L00b

Patriotic Alternative - Wikipedia Alleged Patriotic Alternative member admits terror charges - BBC News Charming people. Obviously they should not be de-platformed. Out of interest, could we expect to see you defending ISIS' right to platform their extreme islamic views as well? You know, for 'balance'.

You don’t say!

So Murdoch, Fox hosts and Fox execs have testified now, that they all held Trump, Giuliani, etc. rethoric up to January 2020 to be complete hogwash, including the claims of rigging by Dominion’s voting machines, but that they still went ahead with airing that rethoric because they did not want to upset their audience… …and yet in its own filing made public on Monday, Fox argued that its coverage of statements by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would “stop the media in its tracks”. Reuters reported that a Fox spokesperson said that Dominion’s view of defamation law “would prevent journalists from basic reporting”? I mean, I understand claims, counterclaims, court-play/advocacy and the PR around it quite well (it’s an aspect of the day job, but not in this field). But that is taking hypocrisy past stratospheric levels, clear into orbit. Here’s to Fox’ upcoming bankruptcy, and I hope that Dominion goes for the Fox journos and execs in a personal capacity next, Hannity ahead of the rest.

Rishi is an anagram for Irish. Just sayin’ 😗

I don’t know why you bother, M. It’s like peeing in a violin to try and get a tune out.

Hold on to that thought. Because for that Windsor Agreement to take effect, first the DUP need to take their seats in Stormont, which must be running for that brake (‘petition of concern’) to be used. For that, the DUP must accept a woman as First Minister (I supposed they could, after all they’ve had Arlene for a while)…who is a nationalist flying the Sinn Fein banner. 🍿🔥 Trade infrastructure also still needs to be built as per the protocol which Johnson agreed, and then real time freight & customs data needs to be shared with the EU. 🍿🔥 But well. Credit where credit is due, on paper at least, Sunak and the Commission managed to snooker the DUP into quite the corner.

The context of my original post was obvious, doubly so when I then linked you to the current order of battle of UK military aircrafts when replying to your question in good faith. Which was not reciprocated, unsurprisingly so with the benefit of hindsight. You’re not worth engaging in discussion with.

I’m sure that the gaslit crowd in the video are Russians, and that the machine translation is reasonably accurate. Having seen prime time Russian mainstream TV for close to a year now, I’m also sure that the narrative chanted by this crowd is exactly according to the narrative pushed by Russia TV’s most prominent anchors, Solovyov and Co. Not forgetting the reincarnated Lord Haw Haw, Douglas McGregor. That is completely representative of Russian national TV, prime time slot, every single day, for the last year. Twitter is, as usual, the messenger, not the message. Could have been YouTube. Or Telegram. Or Insta. Or… Now you can make a joke of the messenger, but all that really shows, is how you ignore the message. As for Biden. He says a lot. He does a lot too. Which does not always accord with what he says. Seems he has this habit of saying ‘no <weapon>’ for a long while, until Ukrainians start clearing orcs by the hundreds with the said <weapon>. Politicians, eh? Can’t trust a word they say. Nor a word they don’t say.

Ah. So, that ‘how do you figure that out?’ was actually just another snipe of yours, not a genuine question. More fool me for engaging with you. Well done. I should have known better from your one liners. Consider me suitably re-educated 👍🏻

You appear to be one seriously confused person, it pains me to say. Stay safe indeed! (…and maybe go easier on the old Ron, this early in the day). edit: here, this might help to de-confuse you a little- Looks like your ‘bear’ has no intention whatsoever of stopping at Ukrainian borders, but somehow wants to repossess most of Western Europe like it was 1945 all over again. And yet, in your world view, everyday people who approve of Ukraine’s democratic choice to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and who denounce Russia’s war of aggression, are “armchair warmongers”? 😏🙄

What point were you making with that link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_Kingdom_military_aircraft We’re talking about attack jets, i.e. fighter-bombers/fighters. The UK only has gen-4.5 and -5 aircrafts (Typhoons/F35s) in flying order, and not a whole lot of them (around 160-ish). Aside from the oldest Typhoons (30, of which 10 in storage) these are never going to Ukraine, whether from the UK, the US or whoever else has them. Can’t afford to have that level of current tech shot down over Donbas then pored over with a microscope by Russia and friends (Iran and China in particular), never mind looking at the economics of it, particularly in as densely-anti-aircrafted a sky as eastern Ukraine. That leaves older airframes, namely Tornadoes. The last of which were retired 3 years ago, after 4 decades of service, they are very end-of-life and would likely cost more to restore to enough of a fighting trim, than gifting or lend-leasing gen-4 jets like F16/F15/A10 which east European NATO members are fast replacing with F35s currently. There are a whole lot of further objective considerations that mitigate against gifting or lend-leading west European combat aircrafts to Ukraine, over and above the oft-quoted pilot training time and logistics, not the least of which is Ukrainian airfields that are all made of concrete slabs with interstitial spaces (USSR-era), and which would wreck the landing gear of those F16s (and Typhoons) in record-quick time, as these are much more fragile (read: less ‘agrarian’) than Russian jet landing gear. It wasn’t a dig at the UK, makapaka. Just moderately-informed common sense, and the same is true for the airforces of most EU countries. Politicians will say as they say and do as they do, but as with everything else in life, reality has this nasty habit of eventually and irremediably catching up with rethoric. So we might as well look at it early on. Now F18s, however, engineered from birth as carrier-based combat aircraft with a very strong undercarriage…Australia is retiring a fair few soon, that have always been land based and so have had an easy enough life. Those would be good candidates, if there aren’t enough gen-4 Migs/Sukhois to be had from ex-USSR/since-NATO members.

