would know when it doesn't know, and say: "I'm sorry, what's a SeanT?" We know the many identities of SeanT; the AI does not. Instead it produces garbage output.
    If you are using mini-Dall-e, which you must be - as only 400 people in the world have access to Dall-e 2, then know this

    1. Mini-Dall-e is a ridiculous fraction of the reality, like basing your opinion of American comedy on a single mediocre episode of Friends

    2. Dall-e is explicitly designed to be near-useless with human faces. This is written into its code. Because the creators are shit-scared of its ability to do deepfakes (Boris fucking a wasp, say) or horrible Nazi porn (Boris in an SS uniform fucking a wasp that looks like Meghan Markle) so they have basically removed all functionality as regards real faces and, mostly, human bodies too

    This is why, inter Alia, all the best stuff produced so far involves toys and animals and cartoon characters or total fantasy. These have no in built restrictions

    There. Now you are educated
    If I have Boris/Wasp slash nightmares tonight, I'm holding you responsible.

    (But yes. The jobs being automated out of existence stuff... as a society, we have experience of that. Probably insufficient, but we have insight into what to do. But the deepfake stuff, the idea that we can't trust the evidence of our eyes... that's scary. Don't have nightmares, everyone.)
    Yep, It’s a real scary issue

    And when you see what Dall-e-2 can do with raccoons and chimps and cuddly dogs - totally convincing images that look real, yet are entirely contrived and unreal - then the idea you could apply this to actual humans: deepfakes, porn, atrocity videos, politicians, celebs, pedo stuff, Zelenskyy, yikes

    That’s why this tech is being rigidly policed, to an extraordinary extent

    It is the nuclear bomb of AI, it is so powerful it must - from the start - be ringfenced and regulated very fiercely
    Do you have direct access to Dall-e-2? Have you been able to directly enter statements in and get answers? If not, how do you know that these are not just cherry-picked results by people hyping up their own results?

    And BTW, allowing a small number of people 'exclusive' access is a good way of hyping. It gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of exclusivity that makes them want to say good things - particularly if you hand pick those people - whilst not risking dodgy ones getting out. especially if you control what they can say about the project through NDAs (*)

    Dall-e-2 *looks* impressive. But the history of AI is littered with things that looked amazing, but turned out to be just meh when it finally emerged. Tesla's self-driving being a classic case. we're still waiting for Musk's coast-to-coast drive...

    (*) I've no idea if that is the case here, but it is common and understandable.
    The hype about GPT3 turned out to be real. And this is exactly the same process. There are people super-critical of its inherent bias, who have access, who are nonetheless saying: Yes, it is amazing, magical, etc

    They do not all work for OpenAI, and have no financial interest in it succeeding, as far as I can see (tho I suppose they could be secretly in the pay of Microsoft)

    Also, there is no sign of Microsoft trying to monetize it. They haven’t even tried to monetize GPT3 yet, they are still too concerned by its innate yet unknown power

    Incidentally there is ALREADY a subculture growing, on social media, of people who flatly disbelieve that a computer can do all this: they reckon it is all theatre, and these things are actually being carefully digitized by teams of super clever slave coders in Malaysia, or wherever (it is generally Asia)

    The Third World War won’t be fought with missiles (I hope). It will be fought with different versions of the “facts”. Perhaps we are already fighting it
    Has the hype of GPT3 turned out to be real? Or are you just reading hype about hype?

    And how do you know the few hundred people selected are super-critical of its inherent bias? How were they selected? Do they work in AI and therefore have a ball in the game? What do you base that claim on?

    AI might change the world. But there is a heck of a lot of hype about it, and not much to back up that hype. But it needs proper real-world testing, not reading an article or research by people involved.

    That's one way Theranos happened. There's money in AI, and every small bit of progress can mean millions in funding. If you can pretend to make a lot of progress, tens or hundreds of millions. It's very tempting to over-sell your progress.

    You need to be *way* more sceptical. Contact them, and say as an interested and believing journalist you would like access. If they don't allow it, ask yourself why. There might be good reasons, or there might be bad ones.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
    Still a five wicket haul. Not to be sniffed at. Sometimes the hardest bowlers are the really inconsistent ones. Five wides in a row followed by the odd straight one can be lethal.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    25m
    Johnson: “How are you?”

    Zelensky: “You know how I am”.

    The legendary Eastern European bluntness.
  • boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
    Still a five wicket haul. Not to be sniffed at. Sometimes the hardest bowlers are the really inconsistent ones. Five wides in a row followed by the odd straight one can be lethal.
    Each wicket was an absolute pie, all the batsman trudged off inconsolable that they had lost their wicket to a pie thrower.

    A couple of matches later I knew my career was over when one of my deliveries nearly maimed the square leg umpire, quite an achievement to accidentally bowl a beamer at the square leg ump.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Absolutely to be touched, aggrieved etc. But the level of nonsense over Diana, say, goes beyond that. It becomes confected. Trying to share a feeling which is not genuine. When you lose a loved one, that’s grief. When a famous person you have never met dies, you are not grieving in the same way, or normal people don’t at any rate. Yes be touched, sad for the children, but it’s not a personal grief.
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,623

    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    25m
    Johnson: “How are you?”

    Zelensky: “You know how I am”.

    The legendary Eastern European bluntness.

    Quite right. Not really the environment or time for small talk...
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    25m
    Johnson: “How are you?”

    Zelensky: “You know how I am”.

    The legendary Eastern European bluntness.

    Quite right. Not really the environment or time for small talk...
    "Mustn't grumble." is the correct response.

  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    7h
    Finland will soon join NATO.

    Another big step toward membership was taken today.

    @AnnikaSaarikko
    , the head of the Center Party announced the party has changed its mind and will support NATO membership.

