Proboscis

18 hours ago, stevenl said:

Rightfully so, flight is a risk here.

Under normal circumstances I would be inclined to agree that the possibilities of flight risk would be there. But where can one run to now. First, he would need a covid test. Then he would need a flight. Most countries are refusing flights from the UK anyway. Those that do are only allowing the foreign country's citizens or permanent residents. And those are currently very few. I suppose he could flee by sea. But that is not easy either. Movement around the UK is now very restricted due to covid. Getting to a port would not be easy and slipping onto a ship would not be easy. Getting onto a private yacht might be possible but any movement out of a harbour would be suspicious. Besides, they could make him wear an ankle bracelet.

IMHO, there is an appetite for the punishing of Mr. Assange. No action has been taken against any of the media outlets and there have been no deaths resulting from the highly redacted and edited/curated leaks despite the dire warnings from the Americans who were highly embarassed by the revelations of what were frankly war crimes, torture and illegal kidnapping across borders (which is what rendition is and was). Much of the stuff that was thrown at him was highly questionable, including the "rape charges" that miraculously went away when they were no longer needed or the other claims that he influenced others to act illegally which has never stood up in court.

I am not saying that Mr Assange is the nicest person on the planet. But he did a service to the operness of society and history will eventually treat him well.

The big news is that it looks like the Dems will take over the Senate.

But the other really big news is that Georgia never votes 50% democrat as in probably has not done so since the Dixie Democrats who ran a Jim Crow regime down there went out of power in the 1960s.

Now you can take your pick as to why more people voted democrat than every before in recent times - the fact that Mitch McConnell's Republican Senate would not even put the 2,000 dollar handout to a vote (given the amount of corporate welfare they have handed out over the years);

the fact that Trump has been wailing like a lost kid about the fake cheating in the election and wanting to take the people's majority choice away from them

or that the Republic administration has made a complete mess of the pandemic and is still making a mess of the vaccine roll-out.

Perhaps a combination of all three.

20 hours ago, ukrules said:

WHO puppets are reporting to their Chinese pay masters, I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest that they find nothing wrong in China and blame it on some 'anti China' like Taiwan.

I take it that you are either a Russian troll or completely uninformed.

The WHO is governed by the World Health Assembly to which each member country of the UN is entitled to have a seat on and vote and invariably does. THe funding comes from the UN agency, The United Nations Economic and Social Council and from partnerships such as international entities as the World Bank.

At no stage does the PRC (China) get to monopolise the policies or the funding of the WHO. Currently, if you have been paying attention, you will know that the PRC has prevented two WHO investigators from entering the PRC in order to identify the origin of Covid-19. Hardly puppets and pay masters.

14 hours ago, nausea said:

The words "rat" and ""sinking ship" spring to mind. I'm half Irish, and I must admit getting an Irish passport has crossed my mind, just for the visa free travel thing. In fact, going back in time, when I was as fit as <deleted>, when it was a toss up between the Royal Marines and the Foreign Legion, that guarantee of French citizenship was pretty tempting; unfortunately life, in the sense of a woman, intervened, and I went a totally different course.

I am part Irish too but I went for the Irish passport years ago - I still have to choice if I really want it but the Irish passport gives me access to the UK whenever I need it for as long as I like (this is based on a little known international agreement that provides equal access to both Brits and Irish to both UK and Ireland).

For me keeping the Irish passport it is about being able to live and work in any part of Europe I want, being able to travel freely and stay as long as I want, being able to bring my pet on a pet passport whenever I travel in Europe, being able to sell my services anywhere in Europe and have my qualifications recognised. Makes having a holiday home in Spain possible and relatively easy, for instance.

Although the taxi drivers are often dishonest at the airport, it has to be the cheapest taxi drive in the world. Where else would you get an aircon drive of 30km for $10?

7 hours ago, overherebc said:

Pulp fiction??????

Come on !  

He or she is only showing his ignorance or trying to get an argument. Don't feed the trolls!

1 hour ago, John1012 said:

Thank you for your politeness, as to baseless, time will tell, I sincerely hope they are. Biden (seemingly a nice enough person) is not an achiever or an inspirational anything,he will just do what his owners tell him to do, Harris, who knows what she is, a soft Marxist?

