Seems like quite a big favour you’re asking of a complete stranger ?

As for the query i’ve raised a few times, about what this new ‘safe route’ is, i honestly have no clue what is being proposed

AIUI it is the same as the existing safe routes, but new (no, really) i.e. that asylum seekers would have their claim assessed at some place closer to their starting point and if successful would then travel legally to the UK.

If only he had a beard and an allotment…

i don’t understand. Maybe if you posted a picture … ??

there are safe asylum routes, as there has always been,

There aren’t, outside of a few very limited ones.

Yes, but what was the actual question

At a guess it was “are you planning to set up new safe routes?”

The whole channel crossing thing needs to stop due to the pain and misery it causes, last i heard the tories had some agreement with France to do more, has this not worked well, why are so many hell bent on leaving a safe nation (France) to get here, how do you stop the trade if there is a safe route, but say 80% are rejected, how do you deal with those who aren’t allowed to claim asylum in the UK?

i would recommend watching some of Zoe Gardners videos on YouTube and elsewhere. She deals with these and other FAQ in an informed way.

Nottingham Castle is also a shit castle. It’s supposed to be all Robin Hood and dastardly sheriff and it’s actually a manor house built in the late 1800’s – admittedly on the site of the famed Norman castle but not remotely castle-like.

On which subject – Lindisfarne – castle on the outside, Roaring Twenties party pad on the inside.

Pretentious selection – Helsingor (Elsinore) Castle in DK-land.

Cracking ride by Rogla – powered up that brutal climb and his usual sprint. Van Eetvelt (sp?) will be feeling the burn for a long time!

Just worked it out , ever the corporate whore, “Red Bull gives you wings.” ?

Aaah – makes sense :-)

Still – that’s my hero you’re talking about, so button it, right?

Looking forward to the mountains now. It’s assumed that Sepp Kuss will take the lead, but I’m not so sure …

I don’t think anyone has said they’re prepared for people to die as a result of a JSO protest

I went out for an ice cream yesterday. i didn’t intend to run over a small child in the event that they carelessly stepped off the pavement in front of me, but I was fully aware that that might have happened. Still, ice cream is ice cream.

Part of the joy of this legal process is imagining those who froth from their armchairs about immigration and think they’re part of a ‘silent majority’ discovering the type of people who are ‘on their side’ are exactly the type of folk who the Mail and Express have also been telling them to hate for the past few decades.

Well at least his protest didn’t kill any children, like those JSO murderers, right? You need to decide what you want, exactly :-)

What a strange way to express your deeply held concerns with levels of immigration

C’mon we’ve all been there. One minute you’re discussing the impact of immigration on local services, and the need for safe routes to claim asylum, the next minute your hand is in your shorts and you’re waving your Big Fella at a passing member (geddit???) of the constabulary.

Refusing aid? You mention nothing of Hamas confiscating the aid that gets through, or attacking the agencies in Gaza that try to distribute it. There are dozens of trucks delivering aid to the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing every day but it just sits there rotting.

Like bombing World Food Kitchen, you mean? Oh no – that was the IDF.  It is the responsibility if the Israelis to provide aid to the civilian population, not just to truck it to a checkpoint, let some rabble trash it, and then expect the UN to deliver it through hell. If aid is rotting it’s because the Israelis refuse to facilitate its delivery to the people who need it – a starving civilian population. I wonder why?

Why are they targeting those places?

So they’re blowing up an unoccupied library in case Hamas are hiding in the bookshelves? Or is it to eradicate Palestinian culture? Really, we’ve heard these pathetic excuses a million times before, from the mouths of the various apologists that the Israelis wheel out to insult us on our TV screens.

As for your point about the meaning of genocide, you have things exactly backwards – as long as the Israelis insist on pursuing their policy of destruction of the Palestinian people, people will stop seeing the Holocaust as a uniquely awful event, and stop seeing the Jewish people as uniquely deserving of protection, so the next time it rolls around they will just shrug their shoulders and make excuses about “collateral damage” and other obscenities.

the actual meaning of the word “genocide”

Do enlighten us – what is the “actual meaning” of the word genocide? Have you shared your wisdom with the ICJ ?

Hinting that calling a Sinwar a terrorist is unfair as I said it just because I don’t like him on the other hand…

Odd that you don’t describe Netanyahu the same way. 

But these word games don’t disguise the more important truth – that Israel is embarked on a campaign of genocide, has killed over 40000 people and systematically tortures hundreds of others, but not content with that they are happy to risk starting a regional war.

I don’t like people for whom the ICC have requested arrest warrants relating war crimes and crimes against humanity

Netanyahu, democratically elected prime minister of Israel, you mean?

Channel 4 News this evening had a report on the torture and abuse of Palestinians by IDF. You might want to watch.

Poor Hamas, eh? It’s almost like being absolute ratbastard terrorists puts a target on your back.

Where “terrorist” is roughly translated as “someone I don’t like”.  Meanwhile the most moral army in the world:

He said: “I understand that Israel justifies its attacks on hospitals by reference to its claim that the hospitals are overrun by militants but in my four weeks in al-Aqsa hospital I personally did not see a single one.” He said he met many patients who had clearly been beaten in detention camps, and one patient who had been dragged along the ground by the external fixator holding his broken limb together.

He added that on his second visit he treated a disabled man who “in detention had been handcuffed, blindfolded and handcuffed to his wheelchair with his wrists tied to the right of his torso for 30 days”.