    It’s one of the largest parties and was traditionally pro-neutrality.

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1512790160852893713
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 2,700

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
    Still a five wicket haul. Not to be sniffed at. Sometimes the hardest bowlers are the really inconsistent ones. Five wides in a row followed by the odd straight one can be lethal.
    Each wicket was an absolute pie, all the batsman trudged off inconsolable that they had lost their wicket to a pie thrower.

    A couple of matches later I knew my career was over when one of my deliveries nearly maimed the square leg umpire, quite an achievement to accidentally bowl a beamer at the square leg ump.
    Hope you had the decency to ask "Howzat?'
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    It is perhaps revealing that he declares that he 'now pays his full share'.

    For those of us on PAYE we don't get a choice in whether we pay or not.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    edited April 2022

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
    Still a five wicket haul. Not to be sniffed at. Sometimes the hardest bowlers are the really inconsistent ones. Five wides in a row followed by the odd straight one can be lethal.
    Each wicket was an absolute pie, all the batsman trudged off inconsolable that they had lost their wicket to a pie thrower.

    A couple of matches later I knew my career was over when one of my deliveries nearly maimed the square leg umpire, quite an achievement to accidentally bowl a beamer at the square leg ump.
    I was once bowled by a medium pacer who slung down a half tracker that bounced no more than 2 inches from the pitch and hit middle stump. One of the fielders called out ‘well bowled’, to much embarrassment from the other 10 players...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,573
    "When Orbán says that he cannot see what happened in Bucha, he must be advised to see an eye doctor” — Jarosław Kaczyński, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland sharply condemned Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who continues to maintain relations with Russia
    https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1512888316252860438
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Shanghai residents revolt over Zero Covid lockdown: Videos shows mobs looting stores for food after being confined to their homes for 22 days

    Panic-buying turns into looting at supply points as residents fight for food
    Locals also seen breaking Covid barriers which stop them going between streets
    Severe lockdown has failed to curb Covid cases as Omicron prompts case record
    Shanghai had 23,600 new cases Friday - and official data likely understating it
    Infected babies and under-7s taken by docs and separated from their parents"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10702811/Shanghai-residents-revolt-Zero-Covid-lockdown-Videos-shows-mobs-looting-stores-urgent-food.html

    All three of the Great Powers have now been checked by opponents they're unable to defeat.

    Russia: Ukraine

    China: Covid

    America: America

    https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1512863971916718080
    Except that America has the ability to renew itself, for instance with the new Supreme Court appointment we saw this week.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Why would Cambridge have rejected Imran? Was their cricket XI so good they could afford to turn down a Test player? More to the point, why would he have applied? He was already playing for Worcestershire - it's just a short train ride. As every schoolboy knows, Cambridge is bloody miles away from everywhere.

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Imran Khan loses confidence vote.

    Horrible man. Probably to be replaced by someone else horrible, but we'll see.
    WTF happened with Imran Khan? He used to be an absolute player. I don’t know whether it was Jemima Goldsmith who messed him up but I remember meeting him at a school cricket match when he was squiring Kristiane Bakker who was one of the hottest MTV presenters. He was very amusing and fun and we had many beers etc. did he “find god” or is he just a weird ass-hat?
    Imran Khan has always been a wrong 'un, he went to the dump known as the University of Oxford, read PPE no less.

    The University of Cambridge did the right thing in rejecting Imran Khan, they only choose the best Pakistani heritage people.
    Applying to both (at least at the same time) was only possible if you were applying for an organ scholarship: I didn't realise he was that musical...
    From what I've heard and read Cambridge didn't think Khan would be the right fit for Cambridge due to his partying lifestyle, it wasn't racism as other Pakistani cricketers including Khan's cousin was accepted by Cambridge, so that's why Imran Khan wanted to go to Cambridge.

    In my era, the late 90s, it was the same about applying to both places, but it was said that a huge cricket fan at Oxford pulled some strings to get Khan in.

    Although Atherton and Steve James, now also excelling as a journalist, played in the same Cambridge XI in the 1980s, it is necessary to trawl back to the 1970s or even the 1960s to find what could be described as a strong side. Here, the admissions tutors are to blame. Tony Lewis, one of the last England captains to be nurtured at Oxbridge, memorably said that "they shrink by their own myopia."

    Their unworldly preference for swats, geeks and rowers has brought about this state of affairs. Even Imran Khan, turned down by Cambridge, where his cousin Majid Khan, had gone, only got into Oxford through the efforts of the late Dr Paul Hayes, a keen cricket enthusiast at Keble College, and that was in the 1970s


    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/excellence-exhausted-368344
    In the last two or three decades being a decent cricket player has been the kiss of death on an application to Oxbridge due to the time spent playing in the crucial summer term.
    I'm so glad I was a SWOT, geek, and rubbish cricket player when I applied.
    Still in with a chance with England though.
    That dream died when I turned 14, I had growth spurt which completely ruined my action.

    One spell after the growth spurt was

    4-0-82-5

    I think I bowled 20 wides and the five wickets, three were stumpings off wides and two were full tosses/long hops caught on the boundary.
    Still a five wicket haul. Not to be sniffed at. Sometimes the hardest bowlers are the really inconsistent ones. Five wides in a row followed by the odd straight one can be lethal.
    Each wicket was an absolute pie, all the batsman trudged off inconsolable that they had lost their wicket to a pie thrower.

    A couple of matches later I knew my career was over when one of my deliveries nearly maimed the square leg umpire, quite an achievement to accidentally bowl a beamer at the square leg ump.
    You have obviously never been roped in to umpire the U12C team...
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    You think Putin hasn't got designs on Alaska?
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060
    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    It would be like doctors not working to reduce the tax they pay on their pension contributions.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Did I say that? It still amazes me that the 1988-89 season was completed. I guess the urge to return to something like normal was a key factor.

