scoobos

Holy fuck I'm sorry to hear that mate , and apologies for the trigger. I don't know whether to speak more or less about it - but it's one of the many untold horrors of how the UK dealt with this pandemic. (and in some cases continues to).

A theme from the other thread. I'm interested to know what you are doing , I'm not going to assume that it's "nothing". But we've discussed that rallies, charitable donations, protest are no good on a systemic level and , in this thread That voting for a party other than Tory might not be done if they don't match your specific personal needs. That for me, is the definition of being cowed - and (capital I ) I am not cowed. Doing something is always better than not (voting, protesting, writing to your MP etc). If everyone who gave a shit really did write to their MP , given that they are legally obliged to answer - we'd fuck them completely. If 10% go to London we could burn them out (I'm not suggesting that, but its a fact) the police force and public services are stripped so hard they could not stop 2 million people, let alone 6. It's easy to shrug shoulders, have strong opinions but be apathetic, its harder to be the change you want to see. I know i keep playing the bleeding heart liberal, but I have made the changes I want to see at pretty huge personal cost, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Why? Because of my own personal motives , it has to be said - but I'd like to think without the childhood abuse and CPTSD I'd still act rather than sit and complain. I've been homeless, I've been a soldier, I've had some terrible times as a youngster in a very well to do town - and I've learnt that people are people, no matter what their background is - and there are good and bad in all. No one treated me better in my whole life than the homeless community who guided and protected me at 15 years old when I lived in a shopping centre in Leeds. (put violin away The army and its training to look after each other, use the buddy buddy system - that's where my influence come from and its the same message, don't prejudge and look after each other - gratitude , trust and belonging are some of the most important things above basic needs of food and shelter and it breeds positivity. This government stands for the absolute opposite - its bullingdon club, victorian class system thinking and we need to fight the ENEMY, not each other. I'm feeling a build guilty now even writing this - as I feel that it may seem like a personal attack and its not , its a response to my own triggers on disguised apathy and if I've got it all wrong, apologies.

The covid pandemic, it happened to thousands of disabled people , and some of them not so disabled. I'll find a link later if you're interested.

Wow its took some catching up today on this, Im supposed to be working man! As I've said before (but maybe not to you) I am not a voter of any particular party. I usually vote Lib Dem, Green or Labour - I vote (perhaps stupidly) on manifestos. Ok. to my point I've never seen Starmer "Lose" an argument in PMQ's he absolutely rinses Boris every time - but you don't see it in the papers , only occasionally on BBC and often on C4. thats because they have control of the media and are oppressing those that dont. If Starmer was going to win this battle by winning arguments he'd have done so by now - but unfortunately , the power that the lobbyists, business leaders and Conservatives have now is very challenging to beat. I don't actually know how you can. Boris Johnsons government should have been dead and buried once Starmer brought up the contract tracing app , lack of PPE due to preferential contracts and ignoring companies without links to the Tories - and especially the lockdown breaches by Number 10. Winning arguments and reason dont seem to work when the media is 70% on the enemies side and much much more effective than it was 10 years ago.

And good on her, it took me YEARS to convince my wife to do this. Its the most abused position I've seen. I was on the largest salary I've ever had at one point - and she was working at least 15 hours a week more than me, every Saturday for 4 hours, every sunday nearly all day - all for fuckin league tables etc - and they get paid fuck all really. The "6 week" holiday thing is bollocks too, because its marking, lesson plans and also the fact that you cannot choose your time off , you have to go on holiday to "get away from work" at a higher cost, because kids are off school - so you don't get away from them at all!

I think to be fair, its not peoples fault, its the power of marketing and propaganda that makes out that to think of others before yourself is in some way idiotic or wrong . That we should have everything we want now, as we "deserve it". Thats what 12 years of Conservatives and neoliberalism, during the technical revolution will do. Ipads, facebook, social media etc - they've all pushed this kind of "self" is the most important thing - show off what you have, feel sad if people look to be living more comfortably than you. They've almost won, havent they? That's where my depression kicks in, the power of the influence away from charity, co-operation and compassion. I think this is why I get so upset about us helping Ukraine but turning a blind eye to Syria , Sudan, Mali, Yemen etc etc etc. Things have got so bad with Externalities that we forcefully seem to compartmentalise the true cost . Pair of Jeans for less than a tenner == definate ecological and human abuse - so we "dont think about it". Arguably that can be led to modern uk politics , cant it? The people who are not voting (who in my mind are as bad as those who are voting Tory) , are turning a blind eye to the fact that they can have a high standard of living at the expense of the "underclasses" , the disabled, human beings overseas being bombed and killed with our weaponry , people who have to live at home till 23, zero hour contracts, exploiting Eastern european workers etc.

