Awol

A Polish Jewish Marxist who fled to England during WW2, refused to fight... Where's that from? Are The Indie wrong when they write: Well that was a rather epic fail on my part. I'd read somewhere before that he was a conscientious objector, apparently not. Although I still think it's fair to say he wasn't enamoured with his refuge. From his wiki page: Not quite sure why he'd expect anything else attitude wise at a time when Britain was the last hold out against Nazi tyranny.

Literal country name translations from Mandarin Chinese:

A Polish Jewish Marxist who fled to England during WW2, refused to fight and instead focused on bringing down the very system that provided his family with succour - the alternative being certain death in a concentration camp for ticking the top 3 "burn him" boxes on the 3rd Reich's check list. Top bloke.

The cynic in me would say the release of Ed's first ever policy would be with the intention of trying to deflect from McBride The line in the papers today from Labour seems to be that McBride was a "lone wolf". I think that's known as the Murdoch defence.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo Can't we just eat vegetarians instead ? ...and there, in (Tony's) comedy form is the problem. We don't have to have unheated homes (though it's worth noting that even in Aberdeenshire, one of the colder parts of the UK, there are modern unheated homes where people live perfectly comfortably because they've been designed well). We don't have to subsist on lentil soup, but we do have to get away from the late C20 idea that three servings of meat a day is either sensible or sustainable. We don't have to live without using energy, though we do have to live with renewable energy, not having continual wars to drag more fossil fuels out of the ground to poison the earth even more. We don't have to have a crap standard of living, but we do have to escape from the idea that a good standard of living is buying endless plastic, disposable shite that's deliberately designed to break down once out of guarantee. The idea of continuing with current patterns of consumption, while telling others to reduce their population and at the same time causing wars, crop destruction, forest logging and mass population movement as a consequence of the wars we foment to win and keep control of fossil fuels, is simply insane. Barking, saucer-eyed, howling-at-the-moon mad. I don't disagree with that, it's perfectly rational in theory. How exactly do you suggest that people in the democratic developed world are persuaded to make such an adjustment? Hopefully that can then be applied to the developing world too, which it would have to be.

What exactly do you think the rapidly developing and industrialising nations of the world are striving for, lentil soup, no electricity, unheated homes and none of the trappings of the developed world? Similarly it is as unrealistic to expect western democratic societies to elect people who are telling them "vote for us and we'll do everything in our power to drive down your standard of living", not without some catastrophe that actually forces people to change their behaviour first. The only other variable therefore is to try to limit the growth of the overall population - although if you've got an answer to the first two points that would be more constructive than dishing out the slightly OTT abuse.

Anybody who thinks there isn't a problem with uncontrolled population growth needs to get educated The Earth is more than capable of supporting a population of 10 billion. Considering the speed (even faster than anticipated) of demographic transition, it's somewhat likely that human population will not even hit 9 billion. Levi with the greatest respect, I'd put a little more weight in the view of David Attenborough on this issue than yours.

The same stance as the Catholic Church. The common thread being religious doctrine suited to a world several millennia ago when the global population was an estimated 200 million, not a world where the population has trebled in 60 years to over 7 billion. That said, the key driver of over population is poverty. People in poorer and less developed countries have big families because in many cases they don't expect the children to reach adulthood. Attenborough was talking about this at the tail end of an interview on R4 a few days ago but was hastily cut off by a nervous presenter, however the core of his argument is spot on: How long can a finite ecosystem support an ever expanding population before the ecosystem itself and the biodiversity required to sustain it is overwhelmed? Edit: Just to add, Muslim countries make up a relatively modest amount of global population, the two monsters population wise are China and India which have minority (but still huge In India's case) Muslim populations. The population explosion in China is directly attributable to the policies of Mao in the 1950's when he declared that the only way to win a nuclear war was to have more survivors than anyone else.

Israel didn't exist in 1945 And suffered repeated surprise attacks by their combined Arab neighbours trying to drive them into the sea since 1948. Not exactly "carte blanche", but we shouldn't mention that, because the Israeli's are evil.

I reckon both the Ed's are going to face some difficult questions about their proximity to McBride's revolting behaviour, carried out at the behest of their former mentor.. One Mong to rule them all one Mong to find them, One Mong to bring them all and in the Treasury bind them.

Well after calling for the UN weapons inspectors report the Russians clearly felt it was too uncomfortable for Assad and decided it was "biased". That doesn't seem odd, given their determination to support his regime no matter what it does. Still Obama has his 'out' now that they have agreed to surrender the 1000+ tons of chemical weapons held by the regime, which they have 12 months to sort out... Quite how that will be achieved in the middle of a civil war is another question, but El Presidente was running away from his red line so fast that I'm not sure he heard it.

Godfrey Bloom is a complete chod and Farage would probably like to shoot him right about now. If he did and I saw it, I wouldn't grass him up.

A Greek Musician? Sounds like the definition of 'mercy killing'.

It's not, for some reason people are not accepting that it is still the rozzers who will continue to pick people for being in a state, they'll just take them to these drunk tanks instead of clogging up the nick. This is not about civilians snatching people off the streets then charging them to be released, that is called kidnap and ransom.

So, in order to maximise profits, then need to maxmise guests, yes? Only the Police can legally detain people. They will not receive a financial incentive from the operators and therefore the people choosing who goes into these things will simply be performing their jobs as normal and the threshold for having your collar felt will remain the same, i.e. being a danger to yourself or others. The difference is that this way the Police wouldn't end up with their cells being full of drunken idiots, and the idiots will be hit with a fine likely to make them think twice about their future behaviour. I don't agree with much the government do but this seems like a fairly obvious 'win'.