    But I’m not sure what’s left to say about it. You need to be 40 to have any memory of the day itself.

    I’m lucky to have been born late enough that I’ve only known all seater stadia. The football world today is utterly different to 1989.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820

    To expand on a point I hinted at below: these AIs are sexist.

    Enter 'nurse with gun', and you get images of women (well, sort-of, given how bad the AI is - but they don't look male).

    Enter 'firefighter with child' and you get a man (although in this case, they look more like the product of a drunken Edvard Munch).

    Yet the more interesting answers are when you get a male nurse, or a female firefighter.

    There is a real issue with 'AIs' from real-world datasets stereotyping people wrongly by gender or race because of dataset bias.

    Too many AIs encode bias.

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/ai-machine-learning-bias-discrimination/
    https://www.ibm.com/blogs/journey-to-ai/2022/02/we-must-check-for-racial-bias-in-our-machine-learning-models/

    That makes no sense. Where's the 'dataset bias'? The dataset reflects reality. Most nurses are women. Most firefighters are men.You seem to be wanting the AI algorithm to act like a corporate PR department, choosing the pictures to fake some quotas which don't actually correspond with reality.
  • Gary_BurtonGary_Burton Posts: 737
    HYUFD said:

    nico679 said:

    Sandpit said:

    nico679 said:

    Le Pen can still win the first round as she might see more transfers from Zemmour .

    Macrons polling has looked quite stable recently around the 26% mark . If you remove the bump he got around the time of the start of the war in Ukraine then nothing much has changed in terms of his support over the last few months.

    Andrew Neil’s column was very good but one thing I disagree with . Mélenchons supporters if you take all the polling into account generally shows a slight edge to Macron in terms of second round transfers .

    And add to that .

    A large amount of his support comes from the Muslim population in France , current abstention rates are likely to include a disproportionate level of that community as they tend to be less likely to vote overall but if Le Pen looks to have a chance of the Presidency this will drive up that turnout .

    Looking across the polling Le Pen is maxing out her second round polling because of low abstention rates amongst Zemmours voters who transfer to her .

    That’s why turnout is key in the second round and this is something Macron has highlighted . If turnout goes up this is likely to be voters trying to stop Le Pen .

    Interesting observations about the Muslim vote in France. Question - will the fact that it’s the middle of Ramadan have an affect on their turnout, one way or the other?
    I wouldn’t have thought so for voters but for any volunteers it will be a hard slog during the day . In terms of Mélenchon in 2017 he took more of the Muslim vote in round 1 than Macron which might come as a surprise .

    Melenchon won the under 25 vote and the Muslim and atheist vote in the first round in 2017. Which is not that surprising as his voter base was and is very similar to Corbyn's in 2017 and 2019
    He has a narrow plurality among 18-24s in the last poll I saw - but only with 27% and by 2%. His next best age group is 35-49 year olds.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    You think Putin hasn't got designs on Alaska?
    No, I don't. And the ability of the US to defend Alaska, if that ludicrous proposition were to eventuate, is not enhanced by NATO membership.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Absolutely to be touched, aggrieved etc. But the level of nonsense over Diana, say, goes beyond that. It becomes confected. Trying to share a feeling which is not genuine. When you lose a loved one, that’s grief. When a famous person you have never met dies, you are not grieving in the same way, or normal people don’t at any rate. Yes be touched, sad for the children, but it’s not a personal grief.
    I agree re the Diana bollocks. There was a madness which shaded into unpleasant emotional bullying. But I am not talking about that or, indeed, about grief.

    It's about the urgent need to get the truth about what happened and why, to get those responsible to accept responsibility, the need for those in charge to apologise properly when they fuck things up and so on. That can - and IMO should - be shared by more than those directly affected. It is the only way effective change for the better will happen.

    I would urge listening to the Aberfan podcast I reference - and indeed read my article. The former is - obviously - grim listening. But essential. There is much to learn IMO. I wrote my article because it made me reflect on something that investigators can, if they're not careful, forget - the human element: the victims, yes. But also others: those responsible and why they deny, the rescuers, the reporters, etc.

    It is something I think about a lot for professional reasons. Empathy is essential to an investigator - but real empathy and understanding is often overlooked. It shouldn't be.

    Without wishing to cast aspersions on PB'ers, some of the comments earlier were a bit crass and thoughtless and superficial and I wanted to bring a different perspective.

    I can't make you read it, of course. But I am interested in tragedies, investigations, cover ups, the search for truth and justice. They tell us so much about who we are and why we behave as we do when faced with events that no human should ever have to face. That is why I wrote it. To explore those themes.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    Maybe, but I'd have thought it was a useful vehicle for entrenching american influence, why give that up?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    Top tip: if the police hadn't failed in their duty of care and then engaged in a decades long cover up and smear campaign they wouldn't have been the target of ire.

    You are acting like they are blameless and lacked agency. As opposed to being a public body who failed in their duty of care and then engaged in a decades long cover up and smear campaign.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Absolutely to be touched, aggrieved etc. But the level of nonsense over Diana, say, goes beyond that. It becomes confected. Trying to share a feeling which is not genuine. When you lose a loved one, that’s grief. When a famous person you have never met dies, you are not grieving in the same way, or normal people don’t at any rate. Yes be touched, sad for the children, but it’s not a personal grief.
    I agree re the Diana bollocks. There was a madness which shaded into unpleasant emotional bullying. But I am not talking about that or, indeed, about grief.

    It's about the urgent need to get the truth about what happened and why, to get those responsible to accept responsibility, the need for those in charge to apologise properly when they fuck things up and so on. That can - and IMO should - be shared by more than those directly affected. It is the only way effective change for the better will happen.

