Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
A vote with 17% turnout is meaningless as far as the wider implications are concerned. We just don't know who the other 83% would support
It’s not the most significant election, no, but Reform are still winning elections and are still top of the polling. They are going to win the Clacton by-election and have somewhat distracted people from the £5 million. I just think we should be a little cautious about writing them off.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are still copying Reform’s policy and rhetoric in many places, which also suggests that Reform-ism has a greater reach than just the one party.
Reform are sliding downwards, the £5million "gift" and subsequent financial scandals have holed Farage beneath the waterline and Reform without Farage are going nowhere. Weren't Reform going to be a shoe-in for the Manchester mayoralty once Burnham stood down? That's all gone quiet
I am not writing them off but the notion that they are going to win the next election has all but disappeared. Even being the largest party when nobody will form a coalition with them is pointless.
As for the Tories copying Reform's policies, the vast majority of voters don't know any of Reform's policies other than small boats and asylum seekers. Which other policies do you believe they have copied? The Tories are shrewd enough to keep their distance particularly as Farage becomes more toxic.
The other big Reform policy that the Tories have copied is opposing net zero. Badenoch has now made opposing net zero and leaving the ECHR as loyalty tests for Tory candidates. That doesn't look to me like being "shrewd enough to keep their distance".
Agree. Kemi needs clear blue water between the Tories and the far right. Both the Tories and Reform (SFAICS) are committed to not implementing net zero. But, and it's a big issue, it is not clear whether they differ on the fundamentals.
Reform have no policy on 'climate change'. They don't officially declare that it's real or a hoax. But the vibes indicate that it's a hoax - following Trump. It seems to me the Tories are too close to this position. The Tories are hoping to get away with a policy of not net zero (which is a popular retail policy for as long as the earth doesn't explode) and silent caution on whether the CO2 thingy is real.
They may of course get lucky. A couple of arctic winters and cool summers would sort it for now.
I think a perfectly sensible strategy on climate change is this: we will not seek to damage the economy on the altar of Net Zero. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking to both reduce emissions generally (health issues) and increase our reselience in the event of external supply shocks (see the impact of Ukraine and Iran on energy prices).
I think you are overestimating the cost to the economy of "Net Zero", not least because by 2040 there is net bdnefit to the conomy. See fig 4 here:
That is on top of the benefits in terms of energy independence, resilience, balance of payments etc.
I actually think we'll get to Net Zero without government interference, because the cost of renewables and batteries is droppinmg all the time.
So, what's the benefit of creating a culture war issue over this? I would spend government time and money on improving charging infrastructure, so that anyone can live with an electric car, even if they don't have offstreet parking.
With some reluctance currently shopping for an ICE because there’s nowhere to charge an EV near our flat. If we find ourselves in the same situation in 5ish years time I’ll be deeply disappointed.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
For what it's worth, I think most of the vegan and vegetarian options are (still) shit.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
WRT the cabinet, Burnham has not shown any interest in foreign affairs in his speeches so far and his history doesn't suggest much different. I wonder if it would be a good move, given the 'never here' stuff about Starmer to appoint a foreign secretary of very high quality and looks OK in a suit and give them more the role analogous to USA Secretary of State in the days when that role did the foreign stuff and everyone knew who they were and the USA was a proper country. They could do most of the going abroad bit leaving Burnham to be available for more Everton matches domestic concerns- which is obviously where his interest lies. Cooper has been invisible in the role, Lammy was not much more so. A Miliband might do. Or they could job share.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
For what it's worth, I think most of the vegan and vegetarian options are (still) shit.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
A really good risotto? Pasta alla Norma? A bhel poori or dosa?
I'm not taking part in the Bond comparisons, but I will point out that The Living Daylights played to the team and Dalton's strengths and Licence To Kill played to their weaknesses. Dalton looked fantastic in TLD: well dressed even in casual clothing, good hair, fantastic in a suit, wicked chemistry with Maryam D'Abo. But in LTK things went wrong: Dalton's receding hairline was too obvious, they were trying to enter the era of strong female characters but didn't commit fully, so Carey Lowell (who'd trained up for the role) was asked to tone it down, they were competing with Miami Vice but without the flashy directing, good clothes, and thumping soundtrack. It has the bones of a good movie and Roberto Davi is an excellent villain, but the execution was bad, and lacking even the excuse of camp excess it came across as a made-for-TV movie.
Compare to Goldeneye later, which got everything right: the bad girl was sexy and scary, the clothes and direction excellent, the SFX adequate, it had style coming out of its arse. In LTK Dalton looked like he'd shopped with your dad.
I think you are too harsh on License to Kill. I rewatched in a few months ago, and it's a genuinely good Bond movie - not least because it has a fabulous villain.
However, what it didn't get right was the seriousness-levity balance. It went all in on serious, and -except at the very end when the mystic retreat is going down in flames- there's barely a smile in the movie.
That said... it is also the movie where Benicio del Toro gets his break as a henchman, and he's great.
I love Licence to Kill.
If you're after pure Fleming, it's very true to the books.
The worst bit is the score, and a very perky Felix Leiter at the end, who is excited about going fishing again, despite having lost his leg and his wife being raped and murdered on his wedding day.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
I am not a big one for tagging, but perhaps @Mexicanpete could actually answer this one - especially considering it is not just Norwegian imports that the extra from the North Sea will displace, but Saudi, Qatari and US imports - and fecking Russian imports via India, that need to be liquified down and sent halfway across the world, with the requisite emissions?
Why is it so important to you that you actively prefer MORE emissions, just for the sake of making a twunt out of our country?
That same question can go to the rest of you too. Especially the ones who whine on and on about Norway's 'sovereign wealth fund' - how do you propose we get a sovereign wealth fund without generating some sovereign wealth?
I’ll have a go, Lucky. I can give you answers that are likely true, though neither of us - being Thatcherite’s - will like the sound of all the answers.
First of all, UK does have a sovereign wealth fund. It’s just a bit naff compared to Norways and the Saudi’s. So to be able to do anything about that now, we get in a Time Machine, lock Lady Thatcher in a wardrobe so Jim Callaghan wins in 1979, ensure Tony Benns Labour Leadership 1980 coup, for a decade of socialism, that doesn’t sell off the North Sea instead copies Norway by setting up a 70% government owned company for extracting the gas and oil with most the profits go in a sovereign wealth fund - I understand it as a big hedge fund thing that sustains itself with investments all over the world. Thatcherism didn’t get everything right. Sovereign wealth fund would have been better than sell off the oil and gas. That is saying it in hindsight though, as knowing afterwards many investors carpet bagged the sell offs, and mass share ownership and benefiting from dividends didn’t really happen on popular capitalism critical mass as hoped.
The Green Party noisy today about rumours of more North Sea drilling under Labour devastating the earths climate - but note the UK Net Zero target was not created and honed by Red Ed or Green Party and other climate Zealots, but by the Conservative Party. Created on the basis the choice isn’t fossil or green, the only right answer is both. It comes down to a question of pace of conversion, how much hair shirt to wear is the only argument here, because all nations of the world should be working on conversion from fossil fuels to green - even Trumps America - because the impact and injury from climate change, rising sea levels and population are not just global, but very localised at home too. And if you want to change the world you set it an example and give leadership - and it’s working brilliantly because dozens of countries contacted UK for the wording to make into their own laws and identical long term planning committees with businesses. Massive success story for the Conservatives from their 13 years in power.
