desensitized43

That's not what I've read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_gas_leaks They were both damaged.

There was gas flowing through it. The Russians were still selling it and the Germans were still buying it, albeit in much smaller quantities.

Ever since that pipeline was detonated I’ve been scratching my head as to why the Russians would destroy it. They were still technically generating revenue from it and presumably at the end of the war the conversations would immediately start to reopen it fully. I’m not one of these conspiracy theorist types as my posting record on here shows but when I’ve weighed it up (albeit from a very uneducated pov) it looks like the ones that benefit the most are those NATO countries who wanted to cut off that potential source of revenue for the Russians (by stopping the Germans do their dirty deal for Russian gas) and making sure that at the end of the war the Russians would continue to feel the economic effects for some time to come. Maybe I’ve got it wrong and happy to be convinced.

You reallt have to appreciate how they construct their front page though...Orgasms and racial hatred. What more can the average gammon need?

They've just had a bloke on LBC saying his solution to the migrant crisis was "to dump a load of Great White Sharks into the channel". Needless to say he was cut off pretty swiftly, but it's troubling that these people not only exist but feel so emboldened in their disgusting views that they're safe to spout them in a public forum. I wonder why they feel so safe to do so?

You won't win the argument by posting "facts" peddled by those notorious communists at the University of Oxford. The only fact I need is my own intuition and feelings.

I’d actually be quite happy if we passed a law that meant you couldn’t claim asylum if you’d crossed the channel in an undeclared fashion but I’d also like to see a law passed to go with this requiring the government to set up centres abroad where these people can actually declare their need to claim asylum status. The two go hand in hand, unless the intention is to just **** these people over because you don’t want to take any of them…which I suspect is the position of a few.

It would just be a hell of a lot easier if people were honest that they don’t want to accept anyone coming over at all regardless of the worthiness of their case. Instead we get this hiding behind certain ‘ ‘red flag’ excuses they’ve picked up by certain publications. ”They’re criminals/illegals” - no one has ever been prosecuted for crossing the channel because there’s no law against requesting asylum. ”they’re all men, why can’t we accept some women” - but we don’t want to set up asylum application centres in foreign countries because that’ll encourage all of them to come. ”they're economic migrants” - but we need them to do the thousands of low skilled jobs we can’t fill. ”they don’t contribute” - all the evidence points to them being a net gain once they’ve been accepted. Tbh I do fee the conversation got a little off topic because I really don’t think todays latest government shitshow should be about whether any of the people coming across the channel deserve to be here or not. They’re here, so we need to process them in the most efficient and humane way possible. Only someone whose opinion is very morally questionable could argue that what we’re doing now is remotely acceptable.

We have plenty in this country to go around. If it’s not getting to the people that need it that’s because the government are incapable or unwilling to engage in proper wealth distribution.

Where they’re coming from and why isn’t the point. Anyone who comes over deserves to be treated like a human being while their case is being dealt with. Not crammed into an overcrowded centre like an animal in inhuman conditions. There’s a backlog of cases that have built up which means there’s more people in the system but as the chart someone posted above demonstrates, it isn’t because there’s vastly more people arriving. It’s due to underfunding and neglect. A deliberate attempt to make the experience of having your case heard as uncomfortable and humiliating as possible. On whether there’s more men than women and children. You’re right in that but ask yourself why that’s the case. If we actually took the people from the camps and dislocated people around the world we’d see a balance but if the only way to get here is by walking and hitchhiking across Europe then it’s not a surprise that those caring for small children, the weak and the old either don’t make it or see it as too big of a risk.

“Let’s stop pretending they’re all refugees in distress” She’s absolutely vile. Justifying putting actual human beings in packed and unsanitary conditions just because you think they’re not deserving of humane treatment.

Well it’s technically a war crime for them to do this but as we’ve all seen that’s really not going to put them off doing something. Putin needs to end up in The Hague.