    I would urge listening to the Aberfan podcast I reference - and indeed read my article. The former is - obviously - grim listening. But essential. There is much to learn IMO. I wrote my article because it made me reflect on something that investigators can, if they're not careful, forget - the human element: the victims, yes. But also others: those responsible and why they deny, the rescuers, the reporters, etc.

    It is something I think about a lot for professional reasons. Empathy is essential to an investigator - but real empathy and understanding is often overlooked. It shouldn't be.

    Without wishing to cast aspersions on PB'ers, some of the comments earlier were a bit crass and thoughtless and superficial and I wanted to bring a different perspective.

    I can't make you read it, of course. But I am interested in tragedies, investigations, cover ups, the search for truth and justice. They tell us so much about who we are and why we behave as we do when faced with events that no human should ever have to face. That is why I wrote it. To explore those themes.
    I will seek it out, thank you. I am always struck by the juxtaposition of Heysel and Hillsborough. Ultimately they have the same root causes, and I think there is something never owned by Liverpool fans. The smears after hillsborough were disgusting and wrong, and the police cover up sadly predictable. The Liverpool fans were not to blame on the day. But some of them were the reason for fences, along with all the other football hooligans who had made football the shameful thing it had become.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    .

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    On the other hand, Trump has no values and no standards. If backing NATO helps him get a second term, he will back NATO. He will find changing his mind remarkably easy, as he has no moral or ideological philosophy to stop him. It is about what position will help *him*.

    In a way, Trump has not created the right-wing problems in America. He is a product of those problems, and the fact it created him meant he stoked them. If enough republicans start loving NATO, he will too.
    That's remarkably naive and complacent. It ignores the evidence of how Trump managed to change the opinion of Republican voters on, for example, Russia.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Rishi Sunak's wife in £4m loan riddle: Tax experts call for investigation into whether Akshata Murty broke non-dom rules by lending money to her UK company with no interest charges"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10703531/Rishi-Sunaks-wife-4m-loan-riddle-Tax-experts-call-investigation.html
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,237
    edited April 2022

    Я киянин - I am a Kyivian

    Hope I got that right. Boris Johnson should say it. For himself and the free world.

    Don't have to like or trust BJ overmuch, to cheer the citizens and defenders of free Kyiv by cheering him this day.

    To paraphrase, the prejudices of a political hack aren't worth a hill of beans in this crazy world.

    Has he done enough yet for you to recant about him being a Putin stooge?
    My cheering is in a specific and limited way. The PM does appear to be doing most of the right things right now to do right by Ukraine and collective security.

    Time enough down the road for further inquiry, investigation, revelation, leaks, etc., etc.

    Addendum - Am giving Big Dog his day . . . not however for him & his fleas.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    kle4 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    Maybe, but I'd have thought it was a useful vehicle for entrenching american influence, why give that up?
    If the primary purpose of NATO, from a US perspective, is to 'entrench American influence' then the rest of you should leave.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited April 2022
    Cyclefree said:

    Nigelb said:

    So much of what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is deeply hideous and scary. I'm finding it harder and harder to accept us not doing more, and halting all purchases of anything from Russia, and perhaps even fighting alongside Ukraine.

    “Russia to Fast-Track Adoption of Deported Ukraine Orphans: Kyiv Officials”

    Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

    E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

    https://un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml


    https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1512798107276296196

    … As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at at the moment those actions become public knowledge. From a legal perspective, the existence of such a text (in the larger context of similar statements and Vladimir Putin's repeated denial that Ukraine exists) makes the charge of genocide far easier to make. Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.
    https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?s=r
    A carbon copy of what the Nazis did with Aryan looking children.
    Roger said:

    At a handshake distance. @BorisJohnson and @ZelenskyyUa walked through the center of Kyiv and talked to ordinary Kyivans. This is what democracy looks like. This is what courage looks like. This is what true friendship between peoples and between nations looks like.

    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1512867082932793347

    If that's courage they should seek out Jeremy Bowen. He has been visiting some seriously dangerous war zones and sending back some exceptional stories.
    You forget Orla Guerin and Lyse Doucet who have been there for far longer than Jeremy Bowen. They are brilliant journalists.
    I agree that they're both good jounalists but for reasons only known to the BBC Lyse Doucet hasn't left her hotel roof once and thus hasn't had anything interesting to see or say. I see they've now removed her. Orla Guerin has been better though I find her voice so maudlin it's difficult to listen to.

    Jeremy Bowen has been the outstanding commentator though. Going places others couldn't or wouldn't. He's produced a picture of whats going on that none of the others have managed. His work in Gaza obviously taught him a lot not least how to lose your minders and tell the story.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Absolutely to be touched, aggrieved etc. But the level of nonsense over Diana, say, goes beyond that. It becomes confected. Trying to share a feeling which is not genuine. When you lose a loved one, that’s grief. When a famous person you have never met dies, you are not grieving in the same way, or normal people don’t at any rate. Yes be touched, sad for the children, but it’s not a personal grief.
    I agree re the Diana bollocks. There was a madness which shaded into unpleasant emotional bullying. But I am not talking about that or, indeed, about grief.

    It's about the urgent need to get the truth about what happened and why, to get those responsible to accept responsibility, the need for those in charge to apologise properly when they fuck things up and so on. That can - and IMO should - be shared by more than those directly affected. It is the only way effective change for the better will happen.

    I would urge listening to the Aberfan podcast I reference - and indeed read my article. The former is - obviously - grim listening. But essential. There is much to learn IMO. I wrote my article because it made me reflect on something that investigators can, if they're not careful, forget - the human element: the victims, yes. But also others: those responsible and why they deny, the rescuers, the reporters, etc.

    It is something I think about a lot for professional reasons. Empathy is essential to an investigator - but real empathy and understanding is often overlooked. It shouldn't be.

