desensitized43

How does a war between 2 countries that aren’t even neighbours work? There’s literally another two countries and hundreds of miles in between them and neither has the ability to launch amphibious invasions of the other so I don’t really get what a conventional war looks like here. Presumably they just lob bombs and missiles at each other but as history has taught us, that’s never enough to win a war outright.

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

So it appears Reform have dropped a candidate for the next GE because of a "lack of activity"

Normally you would say fair enough, good strategy.

It's a bit harsh though as he's dead.

If they’re referring to lack of brain activity they’d need to drop all their candidates.

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

the ESPN documentary captures something that the drama doesn't, they interview some of the jurors and at least one of them maybe 2 and its a woman i can remember and she says "I just wanted to go home" 

he got away with murder because the juror was fed up being locked up in a hotel room

 

I can't say I blame them tbh. The way they were treated was pretty disgraceful because they were all shit scared of a mistrial. It's one of those weird cases where you'd have been buzzing to get on that case but the reality of it must have been like a living nightmare.

I'm still amazed at how he got off but then you watch the documentaries that have been made and the fantastic People v OJ Simpson and you realise just how it happened. The racial climate of the time, the LAPD, the complete incompetance of the prosecutors and some very shady lawyering from the defence team that went very close to the line and in some cases danced across it.

Hell just isn't hot enough for "the Juice".

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

Someone on the new stadium thread had only just realised the North Stand was cancelled.  He'd completely missed it.

I still am shocked to the core that the only communication about this has been a throw away comment in one interview with the CEO.

You can argue all day about the rights and wrongs of the cancellation and the pro's and con's of  having Chris Heck, ruthless money chaser in charge of everything. But there is no argument that the communication surrounding the cancellation has been shambolic, embarrassing even.

Tbf it was on the site and in the local rags. Not to mention it's been done to death on here but hey, some people miss things.

What they haven't done is be transparent about the reasons why it's not happening and what they propose to do now. We all know we're at the end of what can realistically be done with the ground without knocking one of two of the existing stands down or planning for life after Villa Park. At the moment it seems to be "we'll tart the existing up and plough on for another x number of years" all while other rival clubs are busy making ambitious plans and executing them - by that I mean Everton, Newcastle etc, not the unwashed up the road who're busy selling their fans a fantasy.

3 minutes ago, LxYoungAVFC said:

Wait, did I miss something? The new North Stand cancelled?

Where have you been?

It was Purslows project. Heck came in and cancelled it for reasons that the club have never made clear.

14 minutes ago, Czarnikjak said:

777 is very unlikely to happen. Unless they find another buyer, administration might be the only option.

Administration will open them up to all kinds of Xia-level chancers.

It’s pretty fantastical to imagine that a club that’s been in the championship for years, possibly being relegated to league 1, who don’t seem able to put a decent product on the pitch, who made a catastrophic managerial appointment a couple of months ago, who can’t fill their current stadium and recently paid an enormous amount to get it repaired to a state where it can fully open will all of a sudden build a new 60k stadium.

Personally I’m all for it. Let them bankrupt themselves building it.

I bet you it never happens though.

2 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

Yes but The class thing is actually massively exaggerated. There was hardly any class discrimination when it came to escaping except the logistical point that first class passengers were closer to the deck so naturally got out faster. 
 

The only real discrimination was gender, because of the women and children first command. 
 

You were far more likely to survive if you were a woman in third class than if you were a man in first class

It also depended what side of the ship you were trying to get on a boat from.

One side of the ship was being loaded by Lightoller who essentially interpreted the “women and children” first order as “no men” and stuck to it so rigidly he let boats go with loads of empty seats rather than letting on men who were stood right there. The other side was being supervised by someone who would let men get on when he couldn’t see any more women and children to load.

I didn’t realise until listening to that rest is history podcast that lightoller was the basis for mark rylances character in Dunkirk. He captained his small boat over in 1940 to rescue soldiers from the beach. He was the highest ranking officer to get off the titanic. What a life.

21 minutes ago, blandy said:

You may not have heard of it, because it’s rare. But it’s also fact and reality. It’s happened multiple times and Prisons are usually the location, though not exclusively. People with todgers being put in women’s prisons because they either identified as women, or had been gender reassigned as women and then going on to sexually assault other prisoners.