Let’s do this the Yorkshire way Lucky, cut to the bottom line. The reason I am on board is - in the bigger picture, the long run in contrast where politics is so short termist focus on the next voting day - I fully believe fighting climate change now will be cheaper costs than not fighting it in the long run. Much much cheaper. So I am on board for it being not a climate argument, but an economic one. Whilst you are not on board for this reason?
You must see, and I imagine you do see, that what you've written is a complete pile of bullshit - if you had a half-decent argument you would not have beaten about the bush for three long paragraphs.
The sovereign wealth fund was a throwaway line. It did not require a lengthy response, and presumably you gave one because it was the only area where you had something approaching an argument, though I'm damned if I can decipher it.
You completely failed to address the point about us feeding the oil and gas economies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and America. You completely failed to address the point about imported oil and gas causing MORE emissions - utterly indefensible on your own terms. Yet you have the gall to preach to me about 'fighting climate change' - your chosen hydrocarbon source is ADDING TO THE EARTH'S CO2 EMISSIONS. You are the one not fighting climate change, not me.
The only argument that can possibly made in favour of this economical and environmental vandalism that you favour is this fantasyland stuff about other countries clamouring to copy our example. Really? Which countries with an equivalent hydrocarbon resource are deciding to leave it in the ground? Which countries have decided it would be a good idea if their industrial energy costs what ours costs? The answer is none by the way, we have the highest industrial energy costs in the world - 36-46 above the IEA median.
What you don't seem to realise is that actually, by doing this so badly, we are damaging the cause of Net Zero globally. Doing what we are doing is worse than not doing it at all.
If only he’d been in a position of power within a govt that could have stopped it.
The Conservatives biggest problem is that they simply didn't deliver for their supporters.
They delivered for supporters who didn't like the EU and with an enthusiasm greater than a 52-48 split. If one was a Brexiter the Tories smashed it out of the park.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
Choice is the curse of restaurants. There should be hardly any. Focus on doing today's thing well. Alternate Tuesdays could be veggie day. This will become a trend; and can be sold as trendy, friendly and far less wasteful of stuff and effort.
WRT the cabinet, Burnham has not shown any interest in foreign affairs in his speeches so far and his history doesn't suggest much different. I wonder if it would be a good move, given the 'never here' stuff about Starmer to appoint a foreign secretary of very high quality and looks OK in a suit and give them more the role analogous to USA Secretary of State in the days when that role did the foreign stuff and everyone knew who they were and the USA was a proper country. They could do most of the going abroad bit leaving Burnham to be available for more Everton matches domestic concerns- which is obviously where his interest lies. Cooper has been invisible in the role, Lammy was not much more so. A Miliband might do. Or they could job share.
Yes one area where Starmer beats Burnham is that he looks smarter in a suit . Burnham is a bit of a scruff which also affected Johnson but Johnson had a unique personality to sort of get away with it . Burnham should try and get some dress lessons
Why is burnham seemingly yearning for the 1970s ? . A very strange speech
I have a yearning that (IMHO, the superb) Timothy Dalton made more than two Bond films, but we can't always have what we want.
Dalton's first outing was superb. Maryam D'Abo may have helped somewhat. I wasn't so keen on the second, the one with the wheelie -pulling Kenworths.
Try it again.
Licence to Kill is an excellent thriller.
I have seen it loads of times. The Living Daylights on the other hand is certainly in my top 5.
I like that.
I watched Licence to Kill again last night.
It is very dark, but Dalton's acting is superb and the chemistry between him and Robert Davi possible the best in the whole series.
I really enjoyed it.
Both Dalton's films are good. Both have flaws. The Living Daylights loses its way plotwise in the third act, when there's no threat anymore. Licence to Kill has a lot going for it but it has a little bit of a made for TV feel. Bond films always reflect culture and this was maybe influenced by the TV of the time?
I never feel like the The Living Daylights loses anything, because it has the background of the Afghanistan War and menacing villians like Necros. Whittaker becomes dangerous at the end too.
Sure, both films are about drugs - not blowing up the whole world - but Bond films don't have to be pastiches of themselves to be great thrillers, sometimes it's great to just bring a megalomaniac arsehole down.
That's as relevant today as ever.
It is subjective, and if you don't feel the film loses anything in the third act, that's fine. However, for me, [spoiler ahead] once the fake assasination has taken place, and the villains think they're fine but the Soviets are on to them, we know they're done. Yes, Bond could still theoretically die, but there's no real jeopardy any more. If it's on, I'll often catch the brilliant first half with Gibraltar and the Cello car chase, and the pipeline - that's all brilliant. However I usually drift away by the end.
Why is burnham seemingly yearning for the 1970s ? . A very strange speech
I have a yearning that (IMHO, the superb) Timothy Dalton made more than two Bond films, but we can't always have what we want.
Dalton's first outing was superb. Maryam D'Abo may have helped somewhat. I wasn't so keen on the second, the one with the wheelie -pulling Kenworths.
Try it again.
Licence to Kill is an excellent thriller.
I have seen it loads of times. The Living Daylights on the other hand is certainly in my top 5.
I like that.
I watched Licence to Kill again last night.
It is very dark, but Dalton's acting is superb and the chemistry between him and Robert Davi possible the best in the whole series.
I really enjoyed it.
Both Dalton's films are good. Both have flaws. The Living Daylights loses its way plotwise in the third act, when there's no threat anymore. Licence to Kill has a lot going for it but it has a little bit of a made for TV feel. Bond films always reflect culture and this was maybe influenced by the TV of the time?
I never feel like the The Living Daylights loses anything, because it has the background of the Afghanistan War and menacing villians like Necros. Whittaker becomes dangerous at the end too.
Sure, both films are about drugs - not blowing up the whole world - but Bond films don't have to be pastiches of themselves to be great thrillers, sometimes it's great to just bring a megalomaniac arsehole down.
That's as relevant today as ever.
It is subjective, and if you don't feel the film loses anything in the third act, that's fine. However, for me, [spoiler ahead] once the fake assasination has taken place, and the villains think they're fine but the Soviets are on to them, we know they're done. Yes, Bond could still theoretically die, but there's no real jeopardy any more. If it's on, I'll often catch the brilliant first half with Gibraltar and the Cello car chase, and the pipeline - that's all brilliant. However I usually drift away by the end.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
WRT the cabinet, Burnham has not shown any interest in foreign affairs in his speeches so far and his history doesn't suggest much different. I wonder if it would be a good move, given the 'never here' stuff about Starmer to appoint a foreign secretary of very high quality and looks OK in a suit and give them more the role analogous to USA Secretary of State in the days when that role did the foreign stuff and everyone knew who they were and the USA was a proper country. They could do most of the going abroad bit leaving Burnham to be available for more Everton matches domestic concerns- which is obviously where his interest lies. Cooper has been invisible in the role, Lammy was not much more so. A Miliband might do. Or they could job share.
He’s going to need to develop an interest very very quickly.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
I am not a big one for tagging, but perhaps @Mexicanpete could actually answer this one - especially considering it is not just Norwegian imports that the extra from the North Sea will displace, but Saudi, Qatari and US imports - and fecking Russian imports via India, that need to be liquified down and sent halfway across the world, with the requisite emissions?
Why is it so important to you that you actively prefer MORE emissions, just for the sake of making a twunt out of our country?
That same question can go to the rest of you too. Especially the ones who whine on and on about Norway's 'sovereign wealth fund' - how do you propose we get a sovereign wealth fund without generating some sovereign wealth?