I'll go clean my boxing glove typewriter hands after this , but fuck me if this isn't the most astute thing I've read in months .. That's it isnt it! But the Conservatives seem able to define and move what "left" means at will.

Erm ... some people going to the picket lines and Starmer not.. Hardly a united front is it, and exactly what BJ wants.

I wouldn't be surprised if they discover some of us have a natural resilience or immunity, despite it being novel. Somethings definately going on with me, I've had multiple exposures - I was shagging for days before she got it and never caught it, was the only person in 7 at the pub who didnt get it, all at the same table (outside at Tynemouth platform2) and same for my row at the football (both to my left and right got it , 6 out, me in the middle of both groups. When my wife got it, after 3 jabs it still required medical attention and covid treatment drugs (tho she is vulnerable) - I had nothing.. So weird. What I do notice though is at each of these "exposures" I've had a runny nose on the way home like a mace attack or something - but never tested positive and still didnt after some dickhead fella came to a festival we ran a couple of weeks ago, looking like death , coughing in my face from 2 feet away (really) and then telling me he was covid positive and feeling like shit "but we dunt have to isolate now do we, its nDmic like a cold" -- dickhead.

Ah a rayvin / scoobos debate again, lets not let this go south like the last one I'm not taking the piss, but have you ever considered a History degree, I think you'd really enjoy it , as it is really about a lot of what you've said above. I got a lot out of studying history and you seem of similar mind. Why I bring Monsanto / Debt traps up now - is because the FUTURE is not real , its guesswork and opinion, the present is real and the only country / mentality I see controlling world food is late stage capitalism and a great example is monsanto , or conversely the Chinese Debt trap strategy - China is winning territory without a need for war and its scary how its been missed until its too late - they "Could" control something like 40% of the worlds shipping channels now. They get countries into huge debt with "presents to build trust and relationships" - wait 10 years then ramp the interest up to bankruptcy levels. "Because everyone has become uncertain about what truth is, what reality is. " - the internet has certainly made this much worse , because (mostly) to get books published, they had to be vetted by a publisher . Self publishing is a pretty new concept (I think, im no expert !) But , this is exactly what "History" as a topic is about , everything you read is an account of people looking through their own lens, because its impossible not to. Thats a good point here - " people on the right who believe that corporations must be eliminated whilst proudly proclaiming themselves as believers in free market capitalism" I think its referring to a movement in the mid 00's when people realised we were moving to "something new" from simply globalisation: Joel Bakan's the corporation is a good book on it. )(The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power: Bakan, Joel: 9780743247467: Books (amazon.com)) Again, its labelling as right, because i am certainly not a follower of right wing politics and I believe it (nearly, no one want's free market capitalism because it means you legalise guns, drugs, prostitution , copyright theft , counterfeiting etc, if its 100% free - they tend to mean mixed economies closer to free than planned). I'd really like to be able to influence you to address your use of labels as using them yourself just breeds the problem. I want rid of corporations but agree with "regulated capitalism" I do not trust market forces as they are as made up to me, as Maggie's "society" was. The reason people want rid of the corporation is because it is a psychopath by definition - CEO's do not own the money they control, shareholders do - and they are legally obliged to only make decisions that maximise profit - so a company cannot act ethically if it increases costs, without increasing or maintaining profit. CEOs have gone to prison for putting money into the local community, because if they want to do that, they have to do it with their own income, not the company funds. Externalities is another one. This wasn't the case in the UK until very recently, surprisingly co-inciding with the move to stop calling people "Managing Directors" and start calling them "CEOs" - is this due to legalities changing, what applied to an MD no longer applies to a CEO of a multinational? Deregulation at its stealthy finest there . This is why truth doesn't really exist on the internet too, almost everything can come full circle back to "corporate interests" and the power of marketing , imo. Marketing is scary good now. "Going to rallies and donating things etc are not doing nothing on an individual level, but they are doing nothing at a systemic level. " Protest has given us every right we have - EVERY single one. It does more than just typing stuff and "reading stuff" and saying "why doesn't anyone do anything" - dont like plastic pollution and have capital? Then pay for private recycling and help create a market. It sounds like an excuse for apathy and inaction in my view. Its the apathy and lack of protest since the late 80's thats put us in this mess , look to France, the Arab spring, Syria etc - these are people standing up. Regarding this one: Russia will stand to gain significantly as the corridor to the north of their nation will become the main thoroughfare for goods flowing from the West to the East and vice versa This is not new news, Canada has been defending and planting flags under the sea since the mid 00's - America has a defence pact with them. It's not decided. The nordic countries also have the same objective. The fact that Putin cannot overcome 1 country (and not a particularly rich or powerful one at that) for me, is the reason why pandering to warmongers that want to go "all in" is so dangerous. Russia is failing and all this talk of "they wont stop" I find hard to understand. Right now, they are fighting on 1 front and its taking them ages at great cost. They can no way attack the NATO front line even if they got to it. Pushing the NATO front line to them is questionable imo , as arguably this is what feeds the support Russia has. America HAS used NATO as a tool of intimidation and control . What did America do when Russia put "defensive" missiles in cuba? It's taken decades for that rift to settle and America attacked Cuba too. Putin's actions today are indefensible, but just labelling him as an ultimate madman, tyrannical - unprovoked is a bit too black and white. There's a big lesson to learn here , but ultimately we will prevail if only because of the mass co-operation of sovereign states, which is a great lesson for every challenge we face, we must strive to be 1 people, 1 world, it is not achievable but it should be the target.. (lol I gag at myself writing that particular hippy line). That's my daily rant, i'll get me coat