Generally speaking, to be a Marxist (soft or hard, whatever that means), one would have to have read some Marx. At least Volume one of Das Kapital in English (the other two volumes are really notes, not prepared monograph).

I can assure you that very few people have outside of the former Eastern Europe/Soviet Union. Not even China encourages the reading of Marx.

What some people in the USA mean when they say Marxist is an additional small amount of government intervention in the economy, above and beyond what has been the norm. That would make any US President who had to deal with a crisis a Marxist. The term is also used to describe all those places where there is a public health system - that is just about every country that can afford one except the USA. Germany (run by a centre-right government), UK (run by the Convervatives with a huge majority) - need I go on.

It would be much better if you criticised Harris in a more productive way. For instance, you may disagree with her tough approach on law and order (when she was Attorney General of the state of California - a place that is one of the largest economies in the world). While she does agree with the affordable care concept, she does not agree with the abolishing of private health insurance (a marxist who believes in private health insurance!). 

3 hours ago, Kelsall said:

Thank you President Trump!

Not sure that President Trump had much to do with the vaccine.

Lets see who we should thank for the vaccine. The Germans for funding the research, or the Muslim couple of Turkish origin who headed the research and the research company, the Belgians for manufacturing it so far . . . 

22 hours ago, Laughing Gravy said:

Manual skills what are these exactly. I admit that some UK people have a virus called 'lazyitious' but bending over and picking up things, I didn't realise they were better trained.

 

Have you any links for this. I would be intrigued to see some evidence other than a hunch.

It is not just a matter of "better trained." It is a matter of growing up in an environment where harvesting crops is part of everyday life and you learn the skills as a child. How I know about these issues is that I grew up in the countryside and learned a different know-how - I knew how, for example, to pitch a bail of hay without injuring myself (pitching involves lifting a bail of hay on a pitchfork above your head onto the top of a truck), how to "stick" a bloating calf (where sticking involves using a special metal sharp implement with a metal slieve to stab a calf, whose stomach is bloating and will otherwise die, in exactly the right place), how to successfully birth a calf and when to call the expensive vet, how to recognise certain common diseases etc etc etc. There were and I assume are no classes in this. You just learn as a farmer's son.

As I learned the knowhow as a farmer's son on a cattle farm, the East Europeans learn their knowhow on farms and small holdings in Eastern Europe, many as young people earning a little extra money, sometimes on their own or a relatives arable farm. They can plant or harvest many times faster than any city kid or even a kid like me who grew up on a cattle farm, day after day with very low spoilage. Even the older ones can do it like that. They just have the knowhow.

Now I guess if you took those people and put them into a car factory they would not do so well at all. Perhaps you could have them sweeping the floor but then they would get bored with that. It is what people are brought up to do.

So, lets get this straight:

The UK would have got this deal anyway if they had stayed in the EU.

The Singapore deal amounts to approx 1.3% of the trade that is done with the EU, and therefore represents only about 0.7% of the UK's total annual trade. 

I suppose, little by little. But they will need about 70 more Singapores to get to where they would have been in the EU. And Singapore is not next door. And does not produce food.

From that august organ, the Express, no less. For them, the ringing of Big Ben on the BBC is an affront.

4 hours ago, candide said:

This a joke. They should file a lawsuit against themselves! ????

 

"Essentially, the Texas lawsuit alleges executive officials in the four states that went for Biden improperly tweaked voting rules, thus invalidating their results. But Texas' own Republican governor did exactly the same thing, using an executive order to extend the early voting period for the 2020 election, Reuters' Brad Heath notes. The suit also alleges Pennsylvania's decision to accept late-arriving ballots "raise[s] concerns about election integrity" there, even though Kansas and Mississippi, two supporters in the case, accepted late ballots as well."

https://news.yahoo.com/17-red-states-join-texas-211617457.html

The really hilarious part is that Texas, the most pro "state's rights" of them all, is raging against the exercising of the rights of other states to run their elections the way they see fit. Texas should be careful - otherwise their ability to run their own elections the way they want to may be called into question, thereby repressing their state's rights.