I’ll have a go, Lucky. I can give you answers that are likely true, though neither of us - being Thatcherite’s - will like the sound of all the answers.
First of all, UK does have a sovereign wealth fund. It’s just a bit naff compared to Norways and the Saudi’s. So to be able to do anything about that now, we get in a Time Machine, lock Lady Thatcher in a wardrobe so Jim Callaghan wins in 1979, ensure Tony Benns Labour Leadership 1980 coup, for a decade of socialism, that doesn’t sell off the North Sea instead copies Norway by setting up a 70% government owned company for extracting the gas and oil with most the profits go in a sovereign wealth fund - I understand it as a big hedge fund thing that sustains itself with investments all over the world. Thatcherism didn’t get everything right. Sovereign wealth fund would have been better than sell off the oil and gas. That is saying it in hindsight though, as knowing afterwards many investors carpet bagged the sell offs, and mass share ownership and benefiting from dividends didn’t really happen on popular capitalism critical mass as hoped.
The Green Party noisy today about rumours of more North Sea drilling under Labour devastating the earths climate - but note the UK Net Zero target was not created and honed by Red Ed or Green Party and other climate Zealots, but by the Conservative Party. Created on the basis the choice isn’t fossil or green, the only right answer is both. It comes down to a question of pace of conversion, how much hair shirt to wear is the only argument here, because all nations of the world should be working on conversion from fossil fuels to green - even Trumps America - because the impact and injury from climate change, rising sea levels and population are not just global, but very localised at home too. And if you want to change the world you set it an example and give leadership - and it’s working brilliantly because dozens of countries contacted UK for the wording to make into their own laws and identical long term planning committees with businesses. Massive success story for the Conservatives from their 13 years in power.
Let’s do this the Yorkshire way Lucky, cut to the bottom line. The reason I am on board is - in the bigger picture, the long run in contrast where politics is so short termist focus on the next voting day - I fully believe fighting climate change now will be cheaper costs than not fighting it in the long run. Much much cheaper. So I am on board for it being not a climate argument, but an economic one. Whilst you are not on board for this reason?
Nothing we do in terms of the North Sea will make one iota of difference to how much oil and gas we burn. That should be the criteria for whether any individual part of a net zero policy is sensible or not. Indeed shutting down the North Sea and importing oil and gas will make our emissions (if measured properly and including the extraction and transportation emissions) slightly worse than if we continue to use our own hydrocarbons during the transition.
When we have discussed this before, I think I recall you are favourable to UK having followed the Norway model long ago, for a majority national owned company bringing up the gas and oil for profits into a national sovereign wealth fund, rather than sell off of the north seas fossil fuels that actually happened. However, control, and how UK lost control seems topic debate at the moment, If the UK had taken that road instead, with all your tacit knowledge of the industry, in what ways would UK Oil and Gas industry have been different between 1986 and 2026? Would the difference for the UK gas and oil industry overall, and its workers in it, have been for the better or for the worse?
I do apologise but no. I don't say this as a means to argue but I do not think the UK could ever have followed Norway in its Sovereign Wealth Fund path.
I say this because the money the UK made from taxes etc in the 80s was vital for the transition away from dinosaur heavy industries that were going to be destroyed by competition from the Far East. That transition was hard enough anyway with high unemployment and social upheaval. I think it would have been exponentially worse without using the North Sea windfall to assist. Obviously others might say the transiiton was unecessary but I think it had to hapen given the globalisation underway. Morovere it is easy to have a siovereign wealth fund when you have 1/12th of the population and no internal energy market that needs hydrocarbons. Again not the position for the UK.
To answer your other question, I see absolutely no difference between the actual exploitation of hydrocarbons in the UK and Norway> Until the last decade the industry has been pretty much identical on both sides of the divide. I spent 15 eyars working in Norway and their processes and decisions are all identical to the UK. The only real differnce has been in the last decade or so where UK Governments have massively undervalued the Oil industry and its potential whilst in Norway they have embraced it. We could have done the same but it was a politcial choice not to do so.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
For what it's worth, I think most of the vegan and vegetarian options are (still) shit.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
Most Restaurant and Street Food is just overpriced shit.
If only he’d been in a position of power within a govt that could have stopped it.
The Conservatives biggest problem is that they simply didn't deliver for their supporters.
Triple lock, huge increase in BTL, and massive increase in health spending? They certainly did for some of their supporters - the focus was too narrow though, and they’ve created a Millenial generation scarred by private rentals, student loan debts and a huge spike in mortgage costs.
The student loans one is the real crime. and it is no use just blaming the Lib Dems even though they were part of it. This was a policy enacted by a Tory PM and it has been disastrous for both students and higher education alike. For me it is one of the worst policies ever enacted by a government of any stripe.
And even if you could squint at the original version of the policy and say "not too bad" (which meant accepting that the write-off was part of the point), the subsequent changes have made it disgraceful millstone.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Physically he was an amazing Bond. He should never have had input creatively.
If only he’d been in a position of power within a govt that could have stopped it.
The Conservatives biggest problem is that they simply didn't deliver for their supporters.
Triple lock, huge increase in BTL, and massive increase in health spending? They certainly did for some of their supporters - the focus was too narrow though, and they’ve created a Millenial generation scarred by private rentals, student loan debts and a huge spike in mortgage costs.
The student loans one is the real crime. and it is no use just blaming the Lib Dems even though they were part of it. This was a policy enacted by a Tory PM and it has been disastrous for both students and higher education alike. For me it is one of the worst policies ever enacted by a government of any stripe.
And even if you could squint at the original version of the policy and say "not too bad" (which meant accepting that the write-off was part of the point), the subsequent changes have made it disgraceful millstone.
And sadly one of the probems with the original version - apart from a fundemental point of it being an entirely wrong idea - is that the subsequent changes were so very predictable even at the start.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
OK, liking the Niven Casino Royale is just weird.
Best way to think of it is as the alpha release of Austin Powers.
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
Indeed, we all will. And I support the ending of the triple lock, pensioner freebies and a raising of the retirement age, which will affect me.
It's the right thing to do. My politics aren't based on what's most financially beneficial for me personally.
Never run for office, you'd not have a chance based on that.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
I am not a big one for tagging, but perhaps @Mexicanpete could actually answer this one - especially considering it is not just Norwegian imports that the extra from the North Sea will displace, but Saudi, Qatari and US imports - and fecking Russian imports via India, that need to be liquified down and sent halfway across the world, with the requisite emissions?
Why is it so important to you that you actively prefer MORE emissions, just for the sake of making a twunt out of our country?
That same question can go to the rest of you too. Especially the ones who whine on and on about Norway's 'sovereign wealth fund' - how do you propose we get a sovereign wealth fund without generating some sovereign wealth?
I’ll have a go, Lucky. I can give you answers that are likely true, though neither of us - being Thatcherite’s - will like the sound of all the answers.
First of all, UK does have a sovereign wealth fund. It’s just a bit naff compared to Norways and the Saudi’s. So to be able to do anything about that now, we get in a Time Machine, lock Lady Thatcher in a wardrobe so Jim Callaghan wins in 1979, ensure Tony Benns Labour Leadership 1980 coup, for a decade of socialism, that doesn’t sell off the North Sea instead copies Norway by setting up a 70% government owned company for extracting the gas and oil with most the profits go in a sovereign wealth fund - I understand it as a big hedge fund thing that sustains itself with investments all over the world. Thatcherism didn’t get everything right. Sovereign wealth fund would have been better than sell off the oil and gas. That is saying it in hindsight though, as knowing afterwards many investors carpet bagged the sell offs, and mass share ownership and benefiting from dividends didn’t really happen on popular capitalism critical mass as hoped.
