Cool, ok – you crack on, then, I’ll leave you to it. :)

It’s not about your opinions, for me, but how you voice them. It feels like you take any response to your posts as a direct challenge, even when that response is broadly aligned with your own. And political threads turn into echo chambers when differing opinions and other voices are stifled.

There you go – a bit like that. :)

Except that as far as I am aware  I don’t launch personal attacks onto individuals. 

Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s accused you of that. It’s more the style in which you debate – it can come across as very confrontational and can be tooth-grindingly condescending.

Why can’t some people discuss politics without launching deeply personal attacks on individuals and completely derailing the thread in the process?

What you reap is what you sow.

If I’m wrong, someone tell me – is it really only me that thinks this?

Absolutely not.

he’s the most  charismatic and articulate of the current crop 

This is a wind-up, right? :)

That’s sad, she was a great actor. :(

You may wish to consider your tone.

You may wish to read the last few pages back.

It is SO hard to have a good faith discussion on this forum these days. The pearl-clutching is intense.

So you’re saying that £22bn is a black hole. On what basis?

There IS a tacit acknowledgement that fiscal black holes have a unit of measurement. But no overt acknowledgement.

Is that tacit acceptance that fiscal black holes have a unit of measurement?

Talking of petulance Lewis Hamilton was all set for sacking his pilot for taking a dump in his private plane a few years back

Sounds bobbins to me.

Big fan of Anita Anand and William Dalrymple on the Empire pod, too – not just a great history pod, but they’re so clearly having a great time making them, I find them way easier to listen to than Dan Carlin. :)

13 minutes to the moon. :)

I think I would have advised them to bill the hotel as it was their error – you’d done nothing wrong.

*sniggers*

Interesting (and logical) how many people who aren’t that keen on US Ghosts haven’t watched much of it – the first time we tried it, we only watched a couple of episodes and gave up, I think it was a combination of the story being the same but some of the characters being different. Second time we tried it, once it gets going, it is the better programme. And like I say, we love UK Ghosts (and Robin is still the best ghost overall).

The US version of Ghosts is better that the original UK one.

Fight me.

You, my friend, are 100% correct. And I love the UK Ghosts too.

Season 4 of US Ghosts out next month. :)

I was going to suggest speakng to the pub manager/landlord directly but you beat me to it!

Same! Have had a similar result in the past – I like a story with a happy ending. :)

I was at Silverstone when Keke did that 160 mph average in quali – bit late for Graham Hill though. I think my earliest F1 memory is the squabble about the width of Hunt’s car.

I have a memory so faint that it’s just a memory of a memory, if that makes sense, of seeing Hunt in the number 1 McLaren at Silverstone. I was only allowed to go to practice – we stayed with relatives on a farm near Towcester and I have an equally-vague memory of hearing the race start on the Sunday. Of course, that means I saw Gilles at his first grand prix, and even the first turbo grand prix car. :)

Then we got into BMX and motocross and I didn’t go to another grand prix until 1991. :(

Man, Iwata and Paik are class! McLean’s somewhat of a knobjockey, though.

I understand Beckham’s making his first visit to St Andrews tonight, for Blues vs Wrexham – that’ll be an eye-opener for him. :)

You used to be able to measure the gaps between teams with a sundial in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s. What era are you remembering?

Monza ’71 – top 5 covered by six tenths of a second.

Jarama ’81 – top 5 covered by a second and a quarter.

Jerez ’86 – Senna beat Mansell by 0.014 of a second. Etc. :)

Clearly not the program for those intending to live forever… :)

Awesome! Thank you, will look forward to that. :)

water and rail tell us all we need to know there and regulation is ineffective when money and big companies are involved.

This.

“Last year nearly 15% of NHS staff had physical violence from patients, their relatives or the public.

A BMA survey in January 2020 found:

 – 43% of 602 doctors were concerned about physical violence and verbal abuse from patients at work

 – 32% of 602 doctors believed that incidents of violence or verbal abuse had increased in the past year

– 43% of 644 doctors saw physical violence or verbal abuse towards staff

 – issues thought to be factors in the incident(s) of physical violence or verbal abuse included discontent with the service provided (60%), health related or personal problems (54%), and being drunk (30%).”

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/creating-a-healthy-workplace/preventing-and-reducing-violence-towards-staff

If you have a sense of how risky it was for the astronauts on NASA’s space programme, you MUST read Beyond by Stephen Walker and get some insight into Gagarin’s flight. Excellent book, makes Apollo 11 look incredibly over-engineered and risk-free – I remember reading that their hard-bitten flight director was in tears the night before he chose who was flying, because he was convinced he was sending them to their doom.

Lots of people think its faked.

Not to be That Guy (again), but it does LOOK faked – the depth of field is huge and suspiciously crisp… I’d be surprised if a pilot still above his ‘chute at that low height would survive, and I wouldn’t expect him to appear to be falling faster than the plane! Tractor man has amazing reflexes if he’s responded to the sound of the ejector seat…

Sorry, this doesn’t feel like the thread for cynicism…. :(

Can’t believe how lightly challenged his bullshit is.

I remember being hysterical getting my head stuck between two logs in a logpile – super early memory, I might have been five or something. I’ve long reflected on how terribly wrong that could have gone.

Time for another complaint to the BBC.

DOne.

That IS sad. :(

Birmingham away next Monday should be a cracker.

Can’t wait for that, almost sold out – will be sold out by match day. :)

Can we come back from the embarassment of drawing with blinking Walsall…?

Ok, cool.

Oh, I read it, but you said “many” – again, dangerous to presume but I presumed you had more than the two you outlined above.

But again, I’ll leave you to it.

There can be many reasons why a defense might not present an expert witnesses. 

Such as?

Air being found ‘where it shouldn’t be’…

I’m kind of summarising from the appeal’s 58 page judgement there. :)

… is obviously a nice, neat way of presenting all that to a jury, but where there is no consensus, and even an element of conjecture as to how that air got there, we need to make sure that any alternative expert views are also put to the jury. 

PResumption is a dangerous thing, but I presume the defence would have done that were there credible alternatives?

Because it’s just a completely stupid way of trying to kill a baby and there was no meaningfully valid diagnosis or evidence in most of the cases.

Ah, well – if I’d known you were going to be so scientific about it, I wouldn’t have got involved!

I know I said I was going to step away (and I will) but this is me just repeating something I’ve already said, which doesn’t count. :) For most of the babies she was accused of killing through injecting air, air was found in them where air shouldn’t be.

Second-hand, but my mate took his young daughter to a tourist attraction where one of the features was a child-sized house with a child-scaled lounge, kitchen, etc. He saw and heard one of the other children pick up the child-scaled phone, say “how many times have I told you not to call me here”, slam it back down and stomp away in a huff.