    Without wishing to cast aspersions on PB'ers, some of the comments earlier were a bit crass and thoughtless and superficial and I wanted to bring a different perspective.

    I can't make you read it, of course. But I am interested in tragedies, investigations, cover ups, the search for truth and justice. They tell us so much about who we are and why we behave as we do when faced with events that no human should ever have to face. That is why I wrote it. To explore those themes.
    I will seek it out, thank you. I am always struck by the juxtaposition of Heysel and Hillsborough. Ultimately they have the same root causes, and I think there is something never owned by Liverpool fans. The smears after hillsborough were disgusting and wrong, and the police cover up sadly predictable. The Liverpool fans were not to blame on the day. But some of them were the reason for fences, along with all the other football hooligans who had made football the shameful thing it had become.
    Liverpool 39 Juventus 0 was common graffiti after Heysel.

    An irony being that Liverpool football fans generally had a low level of hooliganism.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    edited April 2022
    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    Top tip: if the police hadn't failed in their duty of care and then engaged in a decades long cover up and smear campaign they wouldn't have been the target of ire.

    You are acting like they are blameless and lacked agency. As opposed to being a public body who failed in their duty of care and then engaged in a decades long cover up and smear campaign.
    I’m sorry if I am appearing to say that the police are blameless. But I believe there are two issues. On the day they made mistakes. Tragic consequences, and ones that could have been avoided. The wrong officer was in charge. But ultimately the ground was not safe. It was a death trap. Hillsborough had nearly killed before at a previous game.
    What happened after should attract ire and blame, and I get that completely. It’s wrong that police were not held to account for lying, and smearing. I hope you can understand the nuance. I feel too many blame the police for the deaths, which at heart were accidental, with several root causes. Everything after they get the ire they deserve.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Dura_Ace said:

    kle4 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.

    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    Maybe, but I'd have thought it was a useful vehicle for entrenching american influence, why give that up?
    If the primary purpose of NATO, from a US perspective, is to 'entrench American influence' then the rest of you should leave.
    The point under question was potential benefit to the USA, hence my raising that possibility. However whatever their reasoning and purpose the question remains whether other members of NATO see benefits for themselves regardless of what the Americans get out of it. I think it'd be pretty stupid to act like the other members get nothing out of the relationship. They may not mind having american influence entrenched, given the alternative which has been so very clearly demonstrated recently. You frequently make it seem like involvement with the americans in any way is irrational, but there seem plenty of scenarios where it makes sense. Indeed, places which were happy to remain on the outside seem to be reassessing for just that reason.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    You think Putin hasn't got designs on Alaska?
    No, I don't. And the ability of the US to defend Alaska, if that ludicrous proposition were to eventuate, is not enhanced by NATO membership.
    It is given the US would have to go through Canada to defend it and Canada is also in NATO
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958

    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    25m
    Johnson: “How are you?”

    Zelensky: “You know how I am”.

    The legendary Eastern European bluntness.

    "You know how I am. We talk every 7 hours..."
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    The US is no longer big enough to contain China alone, it needs allies, including NATO allies as well as Japan, South Korea, Australia etc
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited April 2022

    Visegrád 24
    @visegrad24
    ·
    25m
    Johnson: “How are you?”

    Zelensky: “You know how I am”.

    The legendary Eastern European bluntness.

    Quite right. Not really the environment or time for small talk...
    That seems like a bit of an overreading of the literal text, particularly given one is not speaking his native language. There seemed nothing blunt about it in the video. And given it was a for media greeting in front of the camera the idea it was some commentary about not being the time for small talk doesn't stack up, the whole thing was a stage managed piece of political small talk, part of the expected press clippings for such events.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    For instance, for those
    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Did I say that? It still amazes me that the 1988-89 season was completed. I guess the urge to return to something like normal was a key factor.

    But I’m not sure what’s left to say about it. You need to be 40 to have any memory of the day itself.

    I’m lucky to have been born late enough that I’ve only known all seater stadia. The football world today is utterly different to 1989.
    My article is not primarily about Hillsborough. But there is plenty still to be said because there are so many common themes in these tragedies and scandals - themes that you can see in one that was reported on a couple of weeks ago re Shropshire Maternity Hospitals.

    It is because we lose this corporate memory, claim that it is all so long ago and things have changed that the same mistakes are made over and over again. As I show.

    Do please read. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
    Well, that's the thing about institutions. They have a sort of existence that transcends the staff. And it's not just the legal continuity or the name, and nor is it solely the chain of custody if I can call it that. Organisations have cultures and repeatedly we're shown that organisations can change management or even rebrand and still sometimes have the same rot. Even if the ship of Theseus is not the same as the one that embarked, it's hard to draw a line at any point and say "now it's not the same as then".

    As an aside, this is exactly why I'm fairly supportive of leaders apologising for things that their country did hundreds of years ago. It helps draw attention to the progress that's been made since, even if it's been invisibly gradual.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Absolutely to be touched, aggrieved etc. But the level of nonsense over Diana, say, goes beyond that. It becomes confected. Trying to share a feeling which is not genuine. When you lose a loved one, that’s grief. When a famous person you have never met dies, you are not grieving in the same way, or normal people don’t at any rate. Yes be touched, sad for the children, but it’s not a personal grief.
    I agree re the Diana bollocks. There was a madness which shaded into unpleasant emotional bullying. But I am not talking about that or, indeed, about grief.

    It's about the urgent need to get the truth about what happened and why, to get those responsible to accept responsibility, the need for those in charge to apologise properly when they fuck things up and so on. That can - and IMO should - be shared by more than those directly affected. It is the only way effective change for the better will happen.