The Green Party noisy today about rumours of more North Sea drilling under Labour devastating the earths climate - but note the UK Net Zero target was not created and honed by Red Ed or Green Party and other climate Zealots, but by the Conservative Party. Created on the basis the choice isn’t fossil or green, the only right answer is both. It comes down to a question of pace of conversion, how much hair shirt to wear is the only argument here, because all nations of the world should be working on conversion from fossil fuels to green - even Trumps America - because the impact and injury from climate change, rising sea levels and population are not just global, but very localised at home too. And if you want to change the world you set it an example and give leadership - and it’s working brilliantly because dozens of countries contacted UK for the wording to make into their own laws and identical long term planning committees with businesses. Massive success story for the Conservatives from their 13 years in power.
Let’s do this the Yorkshire way Lucky, cut to the bottom line. The reason I am on board is - in the bigger picture, the long run in contrast where politics is so short termist focus on the next voting day - I fully believe fighting climate change now will be cheaper costs than not fighting it in the long run. Much much cheaper. So I am on board for it being not a climate argument, but an economic one. Whilst you are not on board for this reason?
You must see, and I imagine you do see, that what you've written is a complete pile of bullshit - if you had a half-decent argument you would not have beaten about the bush for three long paragraphs.
The sovereign wealth fund was a throwaway line. It did not require a lengthy response, and presumably you gave one because it was the only area where you had something approaching an argument, though I'm damned if I can decipher it.
You completely failed to address the point about us feeding the oil and gas economies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and America. You completely failed to address the point about imported oil and gas causing MORE emissions - utterly indefensible on your own terms. Yet you have the gall to preach to me about 'fighting climate change' - your chosen hydrocarbon source is ADDING TO THE EARTH'S CO2 EMISSIONS. You are the one not fighting climate change, not me.
The only argument that can possibly made in favour of this economical and environmental vandalism that you favour is this fantasyland stuff about other countries clamouring to copy our example. Really? Which countries with an equivalent hydrocarbon resource are deciding to leave it in the ground? Which countries have decided it would be a good idea if their industrial energy costs what ours costs? The answer is none by the way, we have the highest industrial energy costs in the world - 36-46 above the IEA median.
What you don't seem to realise is that actually, by doing this so badly, we are damaging the cause of Net Zero globally. Doing what we are doing is worse than not doing it at all.
I would like to apologise for this response - not because it's particularly offensive, but because I thought this was a Mexicanpete response (for some reason) now that I realise it's a Moonrabbit response, the length and the style is far more understandable. I am sorry MoonRabbit.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
For what it's worth, I think most of the vegan and vegetarian options are (still) shit.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
Most Restaurant and Street Food is just overpriced shit.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Physically he was an amazing Bond. He should never have had input creatively.
Only 1% of actors ever should, it's really not where the vast majority shine.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
Choice is the curse of restaurants. There should be hardly any. Focus on doing today's thing well. Alternate Tuesdays could be veggie day. This will become a trend; and can be sold as trendy, friendly and far less wasteful of stuff and effort.
Wasn't that Shout Gordon's refrain on Kitchen Nightmares? (And part of Aldidildi's competitive advantage?)
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
Choice is the curse of restaurants.
I used to say that there should still be a restaurant that literally services just one thing, and it might do quite well. I think Toby Carvery might come close, even if you technically can order other stuff.
If only he’d been in a position of power within a govt that could have stopped it.
The Conservatives biggest problem is that they simply didn't deliver for their supporters.
They delivered for supporters who didn't like the EU and with an enthusiasm greater than a 52-48 split. If one was a Brexiter the Tories smashed it out of the park.
I would demure.
If one was interested in the 'fog in the Channel, Europe cut off' type of Brexit then they tried to deliver (they were never going to succeed no matter how much some might have wanted it).
If one wanted a sensible Brexit tat took into account the fact that nearly hald the vote was opposed rather than the 'winner takes all' attitude then they failed dismally. I am still a strong supporter of Brexit but very few decisions made since about our relationship with the EU have been sensible or necessary for anything other than winning a right wing civil war.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
For what it's worth, I think most of the vegan and vegetarian options are (still) shit.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
If you think most of the veggie/vegan options are "shit" I think you need to try a few different restaurants.
I would also dispute that most restaurants offer burgers and pizzas. Yes, our city has burger bars and pizza places but most of the restaurants don't offer either. I guess we just patronise different types of eating places
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
Choice is the curse of restaurants.
I used to say that there should still be a restaurant that literally services just one thing, and it might do quite well. I think Toby Carvery might come close, even if you technically can order other stuff.
Fantastic news on Kerr breaking the World mile record and bringing its stewardship of it back to Britain after our dominance of it in the late twentieth century. Hooray !
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
Indeed, we all will. And I support the ending of the triple lock, pensioner freebies and a raising of the retirement age, which will affect me.
It's the right thing to do. My politics aren't based on what's most financially beneficial for me personally.
Never run for office, you'd not have a chance based on that.
He'd get my vote. And again I am closing in on all those benefits. I genuinely hope they don't exist when I reach retriement age in 6 years.
Of course I also genuinely hope I REACH retirement age in 6 years.
I'm not taking part in the Bond comparisons, but I will point out that The Living Daylights played to the team and Dalton's strengths and Licence To Kill played to their weaknesses. Dalton looked fantastic in TLD: well dressed even in casual clothing, good hair, fantastic in a suit, wicked chemistry with Maryam D'Abo. But in LTK things went wrong: Dalton's receding hairline was too obvious, they were trying to enter the era of strong female characters but didn't commit fully, so Carey Lowell (who'd trained up for the role) was asked to tone it down, they were competing with Miami Vice but without the flashy directing, good clothes, and thumping soundtrack. It has the bones of a good movie and Roberto Davi is an excellent villain, but the execution was bad, and lacking even the excuse of camp excess it came across as a made-for-TV movie.
Compare to Goldeneye later, which got everything right: the bad girl was sexy and scary, the clothes and direction excellent, the SFX adequate, it had style coming out of its arse. In LTK Dalton looked like he'd shopped with your dad.
I think you are too harsh on License to Kill. I rewatched in a few months ago, and it's a genuinely good Bond movie - not least because it has a fabulous villain.
However, what it didn't get right was the seriousness-levity balance. It went all in on serious, and -except at the very end when the mystic retreat is going down in flames- there's barely a smile in the movie.
That said... it is also the movie where Benicio del Toro gets his break as a henchman, and he's great.
I love Licence to Kill.
If you're after pure Fleming, it's very true to the books.
The worst bit is the score, and a very perky Felix Leiter at the end, who is excited about going fishing again, despite having lost his leg and his wife being raped and murdered on his wedding day.
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote
Would be the one sensible plan he has proposed so far.
A move that would help him squeeze the Reform vote though not the Green vote, 56% of Reform voters opposed the ban on new North Sea oil and gas developments whereas 51% of Green voters backed it. Could help Labour in Scotland where 45% oppose the ban on new North Sea fossil fuel extraction with just 37% in favour (in England and Wales it is tied, 39% opposed, 38% in favour).
