I’d live like Michael Winner: buy a yacht, sail around a lot, eat in high end restaurants.

Guns have been a part of American culture since the wild west. Obama has no chance of changing the gun laws, infact the more he criticises them, the more pro-gun many Americans become. More people are saying this wouldn’t have happened if everyone was armed. It’s beyond belief.
It’s a sad state of affairs and just another reminder of what a strange, foreign place the USA is.

If he knows that ‘Americans don’t want any more wars’ why would he ‘start wars for election purposes’ if he was in his first term ?

Your right, a contradiction in my earlier statement. I’m hoping that the majority of Americans are now against military intervention, period. But as a country it does suffer from a messianic attitude and this means it is relatively easy to turn the average American into a warmonger, especially if words like “democracy” are flung around by neocons in the press.

So I expect the future Presidential candidates to start using anti-Russian sentiments in their speeches from now on. Hilary Clinton will definitely play this card, and if she gets elected on an anti-Russian platform…well, find your closest nuclear bunker.

Amidst all the hysteria, I have to say I feel for Obama.
He has had war-mongering neocons biting at his ankles for military intervention in the Ukraine, which he withstood.
Now the media is setting him up as a weak leader who is getting pushed around by bullyboy Putin. Obama knows the Americans don’t want any more wars so is acting like a representative president.
The neocons still want a showdown with Russia. Thankfully he is in his last term, so doesn’t need to start wars for election purposes.

As Ernie said, Putin is not in the situation of most Western leaders, i.e. start a war to boost the popularity rating.
Their intervention is old school – protection of national interests.
But this could easily spiral out of control, especially if the people at NATO and the Pentagon fancy a showdown with Russia.
Russia’s announcement to the Americans – one hour’s warning over a phone call – suggests relations are at the lowest they’ve been since the cold war.

Russia is protecting its long established interests in the region (access to the eastern med through Syria).
Most people in the West recognise this. We can hardly criticise Russia, given the extent of Western interference in the region.
Are we at war with Russia? No.
Are neocons at war with Russia? Possibly. As they still hold a huge amount of influence in the US, we could be looking at a continued disintegration in US-Russia relations.
So this could end badly.

So sad. My condolences.

Probably the bride is a complete narcissist and doesnt want anything to take attention away from her, like cute baby snaps.

Standing up with a TV on their backs, if you can’t make your point without smashing windows and stealing stuff before burning down random businesses including those that did loads for the local community then you probably shouldn’t bother.

I’m no fan of looting either, but even as right wing a person has Peter Hitchens has said that some of the jail sentences handed out were way over the top. The political class is heavily invested in all things London and this was reflected in the sentences, one poor chap got 9 years just for nicking a telly!

Gentification? That happened in the 1980s and 90s.
What’s happening in London now is not gentrification. Thanks to crazy neo-liberal economics, London has allowed its housing stock to become a reserve currency for the globalist uber-rich and their offspring.
Why Londoners put up with it, I don’t know, but then again the show-of-force during the London riots and incredibly harsh jail sentences probably put most people off standing up for themselves.
Why anyone puts up with this crazy economic situation, infact, is very depressing.
Things the other 99 percent should take to the streets over:
– the bank bailouts
– Quantitative Easing
– mass immigration and the transformation of us all into a servant class again
– continued political interference in the housing market through things like help to buy
– overpriced cereal
Right, back to my servitude.

I used to have a 125 vespa, I did a commute of about five miles, on good roads. I also loved taking it out into the countryside for days out.
But as others have said, be very careful in the wet, oh and crosswinds can be a major hazard too.

The overall issue is the fact that in the West the humanities and the sciences are opposed to one another (the idea that you have to choose between the two at 16).
Alas, the ‘best minds’ I knew at uni, whether they had phds in chemistry or history, all ended up as lawyers anyway.

I will make one contribution to this thread:
Yawn.

England lost that game more than Wales won it. The current set ups problems have been obvious for months if not years:
– mediocre management
– a captain who makes bad decisions and doesn’t seem to inspire
– a lack of creativity in the backs (which wasn’t helped by dropping Cipriani)
– niggling disciplinary problems, especially when under pressure

I think Australia might complete the demolition job Wales started in the last ten minutes. It’s never the same when the hosts are knocked out but I still think the Irish could reach the semis.

Half of my friends in London are Canadian. They all agree the UK is better for single young people (social life, career opportunities) whilst Canada is better for raising a family.
I’ve visited a few times but wouldn’t be able to take the winters.

What most restless people need is a properly flexible job, IMO – freelance, contracts, etc.

I couldnt agree more. Too many people end up in careers they hate…because they are not suited to the concept of the career in the first place.

You can live a comfortable life in the suburbs without selling your soul to consumer society. My parents have a good life but are very old skool when it comes to buying new things.
Chucking it all in and going to the other extreme of living in a van sounds a tad extreme.
A narrowboat with power hookup in a scenic residential marina, though, does sound appealing.

Well she didn’t do her research very well ! I have emailed her a few shots of Sonny Bill Williams with his shirt off. That should keep her quiet for a while.