    I would urge listening to the Aberfan podcast I reference - and indeed read my article. The former is - obviously - grim listening. But essential. There is much to learn IMO. I wrote my article because it made me reflect on something that investigators can, if they're not careful, forget - the human element: the victims, yes. But also others: those responsible and why they deny, the rescuers, the reporters, etc.

    It is something I think about a lot for professional reasons. Empathy is essential to an investigator - but real empathy and understanding is often overlooked. It shouldn't be.

    Without wishing to cast aspersions on PB'ers, some of the comments earlier were a bit crass and thoughtless and superficial and I wanted to bring a different perspective.

    I can't make you read it, of course. But I am interested in tragedies, investigations, cover ups, the search for truth and justice. They tell us so much about who we are and why we behave as we do when faced with events that no human should ever have to face. That is why I wrote it. To explore those themes.
    I will seek it out, thank you. I am always struck by the juxtaposition of Heysel and Hillsborough. Ultimately they have the same root causes, and I think there is something never owned by Liverpool fans. The smears after hillsborough were disgusting and wrong, and the police cover up sadly predictable. The Liverpool fans were not to blame on the day. But some of them were the reason for fences, along with all the other football hooligans who had made football the shameful thing it had become.
    Thank you. I'd be genuinely interested in your thoughts on it.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
    That's a stated reason for things like lower corporation taxes or the like. But for clever wheezes around trusts etc, which only seem to exist to get out of paying?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,395
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    You think Putin hasn't got designs on Alaska?
    No, I don't. And the ability of the US to defend Alaska, if that ludicrous proposition were to eventuate, is not enhanced by NATO membership.
    Sarah Palin would see them coming anyway.
  • kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
    Respect is easily lost, but hard to win back.

    The Sun was an awful hate-filled rag that day. In the decades that have passed, has anything happened to show that The Sun is anything other than an awful hate-filled rag still?

    People who have not been on the receiving end of it may be amused by them, and view it as nothing but tittle-tattle as the hate of the week moves on to somebody else. But for those who've seen it and come to that impression, what has The Sun ever done to redeem itself?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Cyclefree said:

    For instance, for those

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Did I say that? It still amazes me that the 1988-89 season was completed. I guess the urge to return to something like normal was a key factor.

    But I’m not sure what’s left to say about it. You need to be 40 to have any memory of the day itself.

    I’m lucky to have been born late enough that I’ve only known all seater stadia. The football world today is utterly different to 1989.
    My article is not primarily about Hillsborough. But there is plenty still to be said because there are so many common themes in these tragedies and scandals - themes that you can see in one that was reported on a couple of weeks ago re Shropshire Maternity Hospitals.

    It is because we lose this corporate memory, claim that it is all so long ago and things have changed that the same mistakes are made over and over again. As I show.

    Do please read. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
    Lessons have been learned.
    Things are different now.
    Lessons have been learned.
    Things are different now.
    Lessons have been learned.
    Things are different now.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,064

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    It would be like doctors not working to reduce the tax they pay on their pension contributions.
    Sure, if doctors reduce their earnings to reduce their taxes that is fair enough. They earn less as a result. These people dont reduce their earnings though, they just have legal means to dodge paying their share because their mates make the rules. They pay less tax and keep their earnings.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
    That's a stated reason for things like lower corporation taxes or the like. But for clever wheezes around trusts etc, which only seem to exist to get out of paying?
    If rich foreigners don't have to pay tax while living in London they can spend more in London restaurants and Harrods.

    And also give more to 'charitable causes'.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited April 2022

    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
    Respect is easily lost, but hard to win back.

    The Sun was an awful hate-filled rag that day. In the decades that have passed, has anything happened to show that The Sun is anything other than an awful hate-filled rag still?

    People who have not been on the receiving end of it may be amused by them, and view it as nothing but tittle-tattle as the hate of the week moves on to somebody else. But for those who've seen it and come to that impression, what has The Sun ever done to redeem itself?
    How will they know if they won't look at it? It comes across to me as something that distracts from the focus on the actual tragedy.

    I'm a Liverpool fan and not a Sun reader, but that aspect just seems pointless at this point.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Cyclefree said:

    For instance, for those

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Did I say that? It still amazes me that the 1988-89 season was completed. I guess the urge to return to something like normal was a key factor.

    But I’m not sure what’s left to say about it. You need to be 40 to have any memory of the day itself.

    I’m lucky to have been born late enough that I’ve only known all seater stadia. The football world today is utterly different to 1989.
    My article is not primarily about Hillsborough. But there is plenty still to be said because there are so many common themes in these tragedies and scandals - themes that you can see in one that was reported on a couple of weeks ago re Shropshire Maternity Hospitals.

    It is because we lose this corporate memory, claim that it is all so long ago and things have changed that the same mistakes are made over and over again. As I show.

    Do please read. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
    Very interesting, the contrast between your post and mine posted at basically the same time. You mention the loss of corporate memory, and I mention the continuity of culture (or at least the perception of it from outside).

    These things intersect in the psychology of blame. Experiments show that the people are much more willing to see their own successes as due to intrinsic qualities and their failures as due to circumstance, whilst seeing others' success as circumstantial and their failures due to internal degeneracy. Or in more vernacular terms, I'm great but sometimes unlucky, but you're an idiot and sometimes lucky.
    I speculate that this attitude disparity extends to abstract organisations like newspapers, both as extensions of the self for members of that organisation, and as large abstract "others" in the case of an outsider looking in. I certainly think people act this way about political parties they associate with, so why not papers too?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
    Whats the point in encouraging the bastards to live here if they don't pay their share?
    Well if they stick around long enough they might qualify to make political party donations?
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited April 2022
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
    Respect is easily lost, but hard to win back.

    The Sun was an awful hate-filled rag that day. In the decades that have passed, has anything happened to show that The Sun is anything other than an awful hate-filled rag still?