Trump would be pleased with Burnham on this too, as Trump backs new North Sea oil drills
Labour is losing Labour inclined voters to the Green party, it's not going to get Reform inclined voters to vote Labour by aping Reform but it will lose more votes to the Greens.
It's akin to the local veggie restaurant putting cheap burgers and fries on the menu to compete for McDonalds customers
You are demonstrating why this is a good move.
Labour losing Hamas fanatics to the Greens is not the worst thing in the world, so long as they can win the centre.
The centre is not going to a veggie restaurant. Let the Green lunatics prioritise veggie fanaticism, Labour needs a balance that can offer a broad church selection, including burger eaters, yes.
Have you noticed how much of that has quietly gone away the last couple of years?
I'm not a veggie but often opt for non-meat meals and in our city virtually every restaurant has plenty of vegetarian options so there is no need to go to a purely veggie restaurant anymore
I know the owner of the highest rated restaurant in town pretty well as we go there most weeks and he has told me that about 50% of people opt for non-meat main courses these days and that has been gradually rising over recent years,
Yeah, but that's both nonsense and bollocks.
Everyone I know who was "vegan", or even veggie in some instances, in recent years has now gone pescatarian or flexitarian. It's totally fallen back and has gone off the boil.
You've lost. Sorry.
The only change I have noticed in the last 2 years is everyone everywhere asking you if you have any allergies before each meal, of which there appear to be an explosion, but veganism has gone right out of fashion, plenty of such businesses have closed, and people neither order it nor talk about it much anymore.
People are now eating normal food again. Thank Christ.
I haven't "lost" anything, I'm not a veggie or a vegan so calm down. Really not sure why what other people choose to eat winds you up so much but it obviously does.
I just pointed out that there are loads of veggie and vegan options on menus everywhere these days and that didn't used to be the case a few years ago. A vegetarian or a vegan can go pretty much anywhere now and have a good choice of what to eat. Meat eating, and red-meat eating in particular has declined significantly over recent years.
Restaurants are market driven and will create menus that people want if they are going to stay in business - the days of Aberdeen Steak House and Angus Steak House have long gone.
I must admit I find it strange that anyone would be bothered (in a negative fashion) about the presence of vegetarian options on menus. They are generally as good/bad as the rest of the menu and, as an omnivore, I will give them exactly the same consideration I do the rest of the menu. It just means more choice.
I ignore vegan for the purposes of this argument as I find the whole concept rather silly.
Choice is the curse of restaurants.
I used to say that there should still be a restaurant that literally services just one thing, and it might do quite well. I think Toby Carvery might come close, even if you technically can order other stuff.
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
he does not count all the freebies he gets for his brood, that is different story
I get none. Zero. Nor do I ask for them or want them.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Given Bond’s backstory of his parents dying when he was young, I would love to see him going back to his old school where he presumably was influenced by his teachers and other adults. Throw in an old boys grudge cricket match against the villain’s henchmen for good measure.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
Why is burnham seemingly yearning for the 1970s ? . A very strange speech
I have a yearning that (IMHO, the superb) Timothy Dalton made more than two Bond films, but we can't always have what we want.
Dalton's first outing was superb. Maryam D'Abo may have helped somewhat. I wasn't so keen on the second, the one with the wheelie -pulling Kenworths.
Try it again.
Licence to Kill is an excellent thriller.
I have seen it loads of times. The Living Daylights on the other hand is certainly in my top 5.
I like that.
I watched Licence to Kill again last night.
It is very dark, but Dalton's acting is superb and the chemistry between him and Robert Davi possible the best in the whole series.
I really enjoyed it.
Both Dalton's films are good. Both have flaws. The Living Daylights loses its way plotwise in the third act, when there's no threat anymore. Licence to Kill has a lot going for it but it has a little bit of a made for TV feel. Bond films always reflect culture and this was maybe influenced by the TV of the time?
I never feel like the The Living Daylights loses anything, because it has the background of the Afghanistan War and menacing villians like Necros. Whittaker becomes dangerous at the end too.
Sure, both films are about drugs - not blowing up the whole world - but Bond films don't have to be pastiches of themselves to be great thrillers, sometimes it's great to just bring a megalomaniac arsehole down.
That's as relevant today as ever.
It is subjective, and if you don't feel the film loses anything in the third act, that's fine. However, for me, [spoiler ahead] once the fake assasination has taken place, and the villains think they're fine but the Soviets are on to them, we know they're done. Yes, Bond could still theoretically die, but there's no real jeopardy any more. If it's on, I'll often catch the brilliant first half with Gibraltar and the Cello car chase, and the pipeline - that's all brilliant. However I usually drift away by the end.
Skyfall also loses its way in the third act. James Bond should not be doing Home Alone.
I went into the cinema with the same trepidation I had when I went to see The Fellowship of The Ring as I thought it was unfilmable/they wouldn’t be able to do it justice.
Boy was I wrong, my apologies to Sir Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew.
Go see it in IMAX.
TSE has just gone up in my estimation!
(I haven't seen the film BTW!)
Me neither and at nearly three hours I won’t be seeing it
The Revenant was okay but long enough
Optimum movie length, 100 minutes or so.
Last night I watched the timeless classic, ‘Watch your Stern’, perfect running time.
I'm actually a big Nolan fan - "Insomnia" was on the Beeb late last night, "Memento" the night before.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
OK, liking the Niven Casino Royale is just weird.
The cast, the music, swinging sixties.
What’s not to love.
The fact that the plot makes literally no sense whatsoever?
WRT the cabinet, Burnham has not shown any interest in foreign affairs in his speeches so far and his history doesn't suggest much different. I wonder if it would be a good move, given the 'never here' stuff about Starmer to appoint a foreign secretary of very high quality and looks OK in a suit and give them more the role analogous to USA Secretary of State in the days when that role did the foreign stuff and everyone knew who they were and the USA was a proper country. They could do most of the going abroad bit leaving Burnham to be available for more Everton matches domestic concerns- which is obviously where his interest lies. Cooper has been invisible in the role, Lammy was not much more so. A Miliband might do. Or they could job share.
Replacing the last two absolute useless invisible nonentities with that absolute pillock Milliband would be crazy.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Quantum of Solace is also a James Bond movie which history will treat more kindly than people did at the time.
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
Indeed, we all will. And I support the ending of the triple lock, pensioner freebies and a raising of the retirement age, which will affect me.
It's the right thing to do. My politics aren't based on what's most financially beneficial for me personally.
Never run for office, you'd not have a chance based on that.
He'd get my vote. And again I am closing in on all those benefits. I genuinely hope they don't exist when I reach retriement age in 6 years.
Of course I also genuinely hope I REACH retirement age in 6 years.
Richard, easy to say when you are loaded but what about people with no private pension at all or a pittance, not everyone is loaded like majority on here.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Quantum of Solace is also a James Bond movie which history will treat more kindly than people did at the time.
However, it does have a pretty rubbish villain.
QoS is complete rubbish. Theactors were making up the dialogue as they went along. It is the worst Bond by a country mile.
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
Indeed, we all will. And I support the ending of the triple lock, pensioner freebies and a raising of the retirement age, which will affect me.
It's the right thing to do. My politics aren't based on what's most financially beneficial for me personally.
Never run for office, you'd not have a chance based on that.
He'd get my vote. And again I am closing in on all those benefits. I genuinely hope they don't exist when I reach retriement age in 6 years.
Of course I also genuinely hope I REACH retirement age in 6 years.