Do you really disagree with this? : Do a duckduckgo search and limit the dates to pre 2010 and see what "Left wing" means - and then again, for just the last 5 . I might be a conspiracy theorist, but I see a clear shift and pattern of labelling everyone .. "Underclass" "Posh" "Aristocracy" "Champagne Socialist" etc etc. how many hits do you see, and what are they saying? "I think anyone using the labels of leftist and rightist is an enemy of us all , it is divisionary and as I've said many times before, its only being used in countries that have adopted neoliberal economic policies" or the US via Montsanto etc and China by its strategy of taking countries by "donation then debt traps" The Monsanto has actually closed down food production in some parts of countries (India for exampl) because farms have had seeds BLOWN onto their land that has grown and commited a "crime" by not paying Montesano - it's also illegal to reuse seeds once this has happened. This is a big thing and can reasonably be seen as a late stage capitalist attempt to control food production globally. Here's one example of China debt traps for naval control: China debt dogs Maldives' 'bridge to prosperity' - BBC News Going to rallies, donating funds to causes and making life decisions that may adversley affect yourself but "do good" (e.g pollute less) are not at all comparable to doing nothing. On from that post though, My point is not that there isn't a political spectrum of left or right, its that people tend not to sit on one side and the labels only seed division. There is no "leftie" it's a stupid construct. There are people with socialist views , there are people with communist views, or even pacifists - none of these should be labelled under the same umbrella, ideally. Leftie and Righty is a new thing - its a poltiicised weapon and its being used massively in that guardian piece and doesn't help, only worsens the situation in the UK, imo. Look to the USA - it's totally polarised and in all honesty, both parties are right wing , yet one posts one as uncaring right wing racists, and the other as rabid socialist / communists. This is what is happening in the UK and fuelling and continuing to use the language "Loonie lefty" or "Gammon right wing pork etc" is labelling and taking us that way. I believe this is why we have the government we have. FPTP loves division like this . I feel as passionately about this as I did gay rights and racism in the 80's , thus why I rail against it .. Put it in terms of a "modern battle" like transgender rights and we see how unuseful and damaging labels and stereotypes are.