    People who have not been on the receiving end of it may be amused by them, and view it as nothing but tittle-tattle as the hate of the week moves on to somebody else. But for those who've seen it and come to that impression, what has The Sun ever done to redeem itself?
    How will they know if they won't look at it? It comes across to me as something that distracts from the focus on the actual tragedy.
    I've never read The Sun but it's been on the news often enough to still give me the impression it hasn't changed. It's still a rotten, hate-filled rag and I have no interest in giving it a penny or any of my attention.

    You don't need to read it to reach that opinion. I've never watched RT either and I have no intention of watching that either.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
    Whats the point in encouraging the bastards to live here if they dont pay their share?
    But think how many posho London restaurants and posho London shops and posho London car dealers they fund.

    Not to mention the 'charitable causes' and political donations.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060
    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    A combination of trying to encourage certain behaviour (e.g. savings and pensions for individuals, investment in things like R&D for companies) and dealing with edge cases in a way which is fair.

    Having said that, the whole edifice is far too complicated and I’d like to think it could be massively simplified.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    How could Sajid Javid be a non-dom when he was born here?

    Yes - he worked abroad for a while. So what? He'd be paying tax in the country where he worked like any expat.

    Is that really all it takes for a British born citizen to change their tax domicile?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    A combination of trying to encourage certain behaviour (e.g. savings and pensions for individuals, investment in things like R&D for companies) and dealing with edge cases in a way which is fair.

    Having said that, the whole edifice is far too complicated and I’d like to think it could be massively simplified.
    It obviously could as everyone always says it could. Yet it isn't, Ergo, they must not actually want it simplified.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Foxy said:

    NEW: In the week the health secretary said there was a "moral" duty to raise tax to pay for the NHS, he reveals he was a non dom and had an overseas trust in the early 2000s https://t.co/nJDJax6OhY

    These crooks keep it legal for just this reason. Taxes are for the plebs, not the Masters of the Universe".

    I've never really been clear what benefit, to the country that is, exists for all the myriad legal means of avoiding tax. That is, what is the official reason for their existence, rather than the obvious reason of providing means for wealthy people to pay less. Genuinely, what harm would follow for the country from having fewer means for wealthy people to pay less tax?

    Yes, I don't disagree you cannot simply raise it higher and higher and have it be effective, but this isn't about general rates, it is about all the clever little mechanisms to avoid.
    Isn't the standard reason all about encouraging talented people and investment from abroad or encouraging foreign oligarchs to spend their money in London ?
    Whats the point in encouraging the bastards to live here if they dont pay their share?
    But think how many posho London restaurants and posho London shops and posho London car dealers they fund.

    Not to mention the 'charitable causes' and political donations.
    I do sometimes wonder whether we'd be better off without as many goods and services catering for posh people.
    As in, does one person spending a million pounds do more or less economic good than 1000 people spending a grand each?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    If Trump gets a 2nd term, NATO is over.




    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    It’s totally possible that tons of senior Republican Party national security officials are all lying about this, but the reason many people think Trump was trying to destroy NATO is all these people who served in his administration say that’s what he was trying to do.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1512796197702049793

    From a pragmatic US perspective it does make a great deal of sense. NATO is an anti-Russian construct and Russia is no threat to the US. China is a growing threat and countering China would be easier without NATO commitments.
    You think Putin hasn't got designs on Alaska?
    No, I don't. And the ability of the US to defend Alaska, if that ludicrous proposition were to eventuate, is not enhanced by NATO membership.
    Sarah Palin would see them coming anyway.
    And set the soccer moms onto them.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Is Silvio Berlusconi still significant in Italian politics? He's an MEP and his party is still pretty major.

    BREAKING. Silvio Berlusconi breaks his silence on his friend Vladimir Putin and #Ukraine: “I’m distressed and disappointed by Putin. War crimes happened in Bucha. Russia shouldn’t deny its responsibilities”.

    I see from his wikipedia page he has a current partner who is 54 years younger than him. Great to see love crossing generational boundaries. (I jest, but such things are not impossible. Nevertheless...)
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Farooq said:

    Cyclefree said:

    For instance, for those

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    The families have every right to be angry and I can imagine it’ll never completely fade.

    It’s those that don’t have a personal connection that need to move on.
    Really? Are we only supposed to be bothered about things that happen to us?

    One common feature in all these tragedies as my article goes into is the indifference to the "little people" who suffered. Others can see that if this can happen to them it can happen to us as well. We may not be personally affected but that does not mean we are not touched, aggrieved and want justice to be done.
    Did I say that? It still amazes me that the 1988-89 season was completed. I guess the urge to return to something like normal was a key factor.

    But I’m not sure what’s left to say about it. You need to be 40 to have any memory of the day itself.

    I’m lucky to have been born late enough that I’ve only known all seater stadia. The football world today is utterly different to 1989.
    My article is not primarily about Hillsborough. But there is plenty still to be said because there are so many common themes in these tragedies and scandals - themes that you can see in one that was reported on a couple of weeks ago re Shropshire Maternity Hospitals.

    It is because we lose this corporate memory, claim that it is all so long ago and things have changed that the same mistakes are made over and over again. As I show.

    Do please read. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
    Very interesting, the contrast between your post and mine posted at basically the same time. You mention the loss of corporate memory, and I mention the continuity of culture (or at least the perception of it from outside).