Richard, easy to say when you are loaded but what about people with no private pension at all or a pittance, not everyone is loaded like majority on here.
If they are poor then they will qualify for other benefits. But all these benefits including state pension should be means tested anyway. No one should get a handout from the Government just because of age. Benefits should be for those who genuinely need them.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
Goldfinger was undoubtedly the best.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
Also had the best car. I used to have one of those to push around my living room with the bullet proof screen and the ejector seat. I was playing with it the day that Jim Clark died.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
FWIW (which is the square root of diddly squat) I think Daniel Craig proved to be the best Bond. Like many of the others he played it until he was much too old but he had the style, the wit and the look down pat. Sean Connery started off well but his latter films were just embarrassing.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
I think that's just your paranoia. Certainly, Trump is making sure that the US takes that role most often.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
I think that's just your paranoia.
I don't. People who think we are showing a lead by giving up making things just so we can import the same things from abroad because we need them are really needing detained, not in prison but in a secure hospital for the mentally insane. Yes, Mr Ed, I am talking about you.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Quantum of Solace is also a James Bond movie which history will treat more kindly than people did at the time.
However, it does have a pretty rubbish villain.
I have a soft spot for Quantum of Solace. I've been known for my counter-cultural views here at times, and that film tickled that part of me. A villain who was a feted eco-hero but who was actually intending to commandeer a vital natural resource was an edgy theme. I agree he's not really a physical threat or an organisational one. Perhaps some building up was needed there.
I'll tell you the worst Bond film. Thunderball. Those interminable underwater scenes where you have no clue who is who because they're all in masks and wetsuits.
FWIW (which is the square root of diddly squat) I think Daniel Craig proved to be the best Bond. Like many of the others he played it until he was much too old but he had the style, the wit and the look down pat. Sean Connery started off well but his latter films were just embarrassing.
I never really noticed it until someone pointed it out, but You Only Live Twice was the worst Connery film performance-wise. He looks utterly bored through the entire film. Even when he's just slid down a chute and landed in a chair. It's distinctly odd when you notice it.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
I think that's just your paranoia.
I don't. People who think we are showing a lead by giving up making things just so we can import the same things from abroad because we need them are really needing detained, not in prison but in a secure hospital for the mentally insane. Yes, Mr Ed, I am talking about you.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
They are absolutely superb.
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love - Goldfinger - Goldeneye - License to Kill
Only been one real Bond, the first one, the rest are pale imitations.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are -without a doubt- the best Connery Bonds.
Other S tier Bond movies are Casino Royale and Goldeneye.
I would put the two Dalton movies as upper A tier, with the first just missing out on S tier status because Whittaker was a rubbish baddie.
For me there is a distinct difference between best and favourite
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
OK, liking the Niven Casino Royale is just weird.
The cast, the music, swinging sixties.
What’s not to love.
The fact that the plot makes literally no sense whatsoever?
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
I think that's just your paranoia.
I don't. People who think we are showing a lead by giving up making things just so we can import the same things from abroad because we need them are really needing detained, not in prison but in a secure hospital for the mentally insane. Yes, Mr Ed, I am talking about you.
Goldfinger for me. Solid imaginative plot. Great villain and sidekick. Peak physical Connery. A golf scene. Our macho protagonist in that ridiculous short blue onesy by the pool.
And this memorable scene:
Bond wakes up tied to a chair and is faced by Honor Blackman gazing down at him. There's no fear only amused curiosity. His eyes glint and he drawls a single word.
"Pussy!"
From Russia with Love.
The best Bond and also the best Bond villain in Robert Shaw.
Connery is an extremely boring choice, and also not the correct one.
He just has first mover advantage.
Dalton most accurately captured Fleming's Bond.
I would have thought that, given your PB moniker, David Niven should be your choice
I am a fan of Daniel Craig, led to my original choice, but he went really weird in the last few years.
I think Barbara Brocolli was basically in love with him, and he ended up taking over and then essentially consuming the whole franchise.
She couldn't contemplate it without him, and was grieving - and I don't blame her, after 40 years of her life - so she was totally spent and sold out to Amazon.
I remember walking out of watching Layer Cake with friends and we all said straight away that Craig should be the next bond. Loved Casino Royal as they had to up their game as Bourne had raised the bar. I actually like Quantum of Solace watching it again after a long gap. Sky fall was ok but it got a bit too much about personal life for me. Tried watching Spectre and have never got past around 20 mins and never bothered to watch No time to die as I presumed it was just more Bond feels than Bond kills.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
Quantum of Solace is also a James Bond movie which history will treat more kindly than people did at the time.
However, it does have a pretty rubbish villain.
I have a soft spot for Quantum of Solace. I've been known for my counter-cultural views here at times, and that film tickled that part of me. A villain who was a feted eco-hero but who was actually intending to commandeer a vital natural resource was an edgy theme. I agree he's not really a physical threat or an organisational one. Perhaps some building up was needed there.
Oh the plot is good: I love the whole water thing, and the sweaty Latin American Generalissimo President.
It's just the Dominic Green is about as threatening as a wet lettuce.
If Burnham really is going to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, it's the best news we've had for a very long time in my opinion. He deserves to go ahead in the polls for a while at least.
No he doesn't. He's a Johnsonian populist w@nker*.
* I would still vote to keep our right wing Governments, but Burnham is not my cup of tea.
Is "Burnham" an aptonym for someone whose environmental policies cause wildfires in Scotland and forest fires in Spain and America?
"Burnham" = burn 'em? Oh forget it.
How does extracting gas and burning it differ from buying the same gas extracted from the same field, from Norway?
Apart from the U.K. profits and resultant tax revenue?
Ultimately, if we are to avert the most extreme effects of global warming, most of the remaining fossil fuels need to stay under the ground. If it were the case that extracting more from below the North Sea meant that less would be extracted elsewhere then, yes, it would make environmental sense to continue to exploit the North Sea. But we all know that that is not the case. It just means the world as a whole continues to burn more gas and oil.
So yes, drilling in the North Sea will go some small way towards improving our balance of payments, but it is delusional to claim as some do that it has no downside for the environment.
it cannot be worse than importing from other countries as they laugh at our stupidity and poverty. The whole renewable stuff is going to foreign companies as well. We are the laughing stock of the world for sure.
I think that's just your paranoia.
I don't. People who think we are showing a lead by giving up making things just so we can import the same things from abroad because we need them are really needing detained, not in prison but in a secure hospital for the mentally insane. Yes, Mr Ed, I am talking about you.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Leicester is doubling in size and population, despite almost universal opposition from the annexed areas. Methinks this means the end of Sir Peter Soulsby. The annexed areas will outvote the remaining Labour areas of the city.
This leaves the rather weird donut of a combined Leica and Rutland, stretching from the edge of Stamford to the edge of the West Midlands.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Gerrymandering is about designing constituencies for legislative elections. Not local authorities.
An authority based on a city with its rural hinterland makes a lot of sense. It's how Italian provinces work, for example.
If Lincoln's hinterland is wealthier, they are improving its tax base and presumably making it more likely the Labour Party will be voted out of office.
I'll tell you the worst Bond film. Thunderball. Those interminable underwater scenes where you have no clue who is who because they're all in masks and wetsuits.
They play the same "look we're underwater" music every time they're underwater too, and by the end of it after hearing it a thousand times I want to scream.
I'll tell you the worst Bond film. Thunderball. Those interminable underwater scenes where you have no clue who is who because they're all in masks and wetsuits.
