RuamRudy

Believe me, I was being equally facetious.

I spent a week on an Australian live-aboard with a couple of Israelis where we dived on the great barrier reef together - good lads too, more open to a beer than my Palestinian colleagues but no less or more decent or honourable as individuals from the interactions I enjoyed with them. What's your point?

I don't agree that the flow of evil either started with the Palestinians or that it's only one way. But we are where we are - we need to find a way to break the cycle of hatred and bitterness and violence in both sides. I believe that my point still stands - if Israel had offered a means of negotiating a fair and reasonable resolution I am sure that most Palestinians would wish to pursue it. Admittedly, I don't know many Palestinians but the ones I do know are no different to any other people I know in terms of inherent goodness and decency.

I fully agree - while there is no doubt that the Irish people have suffered at the hands of the British, their suffering and their humiliation is nothing compared to what Israel has rained down on the Palestinians for decades. While I won't condone violence in any form, I often wonder how my views might have been shaped had I been forced to endure that which the Palestinians have had to endure.

Not every Irish person fought against the British or even condoned the actions of the IRA but I am sure that many more supported and still support a negotiated return to proper Irish borders. Likewise, if a peaceful means of negotiating a fair and just resolution was available to Palestinians, I have no doubt that the majority would seek that route.

While that statement is based upon nothing other than your own prejudice, I must agree that if a country was suddenly to emancipate a people who's necks it had been standing on for decades while it systematically abused them and dispossessed them of their lands, I too would be wary that chickens would come home to roost.

And Schrödinger's Britain of yesteryear - both violent and halcyon.

Youth is wasted on the young; a phrase repeated since the began.

I am sure that most of us can remember the days of travel agents and record shops peppering the high street, just a couple of examples of businesses which largely disappeared due to technology. Yet we don't have whole generations of potential travel agents aimlessly looking for a fulfilling future. Things simply change and adapt. They always have and they always will.

You keep tugging that forelock, Tranny - your betters still laugh at you and look down on you like they always have, but they appreciate you more because without pliant and weak proles such as yourself, their position might be in danger.

Do you not wish for your children's and grandchildren talents and abilities to be recognised without prejudice? Why do you think that they should have to be treated as lesser because you (presumably) aren't aristocracy?

And make the prospect of a career in the armed forces desirable and without restriction or limit depending upon status. Little Lord Fauntleroy shouldn't be guaranteed a commission because his father is a Wykehamist while a more capable and creative comprehensive lad has to tug the forelock for all his days in service.

It seems that every generation there is a new threat/opportunity which will steal our jobs/free us from the burden of work. But human ingenuity and adaptability always creates new opportunities. AI is definitely going to change things, but like the internet before it, huge swathes of people are not going to be languishing in poverty as a result because innovation will fill the gap, as it has done countless times in the past. If you were also born in the 30s or early 40s I disagree that you had equality of opportunity. The UK has always been an incredibly stratified country. Things were improving significantly until the last 10 years or so; that's what we need to tackle - the retrenchment to where only children of the rich can hope to aspire to the top. National Service is not going to fix that.

Well, in all seriousness, hats off to you - there are precious few of your generation left but while I respect your view from a position of experience, I will suggest that the majority clamouring to see it reintroduced will not have had the experience of it that you have had. The world is a very different place now. The opportunities that are open to young people today are almost unimaginable in their breadth and internationalism. The solution to youth disaffection is not some nationalistic throwback to a time from before the vast majority of us were alive. The government needs to focus on removing barriers to opportunity.

Did you do it?

I would be happy to offer you a bet that the SNP outperform the nasty party in Scotland once again - just don't pull a Sunak and welch on it...

Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory national service Having come to the realisation that nobody under the age of 40 is going to vote for them, the Tories are desperately trying to woo the boomers. What's next - the return of capital punishment?

Could it be because this is as good as it's going to get? Sunak recognises that growth and recovery are going to stall, and regardless of just how unfavourable the conditions are now for the Tories, things are only going to get worse.

With an admittedly shaky understanding of corporate finance, would I be right in saying that the company's costs were around $400 million for the first quarter? Is that even feasible for running a website with a few thousand users? How can any site possibly cost over $4 million per day to run?

Guided by Voices - Awful Bliss

Why does everything have to be framed in the context of race and culture wars?

For how much longer can this farce continue? Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke defects to Labour citing border security

If there is any semblance of reality in the suggestion that a hung parliament was a possibility, it shows just how undemocratic and unfit for purpose our electoral system is.

There are certainly a few notable absences from this thread.

Congratulations must be offered to Sadiq Khan for his remarkable 3rd term as London Mayor. Susan Hall Pronouns: Has/Been