    These things intersect in the psychology of blame. Experiments show that the people are much more willing to see their own successes as due to intrinsic qualities and their failures as due to circumstance, whilst seeing others' success as circumstantial and their failures due to internal degeneracy. Or in more vernacular terms, I'm great but sometimes unlucky, but you're an idiot and sometimes lucky.
    I speculate that this attitude disparity extends to abstract organisations like newspapers, both as extensions of the self for members of that organisation, and as large abstract "others" in the case of an outsider looking in. I certainly think people act this way about political parties they associate with, so why not papers too?
    From my article -

    "People who have suffered want two things above all: to be heard and justice — not simply justice for the perpetrators — but the acknowledgement of the truth of what happened and why. Ignoring this makes them more determined not less. Take the Aberfan parents: they wanted it recorded that their children had been killed by the National Coal Board. They did not get this, despite the findings of the official inquiry. By contrast, the Hillsborough families fought for years to get a verdict of unlawful killing. It mattered that what happened was not simply written off as an accident, but a consequence of actions and decisions by human beings which could and should have been different. And which would be different in future if the truth was understood and acted on.

    It feels like indifference to those on the receiving end. But perhaps its impulse is less the effect on the victims but more a desire to save face by those responsible. The truth about what happened was important to the families. It mattered that this was publicly acknowledged. But this public acknowledgement is something the authorities find hard to accept or admit. (The paradox is that the later it is said the more victims will want something else — compensation or prosecutions — as a substitute.) It is not just concerns about having to pay compensation which drives this, important as it is. It harms an institution’s self-image and, often, of senior people within it. “We got it wrong.” is hard to say. If “we get it wrong” what sort of a “we” are we, really? Avoiding the shame of having to admit that your actions or inactions have been responsible for the suffering of others is what drives this defensiveness and indifference."
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    HYUFD said:

    nico679 said:

    Sandpit said:

    nico679 said:

    Le Pen can still win the first round as she might see more transfers from Zemmour .

    Macrons polling has looked quite stable recently around the 26% mark . If you remove the bump he got around the time of the start of the war in Ukraine then nothing much has changed in terms of his support over the last few months.

    Andrew Neil’s column was very good but one thing I disagree with . Mélenchons supporters if you take all the polling into account generally shows a slight edge to Macron in terms of second round transfers .

    And add to that .

    A large amount of his support comes from the Muslim population in France , current abstention rates are likely to include a disproportionate level of that community as they tend to be less likely to vote overall but if Le Pen looks to have a chance of the Presidency this will drive up that turnout .

    Looking across the polling Le Pen is maxing out her second round polling because of low abstention rates amongst Zemmours voters who transfer to her .

    That’s why turnout is key in the second round and this is something Macron has highlighted . If turnout goes up this is likely to be voters trying to stop Le Pen .

    Interesting observations about the Muslim vote in France. Question - will the fact that it’s the middle of Ramadan have an affect on their turnout, one way or the other?
    I wouldn’t have thought so for voters but for any volunteers it will be a hard slog during the day . In terms of Mélenchon in 2017 he took more of the Muslim vote in round 1 than Macron which might come as a surprise .

    Melenchon won the under 25 vote and the Muslim and atheist vote in the first round in 2017. Which is not that surprising as his voter base was and is very similar to Corbyn's in 2017 and 2019
    He has a narrow plurality among 18-24s in the last poll I saw - but only with 27% and by 2%. His next best age group is 35-49 year olds.
    You post excellent stuff in an excellent way Gary
  • kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I had a nicely lucrative afternoon watching the racing.

    On Hillsborough, some of the comments on the previous thread show a distinct lack of empathy during humanity. The only reason the Hillsborough families eventually got some sort of justice - like others (Aberfan, for instance) is because they were "going on and on about it".

    The need for justice is very strong. I think it is in some ways hard-wired in us. And when others dismiss it it comes across as cruel indifference.

    To quote the counsel for the families at Aberfan: "The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

    I wrote a longer article about Aberfan, Hillsborough and other disasters here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b - if anyone is interested.

    For the TL/DR brigade, I do not share the "narcissistic Liverpudlians" view. Anymore than the parents of thalidomide babies were narcissistic in campaigning for their children. A tragedy is quite bad enough - but to compound it with injustice upon injustice - is something else, very much worse.

    If such a tragedy befell me I would hope that my family would fight for the truth and justice.

    It is the same impulse which I hope will lead to Russian soldiers and leaders being brought to justice for their crimes in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.

    On hillsborough the point is not parents, children, brothers of those who lost their lives, it’s the city. And the issue is that the target for the ire has been almost totally the police, and not say the FA or Sheffield council who should have insisted on safety compliance, and ultimately the violence of football fans who led to fences and thus to 97 people being crushed to death.
    To be fair, a large share of the blame has been cast at a newspaper for faithfully reporting what the police told them.
    Yes, and any newspaper that acts as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the dismal lies of the authorities deserves all the contempt it gets.
    Contempt for its reporting at the time, sure, but perpetuating decades long local grudges about it? Come off it. There'll barely be anyone left at the paper who is still there.
    Respect is easily lost, but hard to win back.

    The Sun was an awful hate-filled rag that day. In the decades that have passed, has anything happened to show that The Sun is anything other than an awful hate-filled rag still?

    People who have not been on the receiving end of it may be amused by them, and view it as nothing but tittle-tattle as the hate of the week moves on to somebody else. But for those who've seen it and come to that impression, what has The Sun ever done to redeem itself?
    How will they know if they won't look at it? It comes across to me as something that distracts from the focus on the actual tragedy.

    I'm a Liverpool fan and not a Sun reader, but that aspect just seems pointless at this point.
    Just saw this edit so wanted to add ... I'm from Merseyside originally and lived there at the time this happened, I was in primary school and my teacher lost a relative that day. I think everyone of an old enough age from the area knows someone who was affected by it.

    So with respect, although I haven't lived there since I was a child, no I don't think we've held onto it too long or are wrong to have views that were formed then, that nothing has changed to reshape those views.

    What happened that day was atrocious. Certain institutions have continued to be atrocious in the decades since and so they aren't winning respect back any time soon.
This discussion has been closed.