That’s obviously a lamentable situation. I guess the question is how do you stop that and also stop completely innocent and decent trans people from being discriminated against or victimised.  There’s kind of 2 extreme camps (can I say camp?). One is shouting for the rights of Trans people trumping the rights of women born as women, and the other is shouting for the rights of born women trumping the rights of trans people. And then each calls the other haters and dangerous and evil and…so much noise, so little understanding.

Well people who are in prison are generally there because they aren't standup members of society so it shouldn't really be a surprise that when you put scummy people in jail they're going to do scummy things if the opportunity presents.

27 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It’s part of the problem now that some people including some women feel like they are able to police what they perceive as their spaces. But how exactly is this going to be done, do the public have a right to see your genitalia if you’ve entered a women’s rest room and they suspect you are wearing a wig or are unusually tall?

Can I demand to see your cock if I suspect you might be a trans man and my son is in the building? 

The government involvement has been less than helpful, the spineless PM and the trouble making Badenoch with their flippant attitudes and their flippant comments on WC’s provision and access. Do we really think that a potential rapist is dissuaded from rape if a toilet has a lady symbol on the door? But would commit rape if there is a unisex facility? It’s a level of debate that is deliberately pathetic. 

Well definitely a sexual offender will find a way to offend regardless and tbh I've never heard of anyone actually exploiting this as a way to get into a womens space in order to offend which is why it's a paper argument not anything grounded in reality. It's about fear and anxiety rather than anything else, but that fear and anxiety is real, even if it's baseless. 

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yep, I’ve read some of what she says and as I said, she has a nugget of a legitimate point that needs to be discussed including us being a society that has the ability to offer everyone a safe space. But everyone needs to mean everyone. Not just the group she advocates for, it’s a dead end argument to argue that one group should be protected and not another.

She regularly takes that point she wants to make and ends up in shrieking arguments online and creating social media pile ons. In contributing to that, she makes less people safe. 

Then, because of the weight of her identity and presence in the discussion any debate on any ‘serious’ news channel ends up simply reflecting that online shouty ping pong. We don’t get a sensible debate without it quickly turning in to whether you support or dislike Rowling and interpretations of what she stands for.  

 

Agreed. I don't like the way she's gone about it at all and persnally think she's doing harm to her cause but I'm not sure how we move forward. The tendancy is to talk about women in general terms, like they all think like Rowling. I know my Mrs says she personally isn't bothered if someone Trans is using the womens toilet or changing room but I don't think she's ever known when someone Trans was, so is it a non-argument? It's a pretty wooly debate that ultimately boils down to how certain women (but evidently not all) "feel" about it rather than any kind of hard evidence of anyone being in actual danger.

As a man though, I don't feel like this is my fight to be had. It doesn't affect me and I don't really care what bathroom or changing room someone uses. It feels to me like something prominent women politicians need to sort out as they're the ones 'at the coal face', if you like and the rest of us need to butt out and be guided by them.

11 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I don’t understand why she’s got so deep in to the spat on the extreme end of transgender politics and has essentially called out all transgender people as fakes. There is an intelligent debate to be had about a level playing field in sport, and safe spaces, and criminal activity. But for some reason she has taken those reasonable points and decided to absolutely focus hate on the entirety of a very fragile minority.

 

She wrote a massive blog about it some time ago that went pretty in depth as to her reasons. Wjhat I took from reading it was that she's a woman who's been abused by a man in the past (like a lot of women tbh) and her issue isn't with Trans people, it's a fear of men. So when she's in a women-only 'safe space', she doesn't want someone who's a biological man there regardless of whether they 'just identify' as a woman or are actively transitioning.

Personally I think you can do whatever you want to as long as you're not harming anyone else but there lies the rub of the issue...she feels she's being harmed by it.

5 hours ago, blandy said:

Kind of. But it’s an everybody loses scenario. I believe BT workers and Uni workers pension funds are significant shareholders. So those people suffer too. All the contractors and creditors who are owed money, they get shafted to the tune of close to 2 billion quid. And the public, we get shafted, because the work to stop the pollution and leaks and repair sewers and the like. That still needs doing and paying for. So now the taxpayer has to pay for it. Taxpayers in Brum and Manchester have to pay to fix London’s water.