Mere facts....clearly this is all about privatising the Police force, not acting (as you rightly point out) as a deterrent to king size whoppers who cannot control themselves in public. Describing some of the pond life inhabiting English town centres after dark as "revellers" is taking the piss.

The Police are supposed to be dealing with crime, not babysitting retards who drink themselves insensible and collapse in the street. At least this tries to address the problem and allow the Police to focus more energy on their actual job of protecting the public. Unless of course you posting a picture of one copper doing something wrong means the entire Police force cannot be trust to do their job, in which case what alternative would you suggest? While I agree the reality is that the police spend more time dealing with those in the community who really should be being cared for by social services. The police though has long since been left to mop up those that other services fail and do so largely as a result of cuts of various governments and not least those of previous Tory governments and the care in the community. If this government really want to get the Police back to doing their real job or preventing and solving crime then stopping them from acting as societies social workers would be a good place to start. Well that an not cutting their numbers obviously. Quite and this initiative seems to be intended as a step in that direction, not a magic bullet but at least taking some of the pressure off them.

The Police are supposed to be dealing with crime, not babysitting retards who drink themselves insensible and collapse in the street. At least this tries to address the problem and allow the Police to focus more energy on their actual job of protecting the public. Unless of course you posting a picture of one copper doing something wrong means the entire Police force cannot be trust to do their job, in which case what alternative would you suggest?

16% and that's with a lucky guess on the Geordie Shore question - which I assume is a TV programme, not a band. Happy with that.

Yes they do, in America they're called Democrats.

From Wikipedia, of course. That's where I get all my information about military matters - I thought you knew that? Here. It says the dead and wounded were from the Black Watch. The bit about the SBS is however not referenced, I suppose unsurprisingly. The Black Watch losses were from a suicide bomber at a Vehicle Check Point, not in Fallujah. Their job was to act as a blocking force and intercept any insurgents who had fled the city. Trust me, they were not in Fallujah and took no part in the battle for the city. As to whether the presence of insurgents is a weak excuse for not clearing the area afterwards or not, it doesn't change the fact that the security situation was never stable enough to allow the US to do it. That point is not in doubt and therefore hypotheticals about whether they would or would not have done it if given the opportunity are moot. Having had a dig around on line I can't find any conclusive evidence that residual DU is responsible for the birth defects occurring today. I'm not disputing that they happen, just interested in seeing the evidence, if there is any? (PM would be great if you could, just to try and get this back on topic).

The objective of Fallujah, rather than the Iraq war as a whole, was to devastate the place and kill as many as possible. A distinction between civilians and presumed combatants was made when checking people leaving the town. No such distinctions were made in the attack on the town. We were involved, and some of our people were killed or sustained injuries. The Black Watch, the SBS, and the RAF were all involved. What I'm not clear about is whether we also used chemical weapons (or not-chemical-weapons, if you prefer). The Black Watch were deployed to Camp Dogwood south east of Falljuah, they did not participate in the battle, they relieved a US unit stationed there and enabled them to do so. SBS may have been involved, be genuinely interested to know where that info comes from because by that point the SBS were all supposed to be working the Afghan theatre leaving Iraq to the SAS... Similarly the RAF may have been flying sorties and that could have been recce, CASEVAC, air to ground, I don't know. Do you? The answer to your question however is no, UK didn't use DU in Fallujah. Regular UK troops weren't there on the ground, SF don't use weapons that fire DU and neither do the RAF to my knowledge - although standing by to be corrected. DU is not outlawed though and you correctly state it is not the decision of soldier X as to whether it is employed or not. It's not like a bunch of squaddies suddenly say, "stuff this, I was saving these DU shells for something special but I might just fire a few off for the crack..." Sorry, are we talking about Iraq, India or just implying that Americans are racist? I'm getting a little confused.

First, I agree that it is not much help to people dying now as a result of the use of DU munitions, although it is disingenuous to claim they were meant to be killed at some earlier point. However much I disagreed with the Iraq war its objective was not to kill civilians. No the UK was not involved in the battle for Fallujhah. No one was shelled with DU during the battle either. Shelled means artillery, DU is delivered as an anti armour round directly into a target via line of sight. It doesn't explode, it's density is used to penetrate armour at high velocity and ignite flammable materials within - hence being spread around the immediate area. Should it have been used in an urban area? From the comfort of my chair today, I'd say no. From the perspective of a grunt back then who was trying to clear the place, or a commander trying to preserve the lives of his men in the middle of a savage battle, I'd probably be using every tool available to get the job done. Should it have been removed afterwards? Yes. Were the various Iraqi insurgent groups going to allow western forces to conduct a spot of area cleaning? No.

I'm sorry to be anal about this issue but a chemical weapon is something that's only purpose is to use a manufactured poison to cause casualties. So when a rocket or shell full of Sarin is fired at a target the munition is only a delivery vehicle for the chemical substance, enabling the contents to cause casualties instantly. A tank shell containing DU is not a delivery vehicle to poison people, it is designed solely to blow things up - specifically armoured vehicles. I'm not disputing that the residue of DU left over an area when said vehicle explodes is toxic or that it doesn't have long term ill affects, clearly it does, but you don't fire a DU shell to instantly poison people, that regrettable effect is a legacy of its use and not its purpose. Therefore DU is NOT a chemical weapon, i.e. something designed to cause immediate casualties by poisoning. Whether it should be banned because of it's legacy effect is another debate, however it was designed at time when an out-gunned and out-manned NATO alliance needed something short of nuclear weapons to stop any attempt by a Soviet steamroller to squash Western Europe. In the context of potential mushroom clouds DU was a far less radical solution.

lol