He said on his second visit he found the morale of staff had deteriorated and by April “there was a sense of fatalism that this would never end”.

Another consultant, based in Britain but not being named, detailed how he and a group of doctors were bombed at a so-called safe house on 18 January. He said that “the episode acted as an impetus for NGOs to stop sending humanitarian workers” and despite assurances given by British diplomats in Cairo that the attack would be taken up at the highest level in the UK, he claims nobody in government in London contacted the medical team.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/19/lawyers-seeking-arms-export-ban-submit-claims-israeli-war-crimes-uk-court

In stark contrast to the good faith Hamas have shown in refusing to attend

Assassinating their chief negotiator might not have predisposed Hamas to attend a US-Israeli stitch-up. Just a thought.

“Climate change may kill people, and to prove it we’re going to stage a stunt that may kill people”. I don’t think that quite the message they’re going for if I’m honest. If if it is, and the message is in fact; “We want you to pay attention to climate change and in order to do that we’re going to stage events and we decided we’re prepared for people to die” .

You’re just making stuff up. Do give it a rest.

McNulty should get a special jersey to recognise the dodgiest moustache in the peloton. Doesn’t he have any friends to tell him how it looks?

Well that was exciting!!  Kasia and Demi really gave it everything. Can’t help thinking that Rooijackers made a mistake by not working with Vollering, but maybe there’s a reason I’m not a professional racer (I mean apart from being a slow old fart).

Maybe JSO should be much more actively lobbying politicians, finance institutions and the like

or writing letters to their local newspapers, yeah, that could work. I’m sure every activist in history encountered people accusing them of “acting like dicks” – luckily they ignored them so women have the vote, black people can ride at front of buses and so on.

in the UK people aren’t personally worried about global warming

You have to really have worked at it to be this badly informed.

They’re the very people JSO antagonize the most, so not only are they being a royal self promoting pain in the backside they are making people less likely to be sympathetic to their aims, making it harder for governments to implement necessary but unpopular reforms. Go JSO.

So the alternative is … ?

 Climate change will be resolved by serious scientists convincing government to take action.

How’s that working out so far?

If they were doing the interesting, varied, insightful and funny stuff that Escape so but for mountain bikes I’d stump up. It’s such a good website.

For three times the price …

Kasia held strong today – do we think she’ll clinch it? I’d love her to.

Well I don’t think she was under real pressure today. Tomorrow may be a different story, and Demi put down a marker sprinting away to take the bonus seconds at the end. It will be a cracker !!!

Many many people contributing to this thread coming up with alsorts of spurious arguments as to why it’s ok do

Fr’instance ?

I’m amused by the frequent appeals to “our democracy” as though it were some perfect path to justice and equality. Unfortunately it’s largely a tool of the wealthy, for example the oil companies. If JSO could stuff our MPs’ pockets with cash maybe they wouldn’t need to block traffic.

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/uk-government-met-oil-lobbyists-every-day-last-year/

Jokes work less well when you feel like you need to explain them…

TBF it was never working that well.

Has the original article disappeared ?

you can be imprisoned if harm is caused to our democratic society

Which is why Rupert Murdoch is behind bars. Oh, hang on …

Makes sense to me. Just imagine if every rioter decided to use the defence of their ‘beliefs’ to justify torching a library? We all obviously think that their Tommy Robinson style ‘beliefs’ are nuts, but that doesn’t mean that they hold them in any less importance than Tarquin and Miranda hole their own ‘beliefs’ about climate change, does it?

I missed the bit where Tommy Robinson’s beliefs were supported by in an international committee of scientific experts. But hey ho – you do you. Nice pussy.

male advantage

Is that a technical term ?

what is the United States actually going to do to help Palestinians defend themselves against Israeli terrorists?

I think you know the answer to this question. It rhymes with “duck call”. Same as they’re doing to prevent children in Gaza being blown to bits.

25th yesterday; 29th overall.

Yes, sorry – my phone screen is too small for my ageing eyeballs :-(

If we take them at their word then it just seems like nobody on SD Worx knew where anyone was after the crash so they didn’t manage to send anyone back. Part of me thinks it sounds like a convenient story to deflect attention,

I think I saw on telly the SD Worx car was on the scene very shortly after the crash, and according to Lanterne Rouge it was Wiebes’ handlebars that DV got entangled with. If (big if) those things are correct, it doesn’t shine a very good light on SD Worx.

PS what has happened to Cecilie U-L ?  I saw she was in a crash on an early stage but I haven’t seen her listed as withdrawing.

Perhaps you could sort it all out face to face, bare chested, on Dartmoor?

We could’ve, but we’re not free to roam on Dartmoor any more :-)

That isn’t my argumant at all. My argument is that the law is applied by the independent judiciary without political interference and ‘fear or favour’

Too funny. You really believe that? Bless.

What I definitely wouldnt do is opt to defend myself and use that as an opportunity for a bit of political grandstanding.

You think climate change is “political”? But yeah – best to avoid those pesky “principles”.

It’s in the region of £2m for a few hours of closure for the direct overheads; if it’s a premeditated closure then the financial impact will (presumably) have a result at sentencing. Rioters tend to be planning ahead a little less, I’d imagine.

So just in order to be clear that we got the sentencing right – how many hours of motorway closure are equivalent to burning a refuge full of asylum seekers?