Well it’s an opinion piece so more about her reasons for watching rugby, although she does mention this is the case with her friends, and it’s also what Ive heard from women down the pub.

I think you are naive as to how commercial marketing works, if you don’t understand that athleticism and beauty are very powerful forces in a predominantly visual culture.

Did I really just read that – Rugby players wear the tight playing tops to attract more female viewers ? I am not sure who should feel more patronised by that idea.

From an article by a female writer on the Telegraph a few days back:

“Ah. Okay. You’ve caught me. It’s not the game. It’s the gamers. For a large part of the female audience, the greatest attraction of the Rugby World Cup is not the competition, the Corinthian spirit, the chance to relive glory days or whatever it is that attracts male viewers to the sport, but the chance to ogle big beefy men doing big beefy manly things.”
Link.

RU keeps pushing itself as the purer, cleaner sport, attracting families through a heavy reliance on respect between players, officials, supporters etc. its a long way down from those lofty heights.

RU has been taken over by commercial interests. Attracting families, getting more TV viewers (especially women – hence the tight kits), focusing on the Big Hit are all the initiatives of the marketing men and women who increasingly rule our professional sports.

But the long-term effect is to flatten all sports and make them increasingly boring. I always have to flip channels when the inevitable music montage starts.

for those who wear bibs and knee pads, do they (knee pads) slip down if pads on top ? About to don my bib 3/4’s next few days as it get a bit colder….

I’ve always found they slip around abit regardless. You do notice yourself taking your hands off the bars a lot more than usual, as your adjusting them a lot. I don’t like them too tight as hate the thought of enclosing my patella.

The whole point of Ashcroft’s book is to portray Cameron as a privileged, slippery toff with a Tony Blair like Teflon quality. Which is hardly news.
It’s a mild type of revenge, as Cameron won’t fight the next election anyway. It Ashcroft really meant business he would have published the book before the election. His credentials as a Machiavellian Bastard have accordingly gone down in my opinion.

Pro sport of all kinds has always had a drugs issue. There is something badly wrong with rugby right now, as its unsustainable to have as many major injuries that players are getting.

I can’t be bothered to watch the world cup because of this. The marketing makes me wince, with all the focus on the Big Hit. It’s beginning to become as charmless a sport as football.

badnewz – do you actually stop to take them off? and do you have a dropper post?

Yes, I stop to take them off. I don’t have a dropper post. This is mainly when I’m actually going up and then down a mountain. So 4 hours of climbing and half an hour of descending type of thing.

Most of my riding is just around Hertfordshire, which doesn’t have any descents so I don’t wear them round here, only when at trail centres or the Alps or Spain.

UK Bike Skills was one of the companies I had looked at but was struggling to see where they ran their courses from.

They are near Hertford.

I wear them on rocky descents, I’ve experienced the excruciating pain of hitting a knee cap hard on immovable rock and it isn’t pleasant.
But only on the descents, I don’t bother on climbs as I find they impede my movement.

Drugs? Yes. Problem? Only when it gets found out.

Twice weekly interval classes should see you through. I used to do these but they ended up aggravating my knee injuries so am thinking of joining a spinning class with all the ladies that lunch.

I was reading a report (ahem) into British preferences for porn and prostitutes.
A growing theme is the female teacher dominatrix.
I wonder if this all relates to the fact that Britain specialises in producing nutcase primary school teachers (not all, mind).

They’re not all bad, but the really bad ones do stay with us.

A teacher friend once likened being a teacher to a Picasso painting. You exaggerate a certain part of your personality to control the classroom – but if you aren’t careful, you end up like that permanently, a control-freak.

I live a couple of doors away from a teacher couple who are thankfully moving soon. They constantly shout at their kids for the tiniest reasons. But at social gatherings with friends they play the part of the perfect family.

At junior school, I and a friend were given a week of lunchtime detentions for ripping a girl’s coat in the playground. But this never happened – she ripped it herself or someone else did.
A whole week of lunchtime detentions at the age of 7! Ridiculous.

I had a fairly horrific experience of getting my head kicked in and then being accused of being equally responsible for the so-called fight, when in reality I was simply attacked.
That’s a hard one to shift.

Rolling only helps superficially, so won’t do much for an actual knee injury.

Just seen this awful news…as above I’m speechless.

Or Boss of MI6

The Alps weather forecast looks a bit rubbish, infact the weather in Scotland looks better, if slightly colder.

Work – the price of our fall from Paradise. The women got childbirth (and now, work as well). I feel sorry for the women.

but it might bother someone so I don’t see the BBC are obliged not to report it.

The BBC can’t be expected to cover every thing that may happen to bother someone, I can’t think there are many people who would be bothered by the vegan issue. They included it in their coverage to try and play the “what a whackey shadow cabinet” angle they decided to take.

I should point out that Badnewz is known on here for his unpopular right wing views (who dislikes the current Tories for not being rightwing), so I’m not biased in Corbyn’s favour.

The BBC made a point of highlighting the vegan aspect. The mainstream media are certainly out to get Corbyn, it’s sickening.

The Tory party and its continued support for mass immigration and intervening in muslim countries is a threat to our national security. That’s what Id tweet if I were Nigel Farage (which one day I hope I am).