It’s the worst option, but potentially the final option if all others fall through.  Other options include the government giving (via OFWAT) some wider leeway for the company to sort shit out - more time over which to spread the costs and then the shareholders pump more money in. But that lets the company fail to meet standards when other companies are not given that permission.

like I posted earlier it’s kind of a who blinks first, bluff calling stage at the moment.

 

I see the thing about pension funds all the time. It’s just an excuse not to do anything. We can’t nationalise it because the pension funds, we can’t let it go into administration because the pension funds, we can’t fine them for shit performance because the pension funds.

It’s **** blackmail.

Am I missing something?

The company is unviable and potentially insolvent and the shareholders are unwilling to provide it with the capital injection to continue. Surely the thing just goes into administration and the government create a new entity, buy the assets and the debt gets wiped out? The old shareholders get **** all and we get a shiny new co with none of the debts, as tax payers we’d still need to pump some capital in to get the infrastructure up to standard but that’s surely something that’s worth the investment, from a state perspective?

10 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Not expected to face any further ban apparently. 

 

Translation:

we’ve already bunged the FA some of our dirty oil money to **** off and leave us to our sportswashing and murdering.

55 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

He's a very obvious troll

He’s trying his best to get himself a presenter spot on Gbeebies.

21 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Its not really. Clubs are breaking the rules then facing consequences when caught

Only certain clubs are facing consequences when we all know there are far bigger rule breakers who they’re either scared to go after or have decided not to for other reasons.

It’s like the police sitting at the side of the road with a speed gun all day while burglaries and muggings go uninvestigated and thinking they’ve done a good job.

Not to mention the rules themselves are set at a level far too low to allow those clubs to actually be mobile within the pyramid.

“staffed by believers” **** me.

It’s becoming religious now. If the people running the system believe hard enough it’ll work. Conversely, it’s not that the current system is bat shit crazy, underfunded and generally unworkable. It’s just that the people there don’t believe enough.

Simplistic answers for people with simple minds.

14 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

After completing the DS9 marathon it's on to Enterprise. Or rubbish Star Trek as it's called in this house. I always think Hoshi and Phlox are a bit hard done by, the performances and characters don't deserve to be in the franchise killer. But it really is laughable. And that theme tune......

I think that’s overly harsh tbh. Seasons 3 and 4 were great. It’s well known that all Star Trek shows need a couple of seasons to find their feet. The first few of next generation were trash as well.

Agree on the theme tune though. They tried to do something different and I think they kinda acknowledge all these years later that it didn’t work.

The scenes in decontamination where they rub gel over each other were creepy and unnecessary.

9 minutes ago, Genie said:

Local primary school children here are currently based at the high school whilst the repairs take place. I’ve no idea how this compares to the national backlog of work required though. 

At least it's getting done I suppose.

56 minutes ago, Genie said:

Potholes seem to be a turd that the Tories are deliberately not fixing to give Labour a headache. 

Add it to the list.

Have they fixed the collapsing school roofs yet?

Reading Forests statement I agree with pretty much everything that say on PSR. The rules are absurd. The cut off date being before the end of the window is ridiculous and just means clubs have to choose between getting less money now or breaching the rules to get more value later. That can’t be in the spirit of the rules.

It’s also unarguable that these rules are harming mobility within the football pyramid.

That being said, 4 points seems a fair reflection and does take into account their mitigating circumstances around Brennan Johnson. They’ll moan and appeal because it’s risk free to them as the appeals panel won’t increase the deduction for a frivolous appeal so in that way you the statement about how they feel “disappointed and dismayed” is largely for show. They would have thought given what happened to Everton this would be the outcome (4-6 points) and I’d think they fancy their chances of getting 1 point more than Luton over the next 10 games.

5 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

 

I’m actually waiting for someone from the militant nutter wing to suggest there is too much of a national emergency to have an election just yet.

They’d need to burn down the reichstag first.

White told him he didn't want to be considered. I know what my answer to that would have been. Book yourself a nice holiday in June you word removed because you won't be on the plane with us.