Yes, we certainly did. Brexit diminished my capacity to provide professional services from the UK, i.e. to earn a living, and my moral duty is to my wife and child first, then to my elders, in-laws or otherwise, second. The outcome would have been the same if my mother in law had voted remain, and I repeatedly asked her to move in with us in Lux prior to actual Brexit day, so she could enjoy rights under the Withdrawal Agreement. She decided not to. You makes your choices, you lives with them. The end. Keep blaming if it makes you happy 😘 Good for them. I too have friends originally from the UK, who moved and are happy they left the UK after the EU referendum result. Now what? It’s a problem as old as immigration. But was less of a problem for UK/EU families while the UK was still in the EU with FoM. OAPs with EU families yet still voting for Leave maybe should have thought about it a little bit more at the time, it wasn’t for the lack of warning them. Hey-Ho, that’s life, how sad, never mind, etc.

He doesn’t need to. The UK hasn’t got any jets to give or lend-lease. Neither have most European NATO members. Carry on tanking 😏👍🏻 If China is fed up of relying on Western markets for its economic growth, well, why not? Better hope that Xi has a plan for dealing with the riots, though.

Woah, a double strawman?!? When a single strawman just won’t cut it. I don’t. Because prior to the referendum in 2016, and up to summer 2017, I had no intention of going back to France <or wherever else>. That return was only decided about a year after the referendum, when the writing on the wall was clear (a) that the UK would actually go through with it and (b) that, not content with thrashing its economy, the UK would make a complete pig’s ear of it. We’ve had plenty of chats since, and I know for a fact that she voted Leave after getting taken in with the red tops’ anti-immigrant rethoric. ‘Oh but I never meant you! I meant immigrants, you know, not expats!’ Well. Like millions hadn’t heard that back-handed one for years on end. Do you think she’d have voted Leave, if she knew she’d miss on having us living a 10 minutes’ drive away, she’d miss on watching her grandkid grow up, and she’d be left alone? I bet you feel all nice and fuzzy taking these sarcastic xenophobic shots every chance you get. Well, here was reminder that, away from keyboard warfare, Leave/Brexit have had real-life consequences for millions, and continue to.

Trumpites have massively own-goaled themselves over the US support to Ukraine in recent times, never less so than when Republicans realised that they cannot cut funding to Ukraine as it would lose them support on key districts with large Ukranian and Eastern European ancestry populations, wherein the schism between GOP reps and the less extreme balance of the party grows ever wider.

Why should I? Neither I, nor my parents, voted Leave. My mother in law did vote Leave, however. So, you know, that ‘option’ of yours…😏🤣

Then you’ve either been lucky (the correct processing of packages for customs is arguably hit and miss), or the online retailers marked the packages as ‘gifts’ or ‘samples’ with a nominal low value (usually non-dutied) even though they were not (a common tax evasion practice proposed by online retailers, esp.Asian and usually with caveat (‘if it gets lost or caught it’s on you not on us’) in the small print). There is also a value threshold under which duty and VAT are disregarded, I believe. Edit: £135, or £39 for gifts, here- https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty https://www.gov.uk/guidance/import-vat-and-customs-duty-on-gifts There is no “world deal for mail to be tax free”, that I’m aware of. But if you know of one, I’ll welcome a link (no sarcasm). If only to see if there is an option for my mother in law to reclaim the £30-odd that she had to pay Royal Mail in import duty and VAT, when my parents sent her a Xmas gift through the post from France last year. Edit 2: gift was worth more than £39, so that import duty and VAT was correct.

Good luck with that one.

Your Chinese switch should be import duty’d and VAT’d when it arrives in the UK. That was the case pre-Brexit and should still be the case now. Taxes are paid on imported goods, always have been. But it depends what the goods are, and where they come from. No custom duty on the goods that came from anywhere in the EU, whilever the UK was a member: that is what the Single Market is all about. That was discussed to a good extent when the fashion was to push for a ‘no deal’ Brexit and going on ‘WTO rules’, when the habitual useful idiots were parroting the Ultras’ rethoric without the first bit of understanding about what they were wishing for. Not even a quick 5-minute look on some Wikipedia page, just ‘faith’ 🤪

Because you signed that International Treaty, the GFA. It doesn’t matter how the Irish voted, no more than how the Scottish voted. Because the UK broke the rules when it was still a member, and Brexiting does not let the UK off the hook, anymore than e.g. a criminal fleeing the country to the Costa deal Sol lets them off the hook. This stuff is not hard, nor is it partisan.

Those would be the ‘experts’, none of whom wanted Brexit, nor ‘did’ Brexit. I remember well those telling you to Brexit, were also telling you at the time that they ‘had had enough of them’. Well. The EU Commission still has no mandate to change the NI Protocol. So it isn’t going to change this time around, any more than last time around. There is some wiggle room in the detail of the NIP implementation (which is what permits the talk of green channels, though still not on a par with e.g. Norway), that is the extent of Sunak’s “renegotiation”, assuming that the ERG and DUP plod along. Which is unlikely. The problem is just as much Brexit itself(what is it supposed to be?) as your politics, and intractable by reason of same.

Topical 😉😁

That’s…unlikely: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/waitrose-tesco-turnips-stock-food-shortage-therese-coffey-b1062961.html