Straggler

I get a feeling that the new anti protest laws are going to be getting a pretty thorough test this year.

14 hours ago, choffer said:

This is supposed to be a thread for unpopular opinions. What you’ve managed to do here is post something that 99% of VT would agree with. Possibly for the first time ever 

Any post in this thread with a like should be deleted as too popular.

Hmm, hoisted by my own petard.

We have applied to join CPTPP.  In theory, I don't really have a problem with this.  A free trade agreement with a relatively large block of the world's economy.  What I'm really not sure about is why this large trading block that comes with its own very intricate rules that impact our legislation and standards is ok, but the EU is not ok?

Ok, in the emails thing. Clinton was thoroughly investigated over many years about these emails. Violations were discovered and the people who committed the violations were held to account.  Clinton was not found to have done anything wrong herself. She was described as at worst careless, not criminal.

Clinton's premises were not raided because there was never any belief/evidence that she was keeping the emails or server in her house. 

If you want the same level of accountability to be held to both Clinton and Trump, then a full investigation following the evidence to it's conclusion is the way to go. 

There is no way you can point at how Clinton was treated and say that she got better treatment than trump is now.

1 hour ago, Genie said:

An invasion will cripple the worldwide economy including China and the US. Combined with Russia throttling the gas and oil supplies the short term future could be extremely bleak.

The long term future is already bleak. We needed some sort of global response to climate change years ago and now we are headed towards a minimum of the military industrial machine being the growth priority, or at the worst lots more war. 

This world wide military BS moving borders on maps is the global equivalent of shuffling around the deck chairs on the Titanic. Who gives a crap where the border is when all the crops fail? Can the latest stealth fighter drop a bomb on famine? Can a tank crush pestilence? Bunch of **** idiots in charge all over the world.

5 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Another year where they'll have fixed everything and somehow made it less enjoyable to play 

Fixed everything is quite optimistic! 22 is still littered with bugs

Pitch notes

Quote

Career Mode playthroughs have always been a unique part of FIFA, specifically because they require the right mix of being able to get the best results and the desire to progress as fast as possible towards the big matches like finals, six-pointers, or promotion play-offs. That is why we introduced Interactive Simulation to Manager Career two years ago, but even with that addition, we still want to add more to the Career Mode progression toolkit.

Nothing exciting at all in there for me and I only do manager mode careers.  I imagine by FIFA 24 they will have a skip to the end of career button to save you all the hassle of playing the game at all. 

Where is the feature for people who like to get stuck in the lower league and grind games out with talentless players fluffing 1 star skill moves?

Actually I do like having a 3rd kit in create a club. I hope the editor is a bit more flexible too.

Ain't gonna lie, this trailer looked ok to me.  It's a comedy.  I'm ok with a comedy.  Not very original, but can probably watch it with the kids.  I mean, the jokes we can see:

Sleeping person woken by airhorn

Spandex is good for when you get big

4th wall break

Pupil is outrageously better than teacher at lesson

Big super bangs head in small location

Cultural misunderstanding

Flipping the middle finger

All of these have been done before (most just in Deadpool) and done better, but it seems delivered well enough.  Sort of 6 out of 10 may watch a bit, rather than 2 out of ten it looked in the last trailer.

9 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I think LeClerc is a clear tier below Max and Lewis

I agree. Max and Lewis have ice in the veins. Charles is a wonderful driver and super fast, but can't quite match the mental fortitude IMO. Not to say Charles is weak, it's just the other two are sodding tough competitors, there is no shame in not quite being at that level. 

I'm not a fan of Max at all, but I have to admire how inevitable his wins are. Once he hits the front you can turn off the telly, the race is run. He won't beat himself, nor will Lewis.

18 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

Cascarino was not only an appalling signing for Villa (and a record signing at the time) he's a complete tw@

Imagine if we'd actually got Sheringham then instead of that carthorse 

A bit off topic but, on the way back from a match in the train, a few years ago my dad and I were chatting about the state of the team.  I can't even remember who was playing up front, but we were discussing how bad our strikers were, which led to a comment along the lines of, "at least they are not as bad as Tony Cascarino" and then a fairly lengthy discussion about if he would be in the all time worst villa 11.

