Rayvin

What the fuck is that... it looks like something out of LOTR.

And here we go again.

I don't personally believe that, I have to say I think I did once, but I now believe that the correct saying is 'evil triumphs'. Too cynical these days I guess.

I can see the 'better the devil you know' side of it tbf.

There is a crazy cult following around him and tbh I do agree with ewerk. These people think that because he's rich and eccentric that he's some sort of master guru - they're just sheep. Without him, they'll simply mill around lost until the next 'shepherd' comes along.

Yesterday evening you reacted to a post I made in December for reasons I don't fully understand, so you're not exactly one to talk. Presumably scouting around for something you could base a comeback on. Not remotely 'sad'... What is it about my view on BLM that you found so amusing, incidentally?

Well, you're clearly better informed on the internal politics of Israel than I am - if it truly is just headbangers on either side that need to be dispensed with so that a mature centreground of opinion can be reached then maybe there is hope. But I've seen so many videos now of ordinary Israeli and Palestinian people actively hating each other that I'm struggling to believe it myself. I suppose journalists go looking for the hate specifically, but even so.

You'd have thought so. Maybe they can do something like that in future.

I don't think it'll end until Israel has "cleansed" the whole West Bank either through displacement or death. Not that we should stop trying to resolve it in less devastating fashion.

I'm not entirely sure there is a right direction here tbh. Natanyahu might be one of the causes of the recent mess but he's not the overall cause of the whole situation.

This was my original argument for Trump winning power - that shock and awe from the right may well be the only way to the left. But having said that, it's not an accurate depiction of what has happened here IMO. Biden has never looked as left wing as he is currently being - either the Democrats as a party have finally woken up to the need to achieve genuine change, and also the need to determinedly keep the young, left wing members of their party enthused (something Labour have completely failed at), or Biden has been a closet leftie his whole life who has just been playing the very, very, very long game. He was nowhere near as left wing as this in the run up, I'd imagine the eyebrows are raising from the centrists. That said, more fucking power to him. Especially since the UK and EU both benefit significantly from his global minimum corp. tax.

Based on that profile there'd be an inevitable injury for me in the first 5 mins of game one, followed by missing the rest of the tournament

Social anxiety is a real fucking pain and I understand her position. Given that I have similar issues I could see myself hypothetically attempting to handle it the same way, but ultimately I have had to accept in life that sometimes you have to suck it up a bit or you can't move forward. If the world changed to be more accommodating of people who have social anxiety/depression then that would be fantastic, but we're not there yet. Hopefully the whole thing will help to expand the conversation in this space anyway. She seems to have done what she needs to do, so good for her.

Is it? Could just legitimise the far right. Not sure really, a 'watch this space' moment IMO.

If it is proven, you will still have baselessly made the claims you did though The fact remains that even now we don't know. What we can say is that there now appears to be enough evidence to investigate it further - something we didn't know at all until this report was produced. Will be interesting to see the critical feedback of the research from the academic community.

Honestly, same. It's just not possible to continue to be emotionally invested in this - but that said, I do continue to feel bad for people who are vulnerable, who can see this exactly for what it is, and who will be negatively affected by it. Ultimately though, I'm just not sure what any of us can do anymore. I would be interested to learn how these polls translate into actual population driven numbers though - my understanding is that all of the responses they get are fed through constituency modelling. If this is representative of where we are across the population on the whole then we genuinely are in trouble. Silver lining to all of this could be an actual electoral pact (not a fake one, not a "we could work with Labour if they would only..." pact). Labour clearly can't challenge the Tories from where they are - the sooner this is recognised, the sooner they can start doing something about it.

Indicates yet more Labour losses to the left/remainder side. This doesn't feel like it's working. Maybe Starmer believes all of those people will hold their nose in the end and pull back into Labour at the right time, but I am doubtful of this personally.

How far back do you have to go for £12m to be a genuinely useful transfer budget 15 years? 20?

Yes, that would be preferable. I note that she was a conservative spin doctor though which I wasn't aware of, and which now means that the whole picture makes more sense. I'd imagine she's an almost entirely talentless individual but that alone might well put her head and shoulders above Johnson who isn't so much limited as actively useless.

Yes, I don't at all understand why she is even remotely involved in any of the politics considering she's just his wife and not any manner of politician, but I guess that comes with the territory when your PM is basically a rich version of Frank from Shameless.

And now we know that the policy that allowed for large numbers of people coming into the country during a lockdown came straight from Boris Johnson himself. The total negligence on display there has to be worth at least another couple of points in the polls, surely? The worse he does, the more popular he gets after all.

The only people who suspected any of this though, are the remainer lefties. You think Cummings is trying to appeal to us? As I mentioned earlier, the Daily Mail comment section is tearing him a new one (other than on Hancock, whom even they seem to despise) He's got nothing to lose, isn't planning to go back to government, and has a score to settle. So he's thrown in a hand grenade to amuse himself more than anything else, IMO. Either way I don't see what we stand to gain by stacking up against him. We should let him and Johnson kill each other, frankly.

Unelectable. The entire party that is, not just Starmer. That's what I'm taking from this.

TBF mate I said the same thing when Russia poisoned people and the whole country decided to dispense with due process and named them guilty with no investigation I'm a firm believer in evidence based policy and decision making, no matter how 'likely' something is.

Not entirely sure they'd start with work towards a super infectious strain that lacked potency instead of the other way around in that case, but if you say so. I find it very hard to believe. It's just an entirely futile endeavour. But yes, accidental release of something that was being tested in a lab is possible. If it was all routine testing and it just escaped though, I'm not sure what difference any enquiry makes other than to pointlessly ramp up anti-China sentiment. And I say 'pointlessly' here because if it was an accidental release then it's not at the behest of the Chinese government and is likely the incompetence of a single individual.