Didn't you notice the different coloured wetsuits! Goodies were Orange, Baddie were Black!
On the latest polls the Tories and Reform are getting closer on votes and seats. It seems Burnham wins back some voters from Reform to Labour in the redwall but leaves the Tories largely untouched (perhaps as if you are still voting Tory even now you will almost certainly always vote Tory). For the Tories to overtake Reform on seats though it would likely need Kemi to win back some former Conservative voting swing voters who voted for Starmer Labour in 2024 but think Burnham too leftwing. Plus for there to be anti Reform tactical voting in Conservative held seats.
In terms of forming a government though, if the Tories do just edge ahead of Reform on seats without pulling away that will likely overall be good news for Burnham. With the rightwing vote near equally divided between the Conservatives and Reform under FPTP the main winner from that would be Labour in Labour held marginal seats
The attractiveness of a CDU-CSU style tie up increases by the day.
Let Reform run in t'North, and Cons in South. 400 seat coalition of the right....
So Reform smash the establishment by... forming a coalition with party of the establishment. Got it.
Someone is going to have to save Britain from the ridiculous socialism that has dominated since the war, with a decade or so exceptions in the 80s.
The line to take for Reform would be 'we'll work with the Conservatives to help them correct their previous mistakes. They were far too dominated by lib dems in disguise, and had forgotten what the voters want. We will help remind them'
Pensioners are part of that socialism (they absolutely won't see it that way, saying they paid their taxes their whole lives etc) but they are in receipt of a large amount of cash benefits and subsidies from the State.
I see no prospect of that being cut back.
You're going to be a pensioner one day...
Indeed, we all will. And I support the ending of the triple lock, pensioner freebies and a raising of the retirement age, which will affect me.
It's the right thing to do. My politics aren't based on what's most financially beneficial for me personally.
Never run for office, you'd not have a chance based on that.
He'd get my vote. And again I am closing in on all those benefits. I genuinely hope they don't exist when I reach retriement age in 6 years.
Of course I also genuinely hope I REACH retirement age in 6 years.
Richard, easy to say when you are loaded but what about people with no private pension at all or a pittance, not everyone is loaded like majority on here.
Plenty of pensioners pay tax anyway. Which reminds me to better remind Mum her next Payment on Account is due on the 31st.
FWIW (which is the square root of diddly squat) I think Daniel Craig proved to be the best Bond. Like many of the others he played it until he was much too old but he had the style, the wit and the look down pat. Sean Connery started off well but his latter films were just embarrassing.
I never really noticed it until someone pointed it out, but You Only Live Twice was the worst Connery film performance-wise. He looks utterly bored through the entire film. Even when he's just slid down a chute and landed in a chair. It's distinctly odd when you notice it.
Craig then Connery for me.
There are two Bonds, the first the Riger Moore, Pearce Brosnan, gentlman Spy!, a sort of Dean Martin with a gun. The other closer to the original is aThug in a suit...Craig and Connery.
Both wear Tuxedo's!
One leans on the bar and chats up woman; A lounge Lizard. The other leans on you throat with the heel of his shoe. A Bouncer!
As she says in Spectre..."I know what you are..you're an Assassin!"
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Gerrymandering is about designing constituencies for legislative elections. Not local authorities.
An authority based on a city with its rural hinterland makes a lot of sense. It's how Italian provinces work, for example.
If Lincoln's hinterland is wealthier, they are improving its tax base and presumably making it more likely the Labour Party will be voted out of office.
No it doesn't have to be just legislative. Gerrymandering is the political manipulation of any electoral boundaries to advantage a party. It can apply just as well to Local Council elections as Parliamentary ones.
And many of these changes - Nottingham being a good example - are sucking in the wealthier marginal areas because they have massive overspends within the cities and don't want to raise taxes there. In Nottingham they were quite open that the only way to get themselves out of a financial hole was to suck in the wealthier rural areas to prop them up.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
Leicester is doubling in size and population, despite almost universal opposition from the annexed areas. Methinks this means the end of Sir Peter Soulsby. The annexed areas will outvote the remaining Labour areas of the city.
This leaves the rather weird donut of a combined Leica and Rutland, stretching from the edge of Stamford to the edge of the West Midlands.
Still, Soulsby has had a good run. Feels like he has been mayor of Leicester since Tutor times.
Remarkable how this relatively minor decision about some North Sea oil has been elevated to the key litmus test for chancellor and energy/climate secretary.
Personally I think Treasury experience is essential for chancellor, given there are only 2-3 years before next election. So it should be Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper or Darren Jones imo.
I'll tell you the worst Bond film. Thunderball. Those interminable underwater scenes where you have no clue who is who because they're all in masks and wetsuits.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
Goldfinger was undoubtedly the best.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
Also had the best car. I used to have one of those to push around my living room with the bullet proof screen and the ejector seat. I was playing with it the day that Jim Clark died.
Okay, if we're doing James Bond, instead of what's the best movie, what's the worst movie, why don't we spin it round a bit and say who are the best baddies and who are the worst baddies.
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger, - Zorin from A View to a Kill, - the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye - the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies - the drug dealer in Licence to Kill - Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun - And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst: - Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace - Whittaker from The Living Daylights - Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???) - Renard from The World is not Enough
Donald Grant and Rosa Klebb for me by a country mile.
Goldfinger was undoubtedly the best.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
Also had the best car. I used to have one of those to push around my living room with the bullet proof screen and the ejector seat. I was playing with it the day that Jim Clark died.
Why is burnham seemingly yearning for the 1970s ? . A very strange speech
I have a yearning that (IMHO, the superb) Timothy Dalton made more than two Bond films, but we can't always have what we want.
Dalton's first outing was superb. Maryam D'Abo may have helped somewhat. I wasn't so keen on the second, the one with the wheelie -pulling Kenworths.
Try it again.
Licence to Kill is an excellent thriller.
I have seen it loads of times. The Living Daylights on the other hand is certainly in my top 5.
I like that.
I watched Licence to Kill again last night.
It is very dark, but Dalton's acting is superb and the chemistry between him and Robert Davi possible the best in the whole series.
I really enjoyed it.
Both Dalton's films are good. Both have flaws. The Living Daylights loses its way plotwise in the third act, when there's no threat anymore. Licence to Kill has a lot going for it but it has a little bit of a made for TV feel. Bond films always reflect culture and this was maybe influenced by the TV of the time?
I never feel like the The Living Daylights loses anything, because it has the background of the Afghanistan War and menacing villians like Necros. Whittaker becomes dangerous at the end too.
Sure, both films are about drugs - not blowing up the whole world - but Bond films don't have to be pastiches of themselves to be great thrillers, sometimes it's great to just bring a megalomaniac arsehole down.
That's as relevant today as ever.
It is subjective, and if you don't feel the film loses anything in the third act, that's fine. However, for me, [spoiler ahead] once the fake assasination has taken place, and the villains think they're fine but the Soviets are on to them, we know they're done. Yes, Bond could still theoretically die, but there's no real jeopardy any more. If it's on, I'll often catch the brilliant first half with Gibraltar and the Cello car chase, and the pipeline - that's all brilliant. However I usually drift away by the end.
Skyfall also loses its way in the third act. James Bond should not be doing Home Alone.
Comments
My favourite Bonds are Moonraker first and foremost. Spy Who Loved me and also License to Kill
For different reasons. Their fun, they’re hokum and they evoke happy memories
Doesn’t make them the best.