To be fair we had decided he didn't quite make the team when I noticed he was in the seat infront of my dad.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

Not sure that a gradual changing of views over years is something that can be characterized as a U turn, tbh.

As others have said, there's nothing wrong with changing your opinion, the problem is knee jerk changes, especially due to just blindly following public opinion.

Criticising politicians whenever they change their opinion, even when it is a gradual changing of views over a long time, or based on new information, is a great way to encourage politicians to become even more entrenched in their views and resistant to change. That should be the opposite of what we want.

Playing someone's words back decades later shouldn't be considered some sort of "gotcha", it's ludicrous, tabloidesque politics.

Not the point I was making at all. I was simply pointing out that one person who has changed their mind was criticising the other for changing their mind. It is the hypocrisy of the pair of them I find ridiculous.

I totally agree with the idea of changing your mind as new evidence becomes available. That they are both pointing at the other and presenting changing opinions as a weakness is stupid as they hurl stones from their glass houses.

I would also contend that the reasons that both have for flitting between opinions is more about personal advancement than wanting the best thing for the country, but that is another conversation.

Rishi is being accused of making a U-turn by people supporting ex Liberal democrat, remain voting Truss.  

I really wish the bar wasn't so low.

1 hour ago, Genie said:

There’s also the contradiction in thinking that I don’t think the classic Brexiteer realises.

1) We want to be out, we don’t want EU rules or influence over us.

2) We don’t to do a deal, hard brexit, cut all ties.

3) We don’t expect how we travel, work, trade or live in the EU to be negatively impacted. 

They are completely incompatible. We could never have a hard Brexit, and also a special arrangement with the EU that maintains some/all of the benefits of membership.

I totally agree, but how on earth do they not realise the contradiction?  It's not like this is cracking the Higgs Bosun, it's a straight line of logic that is so plainly obvious that to not see it takes an effort of considerable will.  The day May drew her red lines, it was an impossible/contradictory ask.  I remember my WTF thoughts at the time, yet on they stumbled into the inevitable failure.  Thanos will have to be downgraded to "reasonably probable" in the face of the inevitable failure of Brexit.  How do people who fell for this nonsense and still continue to support it manage to make a living?  I don't see how people can manage a household budget or raise a child if you are willing to buy every bag of magic beans that is waved under your nose.

It's - I want to have an athletic body, but live on Pringles and Dairy Milk, I want to do a space walk but don't want the helmet, it's bitching about not winning a prize in a competition I didn't enter.  Sorry I'm just venting now, but FFS saying you want to end freedom of movement then being pissed off/surprised that we are not free to move too is so freaking dumb.  I don't get how this wasn't obvious before the vote, I'm struggling even more now with the evidence clogging up our streets and hurting GDP more than the damn pandemic (ONS said that, the people that run the numbers for the fricking govt) how this is still even a question. 

But here we are and it's so screwed up that even in opposition you can't say out loud that Brexit is crap.  No, Labour are going to "make it work". I didn't believe it when Boris said it and I don't believe it when Starmer says it.  It is fantasy.  The ONS said that every single form of Brexit makes us poorer.  Everyone who supports it, supports that basic fact.  Bloomin Labour are going on about focusing on growth and making Brexit work, which brings us right back round to completely incompatible agendas again.

Ending free movement was point number one in the official govt Brexit Benefits document! The biggest benefit, the headline, the star of the show and somehow enough people thought that it just meant ending freedom of movement for other people. This was of course the same document that had to pad out the benefits with blue passports, imperial measurements and sticking a pic of a crown on your pint glass.  So the biggest benefit turns out to be FUBAR, so what do we have left?  The sum total of diddly squat and piss all. 

Seriously, anyone who has not read the Brexit benefits doc, I would recommend it.  Like so much that the Tories do, it is a parody in its original form.