We are quite different people and that's fine, I believe that logic doesn't always work I'm afraid, Humans are emotional and unpredictable and mostly not logical at all. People only tend to see things from the world they were born in, imo. Also, in politics, we all have unconscious bias, there's nothing you can do about that , but the glasses that we view the world through massively influence our perception of events or information as a whole. We'll have to agree to disagree that "going to a rally does nothing in isolation" it's better than doing LITERALLY nothing. That's what really frustrates me.. People have to do something. You're singling out Starmer for playing a strategic long game to try and win - Boris clearly has an ability to hoodwink and win a campaign - The Labour party can try and move more towards its core values once it's wrestled power from a government that holds all the cards. Starmer is doing something, he's not falling into Tory hands - they've spent all day labelling this as a Labour event . I'm feeling quite confident that if Labour don't win the next election it might actually be the Lib Dems that do - but I can be happy with the fact that I don't think the Conservatives will come near, it's a coaltion again at worst. (fingers crossed!) Believe me, if 6 million people actually stood up and did something, anything could change, thats less than 10% of us, but 1 in 100 attends things, the rest just moan. I have read the article and if I'm honest it just riled me a bit, i think anyone using the labels of leftist and rightist is an enemy of us all , it is divisionary and as I've said many times before, its only being used in countries that have adopted neoliberal economic policies . There is no black and white, just as there is no real Left and Right. There are people who believe in self interest and there are people that believe in mutality and people who believe in co-operation, some charity, some even want to be ruled in a totalitarian way. My personal point of view with this, is that for every example I just gave, they could be "Right wing" or "Left Wing" A racist can give to charity , just as much as a philantropist can, or the head of Barclays - but the motivations are very different. Caring does not mean Left , just as much as not caring means Right - everyone thinks they are doing the right thing. How many times in that article does he use the term "Leftie" - this is a derisory term . Do a google search and limit the dates to pre 2010 and see what "Left wing" means - and then again, for just the last 5 . I might be a conspiracy theorist, but I see a clear shift and pattern of labelling everyone .. "Underclass" "Posh" "Aristocracy" "Champagne Socialist" etc etc. Some of his points are good, if taken as fact, but they are not fact they are opinion. The whole Russia controlling world food supplies is not very credible imo - the eyes for that should be firmly pointed at the US and China - The US via Montesano etc and China by its strategy of taking countries by "donation then debt traps" . (worth a google if you are interested, but its frightening - its a clear strategy and wow do they own some ports , especially in africa) I'm more of the strategy of I(forgive me , Im paraphrasing some quote) If a rabid dog is attacking you - you control it and exhaust it , it is already on the way to death - this is how I see Putin and his regime. This was a massive mistake , I believe he expected to win this in a matter of weeks, US Iraq style. Finally, just to make us both shudder - I still believe that there's many "imperalists" in the world and there is a big danger in playing the "Good guy / Bad guy" strategy to the extremes, because every "super power" behaves like this. Co-operation is better than conflict and we are co-operating now and managing to repel a super power through a proxy war , simply by supplies and training. I honestly think this is all we can do to "save lives" every other option sacrifices lives for an ideal that isn't achievable (e.g go all in on Russia and expect anything less than a 3-5 year global war). That's not backing off, its playing intelligently for the long game, with the least damage possible and rising above .. We can show solidarity and co-operation wins vs the might of a super power.

Now , this is where I see things differently - not everyone does back off. I don't and I make firm life choices that detriment me financially and definitely socially . for some of these values. We , is all of us. You can't do nothing yourself and just point at others expecting them to change - but there is a lot of "monkey see / monkey do , or mob mentality" behaviour that we take for granted. See people wearing masks in the pandemic, but removing them if they enter a building with people who aren't wearing them. The more people who have never protested before, do - the more join. The rebellion movement is testimony of this really, it is definitely building , despite being "niche" compared to frustration with politics. The Iraq war made half a million of us go, we went to Occupy - I got cut from a contract because they found out I went , but a few members of the team contacted me later to ask about how they could get involved. "how did you do it for a week without working ?" I always thought that was a weird question , I spent my holiday differently?? It's not that hard to attend a protest, you see it on TV, you go, you meet people. There's always something you can go to - Newcastle is frankly, brilliant at this - get yourself to a rally and hopefully it will change your perspective and make you feel better that "we" are not backing away from anything. Power to tooting and all that!!

This is the problem with Labour, all the infighting, it's like someone pays them to self destruct at the worst possible moment.

Good news: Known Omicron variants are proven less likely to result in long covid , peer reviewed. Bad news, looks like we are entering the 4th wave , hospitalisation numbers are now higher than the lowest numbers in wave 3 😕 During bloody summer too ..

I came on here pre-empting defending them (I thought the Sky Sports games boycott they arranged was great and had some top times at the Strawberry and Shark bar those days) - but yes exactly.. It's not like there is a shortage of worthy causes at the moment eh?

I'm a blatent Trippier lover boy, but I'd say both of those aren't mid table team signings but can certainly get in a CL first 11.

