Watawattana

No offence intended, but finally not one Cryingdick will be found in a women’s changing room after showering 🤣

I believe there is still plenty of legal coverage for trans in the Equality Act, i.e. they cannot be discriminated against on the basis of being trans. But a massively important change that protects women from having to shower with men after a women's sports event, or women having to compete with men at those events. Well done to the British Supreme Court some sense at last.

I'm glad I never voted for them.

And a Happy New Year to you too!!

Yeah, in HK there are lot of Indonesians (a lot of domestic helpers), most of the muslims I personally know and spend time with are men from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Malaysia. I picked Sweden as that's the OP, I picked the UK as that's where I'm from. Didn't want to post a 15-page essay covering the whole of Europe, with examples of some muslims who have integrated and some who have not, but I agree that I couldn't name a single European country that I could call culturally integrated, the old Yugoslavia is a great example of where it went spectacularly wrong.

The bacon would have had to have been raw, Hashem Abedi threw it all at some prison officers in HMP Frankland. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5qe6j01g6o

Successive UK governments have bent over and offered their butts to foreign investment, giving away massive chunks of their infrastructure and manufacturing backbone to those investors, all at the expense of the UK consumer, businesses and employees. This was all predictable. Plenty of opposition politicians made complaints, only for their parties to do t exactly the same thing when they got into power. UK; you are getting what you deserve.

I guess it depends a bit on the definition and boundaries around that word, but I'd say that in Hong Kong and Singapore multiculturalism is working so much better. No great issues in either place, indeed Singapore was built upon the foundation of multiculturalism, and seceded from Malaysia due to that country proactively advocating against that. Yes there's Little India, Chinatown etc., but there is no social breakdown and generally everyone gets on. I don't know anything about gangs and their activities in SG. In Hong Kong there are South Asian gangs and Chinese Triads, but there's little impact on normal daily life unlike what is being seen in Sweden, and indeed the UK. I live in a predominantly Chinese area without issue, and I don't like the generally expat areas as they are expensive and not very integrated (might be quite a few places like that in Thailand 😜). Part of the reason why it works better in HK & SG I think is down to their Governments and criminal justice systems. Bad behaviour is simply not accepted and it gets dealt with, unlike in the UK where a Facebook post is treated as a bigger crime than robbery, mass murderers are allowed to work in a prison kitchen so they can fashion weapons in order to seriously injure prison guards. I'm sure there are parallels in Sweden. Bottom line is that Sweden and the UK are broken societies because successive governments have failed, and failed badly, their citizens. The US has gone a long way down that path by allowing free-flow immigration through lack of border enforcement and immediate repatriation. Love him or loathe him, Trump is trying to address that and has started well. Sweden and the UK need to learn from this.

Of course it's a shame about the US' response, and especially the firings, but I wonder what the other side iff the story is. Might it be concern over corruption, where the donated money will actually go, i.e. to fund the war and not to humanitarian aid?

I'm no catholic, but I still find this sad.

I guess Argentina wouldn't be a great market either 🤣. In looking at this I found a wiki article on this, interesting parallels to what's happening today versus 120 years later - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_beef:- In Chile, heightened taxes for the import of Argentine cattle in 1905 led to the meat riots, one of the first massive protests in Santiago. The price of meat was kept artificially high by the government, by means of the combination of a special tariff applied to cattle imports from Argentina, to protect the domestic producers, and a runaway inflation. The riots lasted from October 22 until October 27, and between 200 and 250 people were killed over this period, while more than 500 were injured.

I just completed this quiz. My Score 30/100 My Time 109 seconds  

I just completed this quiz. My Score 10/100 My Time 103 seconds  

I just completed this quiz. My Score 70/100 My Time 83 seconds  

Yeah, the officer the chief is talking to look really pee'd off. I guess he's just been told what his "sales" target is for the weekend...

Anyone still wondering why China stopped the sale of the Panama Canal ports to Blackrock? https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/28/business/panama-canal-ports-deal-blocked/index.html

Of course, but the same happens in Europe. Mostly east Europeans heading west, Africans or Asians. Plenty of stuff about it on Google, virtually the same in HK.

Yeah. A lot of things in this if their application is rejected and the country they are from is not a good destination. But I want to concentrate on the positives of this as I've seen this first hand in Hong Kong, where I live. Seekers do not get much, I won't bore everyone with the details but I've seen first hand the impact of the inability to work, which includes modern-day slavery & prostitution, all of which is driven by people smuggling from very poor countries with promises of a golden land and untold riches - for a price. The reality is exploitation by, for example, restaurants who pay a tiny fraction of the HK minimum wage, nowhere near enough to pay the people smuggler or to live, with the threat of the worker being sent back home and barred from HK due to illegal working. If they could work legally then they'd be contributing to the economy, with the knowledge that there's a seeker process that may lead to rejection.

Hi recom273. I have made the same mistake you pointed out. Thanks. I had a quick, but not exhaustive look online for info on this. The UNHCR web site isn't clear on this (I've not read 100% of it though). I did find this though - https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/stay-informed/explainers/the-truth-about-asylum. In that it states: - A European regulation allows countries in the EU to return an adult asylum applicant to the first European country they reached. - This means that countries on the edge of Europe have responsibility for a lot more people seeking asylum than others. So leaving the EU has in part caused the asylum issues that the UK are experiencing. This is almost entirely the fault of the Conservative Party's abject failure to counter right-wing Press run by an Australian, and Boris Johnson's bovine excrement. So the UK needs to negotiate this with the EU or suck it up.

When I was at college/uni and whilst working I often listened to rock/metal music using headphones. This was to drown out all of the unexpected noises that would distract me. My brain cell was able to filter out the music, which had drowned out the other audible disturbances. Worked perfectly. Of course, no good for trying to get sleep, so I totally understand the need to find a quieter room. Where I've lived before I'be been close to main roads, train lines, tram lines or airports. After a couple of nights I've generally filtered out that noise, so getting good sleep. Would not fancy being next to a loud bar, and I definitely didn't like being close to a fire brigade/ambulance station; I never was able to filter those sirens out.

I was 14 years sober, but the demon drink got me. That said, the 14 years started when I was born...

I know it's not funny or correct of course (ahem), but I think I'll stick to beer if it's all the same to you.

I don't have a magic answer. Executing them is not going to happen, obviously. Keeping them in prison for life is a massive drain on the taxpayer, I don't like that either. I wish there was some 'hard labour' sentence available, so incarcerated but productive. They clearly cannot be left on the streets until they can demonstrate, to those who know how to assess this, that they are no longer a threat.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers are not supporting terrorists. It's more likely they are simply making a fortune from exporting loopholes in UK law. No idea where the money is from, but expect it would not be Hammas, more likely from some crazy lunatic left wing source. Or maybe from the BBC Licence payer... 😂

Wow! That'd take a lot of research and a lot of money!