Brexit BS

Quote

There are a great many benefits to Brexit: control of our democracy, borders and waters;
control of our own money, helping us to level up across the country; the freedom to
regulate in a more proportionate and agile way that works for our great British businesses;
benefits for people that put money back in their pockets, improve their rights and choices
as consumers and give them access to better healthcare; the ability to shape a better
environment as we achieve net zero by 2050; enhanced welfare standards for our animals;
and a Britain that is truly global once again, with its own seat in international fora, reaching
out and agreeing new trade deals and strategic partnerships.

Above is the first paragraph and contrast that with us burning 10's of thousands of pigs, a broken under resourced NHS, the widest gap in wealth between rich and poor in history, the new high speed rail linking the north and south stopping in the midlands, net zero by 2050 ignored by the 2 candidates vying for the top job, the agricultural trade deal with Australia making our farmers worse off, fishermen going broke because they cannot sell their catches in EU ports and the freedom to regulate in a more proportionate way that works for us meaning serious discussion about removing ourselves from human rights legislation and ending the freedom to protest noisily, and finally we can't get on a ferry to go on holiday because we insisted on more border security.  This stuff I can reel off from the top of my head.

Brexit benefits my arse.

Want to watch the economy bounce?  Get in power and promise to rejoin the EU.

The French have a responsibility to the rest of Europe as they have the boarder all these non EU citizens (Brits) are crossing to get into the EU.  We have 100% forced them to do additional checks, not just for the French, but as a responsible member of the EU.  This one was easy to see pre Brexit, all you had to do is look at what non EU members had to do to travel into the EU.  But once again the argument "no, that won't happen to us" won again. 

It seems the argument now, that it wasn't Brexit that caused this, seems to be doing pretty well too.  You have to do some pretty awesome mental gymnastics to go with that logic, but it seems we are getting world-class at deluding ourselves.  So predictable and so stupid. 

Actually, that could be the tag line for Brexit as a process "so predictable and so stupid". 

We want to take back control of our borders!  How dare the French control their own borders!  Anyone still peddling Brexit as anything other than an unworkable mess should be ostracized from any responsible position due to a catastrophic lack of judgement. 

20 hours ago, sne said:

Gotta admit my hype kinda went up a bit after watching this. Looks a bit epic tbf.

 

A definite improvement on what we have seen before 

£110 for the pro shirt.  For that price, I'd expect it to pull me off at the end of the game, rather than the other way round.

3 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I'd like to compare this to a video on how to do it before we left the EU. I imagine the video for that would be about 15 seconds

1. Accept order.

2. Put goods on truck.

3. Wave goodbye to truck.

Made no different if you were sending the goods to Birmingham or Berlin.

"Simple"

35 minutes ago, Jareth said:

I just don't know what the spell is that Truss has over tory party members - the ones I know have been touting her for a while, but there literally cannot be a worse candidate to charm the general public at an election, I mean she can't string a sentence together. So I get that she's Thatchers heir, in that she's a right wing Representative for Wellingborough who's not male, but she is arguably less relatable than the Maybot, less skilled at getting what they want than Bozza, and less intelligent than any previous PM to date. They just want to shag Thatcher on a union jack bedspread while the world literally burns, don't they?

This is a thought I have had myself.  The Tories simply want to shag a cosplay Thatcher.  At least enough of them do to make it a viable strategy as part of a bid to be the next PM.  The funnier thing is that the Thatcher fantasists are the hardcore Brexiteers and there is no way in hell she would ever have held a referendum on our membership of the EU.  She would probably have campaigned to remain in the event of one.  She was a Eurosceptic in that she didn't like the idea of a federal Europe, but no way she would have allowed that to trump the benefit of free trade and no way she would give up all her influence inside the EU in exchange for the somewhat dubious benefits of being outside.

2 hours ago, BOF said:

Having read the article, the headline doesn't match the content. Have at it. Maybe don't go with the sharp end of a Cornetto though.

Decisions, decisions.

If I had anything to do with the Tories I'd bin it off too. It has done nothing but expose what a poor selection of candidates there are. I think even the Tory members are unhappy with the choices before them.