As for Casino Royale the Niven one, as I discussed with MexicanPete a week or so ago, one I dearly love too.
Most places seem to have a BPPS menu (burger, pizza, pasta, steak) with some salads and cauliflower steak or a nut roast that tastes absolutely toilet.
Everton matchesdomestic concerns- which is obviously where his interest lies. Cooper has been invisible in the role, Lammy was not much more so. A Miliband might do. Or they could job share.If you're after pure Fleming, it's very true to the books.
The worst bit is the score, and a very perky Felix Leiter at the end, who is excited about going fishing again, despite having lost his leg and his wife being raped and murdered on his wedding day.
The sovereign wealth fund was a throwaway line. It did not require a lengthy response, and presumably you gave one because it was the only area where you had something approaching an argument, though I'm damned if I can decipher it.
You completely failed to address the point about us feeding the oil and gas economies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and America. You completely failed to address the point about imported oil and gas causing MORE emissions - utterly indefensible on your own terms. Yet you have the gall to preach to me about 'fighting climate change' - your chosen hydrocarbon source is ADDING TO THE EARTH'S CO2 EMISSIONS. You are the one not fighting climate change, not me.
The only argument that can possibly made in favour of this economical and environmental vandalism that you favour is this fantasyland stuff about other countries clamouring to copy our example. Really? Which countries with an equivalent hydrocarbon resource are deciding to leave it in the ground? Which countries have decided it would be a good idea if their industrial energy costs what ours costs? The answer is none by the way, we have the highest industrial energy costs in the world - 36-46 above the IEA median.
What you don't seem to realise is that actually, by doing this so badly, we are damaging the cause of Net Zero globally. Doing what we are doing is worse than not doing it at all.
What’s not to love.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teens-pour-petrol-customers-set-37447082
This was the arson attack on a restaurant just down the road from Wes Streeting's constituency office.
I can’t see Mr Dua Lipa playing bond as he looks a bit like a rat. Not his fault but not for me.
If Amazon have plans to make a universe then a pared back post war Cold War bond with low key tech would be good but they shouldn’t saturate it with a million spin offs to attract every demographic as it will kill any cachet.
I say this because the money the UK made from taxes etc in the 80s was vital for the transition away from dinosaur heavy industries that were going to be destroyed by competition from the Far East. That transition was hard enough anyway with high unemployment and social upheaval. I think it would have been exponentially worse without using the North Sea windfall to assist. Obviously others might say the transiiton was unecessary but I think it had to hapen given the globalisation underway. Morovere it is easy to have a siovereign wealth fund when you have 1/12th of the population and no internal energy market that needs hydrocarbons. Again not the position for the UK.
To answer your other question, I see absolutely no difference between the actual exploitation of hydrocarbons in the UK and Norway> Until the last decade the industry has been pretty much identical on both sides of the divide. I spent 15 eyars working in Norway and their processes and decisions are all identical to the UK. The only real differnce has been in the last decade or so where UK Governments have massively undervalued the Oil industry and its potential whilst in Norway they have embraced it. We could have done the same but it was a politcial choice not to do so.
Daliah Lavi?
If one was interested in the 'fog in the Channel, Europe cut off' type of Brexit then they tried to deliver (they were never going to succeed no matter how much some might have wanted it).
If one wanted a sensible Brexit tat took into account the fact that nearly hald the vote was opposed rather than the 'winner takes all' attitude then they failed dismally. I am still a strong supporter of Brexit but very few decisions made since about our relationship with the EU have been sensible or necessary for anything other than winning a right wing civil war.
I would also dispute that most restaurants offer burgers and pizzas. Yes, our city has burger bars and pizza places but most of the restaurants don't offer either. I guess we just patronise different types of eating places
https://relaisdevenise.com/menus/set-menu.php
https://x.com/marcus70672192/status/2078503390661775797
Of course I also genuinely hope I REACH retirement age in 6 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8JhOSps_0
The way that Peter Sellers just... disappears?
However, it does have a pretty rubbish villain.
If you want to see how genuinely stupid the Local Government reorganisation plans are, just look at Lincolnshire. All designed so they can suck wealthier parts of the County into Labour dominated Lincoln City.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/council-leaders-react-to-local-government-shake-up-plan/ar-AA2847Z3?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Let me start. In no particular order, the best baddies are
- Goldfinger,
- Zorin from A View to a Kill,
- the Sean Bean character in GoldenEye
- the Jonathan Pryce character in Tomorrow Never Dies
- the drug dealer in Licence to Kill
- Scaramanga in the otherwsie forgettable Man with the Golden Gun
- And, of course, Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant in from Russia with Love
I'm going to give an honorable mention to Skyfall's Raoul Silva
The worst:
- Dominic Green from Quantum of Solace
- Whittaker from The Living Daylights
- Blofeld in Spectre (how did they fuck up with Christoph Walz???)
- Renard from The World is not Enough
But -then again- so is Goldfinger.
It's quite surprising, though, how many weak Bond movies have good villains, and vice versa.
In fact, I would argue that the only great Bond movies, with great baddies are:
- From Russia with Love
- Goldfinger
- Goldeneye
- License to Kill
https://www.baesystems.com/en/story/adativ-cloak-of-invisibility
"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
Also had the best car. I used to have one of those to push around my living room with the bullet proof screen and the ejector seat. I was playing with it the day that Jim Clark died.
He had the requisite swag and sex appeal
It’s vibes and just great fun.
I also love the cast. Just spotting people
Besides it isn't a beauty contest. Britain as the world's dumb blonde is nothing to aspire to.
It's just the Dominic Green is about as threatening as a wet lettuce.
This leaves the rather weird donut of a combined Leica and Rutland, stretching from the edge of Stamford to the edge of the West Midlands.
An authority based on a city with its rural hinterland makes a lot of sense. It's how Italian provinces work, for example.
If Lincoln's hinterland is wealthier, they are improving its tax base and presumably making it more likely the Labour Party will be voted out of office.
@andreajenkyns
A massive thank you and well done to @trussliz and the @cpac_gb team for organising such a fantastic conference.
https://x.com/andreajenkyns/status/2078509702040719703
Narrator: Journalists reported on and photographed a basically empty hall every day.
Peter.
There are two Bonds, the first the Riger Moore, Pearce Brosnan, gentlman Spy!, a sort of Dean Martin with a gun.
The other closer to the original is aThug in a suit...Craig and Connery.
Both wear Tuxedo's!
One leans on the bar and chats up woman; A lounge Lizard.
The other leans on you throat with the heel of his shoe. A Bouncer!
As she says in Spectre..."I know what you are..you're an Assassin!"
Peter.
‘You could have come in a taxi”
And many of these changes - Nottingham being a good example - are sucking in the wealthier marginal areas because they have massive overspends within the cities and don't want to raise taxes there. In Nottingham they were quite open that the only way to get themselves out of a financial hole was to suck in the wealthier rural areas to prop them up.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/4f8a5466-0e46-4596-8803-87697ff5253e?shareToken=eca8f6b2d7ae6befee9fadbcd9ef33a1
Personally I think Treasury experience is essential for chancellor, given there are only 2-3 years before next election. So it should be Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper or Darren Jones imo.
Did you come here to die
Nah mate, I came yesterday.
It won't stand the test of time.
@PolitlcsUK
·
1h
🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is set to increase international aid spending to 0.7% of GDP
[
@Independent
]