Occasionally having to admitting a mistake had been made and correcting it is absolutely a good thing. When you have to do it multiple times it’s an indicator that decisions are being taken in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, with a lack of acceptable advice or oversight or put simply, they’re **** incompetent.

That’s true but the modelling doesn’t show a peak until between 2080-2100 at around 10-11 billion and then a gradual fall. It’s a bit of an inexact science but from what I’ve read the level of population the planet can support sustainably is somewhere between 4-5 billion we won’t reach that sustainable level until we’ll into the next century.

Not a question of politeness. There’s no one who can tell me that level of growth is sustainable.

Accelerate? Looking forward that Mediterranean lifestyle? In all seriousness, there’s nothing we as individuals can do except common sense stuff. Use less leccy, drive electric if you can afford it, eat less or no beef if you can but above all else use your vote to remove governments and those in parties that aren’t taking it seriously.

It won’t wipe us out. That’s massive hyperbole. What it will do is render more of the equatorial and inland regions uninhabitable and result in sea level rise further reducing the remaining farmland available for human/animal use and a competition for the remaining resources, primarily that’ll be water, food, fuel and ‘living space’. Current estimates are that we’re currently at a point where we need 1.6x the amount of resources the planet can provide. A correction in the numbers of humans is inevitable but humans as a species will still be around. The question is “what form does the population correction take?” War? Disease? Starvation? Natural depopulation due to a lower birth rate over decades? It’s likely to be a combination of all of these. What we need to be doing now is making best use of the arable land available to us (kill all the **** cows) to get the maximum amount of food, conserve fresh water, build wind and solar on a monumental scale to reduce our need for fossil fuels and help those parts of the world where it’s going to become a lot more difficult for humans to live to adapt too or we’re going to see migration on epic scales within our lifetime.

We all know that anything Rees-Mogg says needs to somehow be reduced back to Brexit and some imaginary war that will go on in perpetuity against "Remainers" in order to maintain his relevancy, because we all know that when the country has moved on from that kind of entrenchment he doesn't really have much to offer on any other subject. Whatever he says needs to be taken in that context.

Yeah ordinarily I’d think it was pretty shabby for a club to potentially be talking to other managers behind the current managers back but when that manager is Steven Gerrard I’ll make an exception.

Just of interest, can you suggest a voter demographic the Tories haven’t pissed off?

I suppose some would and some wouldn’t. Just as some Tory voters won’t care whether Sunak was brown, blue or green. It’s fun to generalise and I suspect there’ll definitely be some Tory voters to whom the meme will apply. All the best comedy at someone’s expense is funny because there’s a nugget of truth in it.

Define loving your country though? What does that even mean? Wanting us to do well at sport? Loving a flag? In what way? You like the colours or the design. What does that even mean?

Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s not inherently bad to “support” your country, but that comes in many forms. There’s a good side of nationalism which is wanting the absolute best for your country and generally wanting it to be a great place to be and what some of these people want. A place where your national identity is defined by a few very narrow minded characteristics and basically being against anyone who doesn’t “fit” that idea. The SNP are a case in point. They clearly want the best for their country and have an idea of how to make that happen. From what I’ve seen they’re against the idea of union with England and Wales but not actually against English people. I don’t see many Scottish people advocating to close their southern border or an English family who move to Scotland and have a child born in Scotland that their child isn’t Scottish. I don’t doubt there are some in that camp who have tipped over into “bad nationalism” though but from what I’ve seen they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

I think we all know people like that caller. They’re people who don’t actually think they’re being/are racist but they’ve been so brainwashed by the constant headlines about terrorists, people getting off dinghy’s, brown people doing bad things, that they’ve decided that being brown and British are incompatible. It’s pure English nationalism plain and simple. A force that’s been growing in our country for years now. The reality is that we all know that person considers themselves a “patriot” and that he “loves his country” but in truth has no idea what that means other than loving the monarchy, shagging a flag and hating on brown people.