I struggle with anyone who says that NATO should attack. That would be suicide and a horrible strategical mistake. More war is never the answer to end war imo. It should be done once a point of no return has happened. For me, from a NATO or EU perspective that is when an EU or NATO member state gets attacked. If we mobile defenses now, as it appears we are, then good. But to go into Ukraine now will simply open the flood gates to a full scale war that can only escalate as both international powers go head to head, diplomacy is lost. I think that diplomatically, Ukraine has done a damn good job this week, by pointing to the none EU / none NATO member states to take action - Russia has made allies of countries that can put shipping through the black sea for food exports - he will end up starving the people he's only recently won over. This is horrible of course, but baying for us to get directly involved is self flagellation. And I know its been said before, but you don't see us doing this for any other country that is invaded by its neighbours, unless its a resource or ideological war. If food shortages really do happen at the scale that is predicted then, unfortunately, I do worry that the resource war will begin. Neither Boris Johnson, Biden (or trump before anyone thinks it) are the right leaders to start weighing in now - it will be like throwing all of the worlds petrol on a match and no one will win. Putin is doing a very good job of ruining his own military capability and whilst its totally tragic that civilian lives are being lost, they are everywhere, in the name of many things and that's no reason to turn 100,000's into millions , make no mistake if NATO light the touchpaper so far out of its territory it will cost millions of lives and fuck us environmentally. The world is going to hell in a handbasket - Global powers realising that power plays don't work anymore , might just help shift things a little. Not fact, obviously, but opinion - but I like to think it's slightly educated opinion having been a serving infantry solider (crap hat) and also graduate of History / Totalitarian Regimes , who is worried by the repetition of the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles and thinking that "it's 1 madman" vs the world, as soon as it escalates, their allies come out of the shadows all over the damn place.

Fuck me, can someone get Pardew out of the cupboard - we need some help getting transfers "over the line" even with 100 million budget

Ah there goes my optimism. Parties that are not in government, dont have the nudge unit / "behavioural Insights team" at their disposal - it worked tremendously during Corbyns run and will continue to do so , until it is legally questioned about how ethical it is . If its used for Public Health matters only, great - but combined with the data communications bill , its too powerful. BIT was created in 2010 , and it was all downhill from there. "if we don't pay the banks, the country will collapse - we cannot survive a run on the banks". 10 years later , realistically 50% of the public services (toilets, police stations, libraries, youth clubs etc) all gone, FTSE year on year growth, 40% of our money back after inflation has already devalued it by 20% .. Thanks BIT.

You know what though, its the young peoples world now , what the 65+ think doesn't really matter. I can't put my finger on why, but I think this Boris Johnson government may well turn out to be the best thing that's happened to Britain for decades. I can see it actually enticing people to vote who wouldn't have usually, its just been so good in a way that it's exposed what is "tory business as usual" just because they are so incompetent they cannot disguise it.

You know, I've lived in some "less developed" countries and if you did this is them, you would go to prision. You cannot use doctored images to attack political opposition You cannot use political images outside of an election campaign, unless it only includes your own party. This is absolutely outrageous and backs exactly what I said earlier today - the papers / media are outrageously biased and once again allowing or using photoshopped images. Wasn't there one as Corbyn as a chicken, never in a million years would that be allowed in most democracies.

I don't know about this really. I think when the majority of the media is in the pocket of the tories (or vice versa) it's asking to be photoshopped / defamated. This is the current government's mess and its down to them to sort it - I think that is actually a good stance , the only one that stands a chance of winning. I'm not a voter who always votes the same party, I don't really have loyalty that way (but I've never voted Conservative!) - but I've seen that its alarmingly easy for the PM to make Trump like statements and they stick. E.G Saville, Cpt Hindsight, "You tried to keep us in lockdown" etc etc. I was VERY involved and anxious with the Covid outbreak , I left my contract and volunteered for the NHS and was kicked back , so went to Scotland instead to build their contact tracing response - so every day I was listening to the Scottish gvt then watching PMQs on the wednesdays. Never ONCE did Starmer attack Boris's shit covid strategy without saying "You should be doing this". There was foresight , not hindsight at all - yet its been totally twisted and Boris will quote something starmer said in June 2020 and make out he said it in January 2022 and it STICKS. Best example I can remember is during the lockdown when contact tracing was being built and we refused to use the "open source / free" app , or give it to NHS Digital (who weren't even asked to tender btw) instead opting to farm it out at great cost : Starmer said "We cannot look at lifting lockdown without a working contact tracing system, why didnt we use the global app like Germany et al - are you really confident you are going to have a working app ready before lifting lockdown on date x" "Yes, of course, it will be world beating" And we all know what happened. I know that we've lost 10's of thousands of people that needn't have - and Starmer, Sturgeon et al were completely right with FORESIGHT. So yes, keeping out of it and letting the stupid fuckers fall on their own sword is probably a good option, given that if you tell them how to do it , they will use it and make out it was their idea and its easy with hindsight. End todays rant #dailyrant

Too much of that cocaine I keep hearing about.