"Currants Bw..."

[Niall_Quinn]

Olympics postponed until next year.

[Letters]

They're going to think of a new name for Euro 2020 and Tokyo 2020 :unsure:

[Mac76]

They're going to think of a new name for Euro 2020 and Tokyo 2020 :unsure:

i honestly think the euros should be scrapped, at least in their current format, it will be a long time before countries want loads of football fans travelling back and forth around Europe

[Letters]

Olympics postponed until next year.

Oh also. The BBC get it right again :bow:

[Niall_Quinn]

Oh also. The BBC get it right again :bow:

They qualified their headline with the suffix, "says..." A critical difference. Maybe they have learned the first lesson ever in their existence.

[WMUG]

They're going to think of a new name for Euro 2020 and Tokyo 2020 :unsure:

The euros have said that the rearranged tournament will still be called Euro 2020 actually :lol:

[Letters]

The euros have said that the rearranged tournament will still be called Euro 2020 actually :lol:

:doh:

Each game had better kick off at 8:20pm in the evening or that will make no sense :sulk:

[Mac76]

:doh:

Each game had better kick off at 8:20pm in the evening or that will make no sense :sulk:

or maybe it's like cricket 20-20 and they will just play two 20-minute halves to get it over with quicker... (that's actually scarily plausable...:yikes:)

[Letters]

Maybe they'll have to be socially distanced too, so no player allowed within 2m of any other. Hmm.

[Niall_Quinn]

Maybe they'll have to be socially distanced too, so no player allowed within 2m of any other. Hmm.

That's will leave huge gaps in Maureen's defensive line. In fact some of them won't even be able to stand on the goal line, they'll have to be at least 2m up the pitch.

[LDG]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52141411

Dillon Passage :haha:

I wouldn’t let a tiger near my Dillon Passage

[Letters]

Bill Withers :rose:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52155227

[Globalgunner]

Bill Withers :rose:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52155227

Sad one that. I was a real fan. Great singer/songwriter

[Mac76]

Bill Withers

Yes, it sounds like it... :getcoat:

[Letters]

Stirling Moss :rose:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/52261216

[Letters]

Noooo!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52262490

Goodies :rose:
Goody-goody yum yum :rose:

:(

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

:rose:

And I've just learned/realised today he was in Willy Wonka!

....which I've also just realised is on right now :blink:

[Letters]

Apparently he also did the voice of Bananaman!
Very talented guy. Shame.

[Mac76]

:haha:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/man-accidentally-ejects-himself-from-fighter-jet-during-surprise-flight

[Letters]

:haha:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/man-accidentally-ejects-himself-from-fighter-jet-during-surprise-flight

:lol:

I saw that. Chuckle.

[Letters]

SciManDan on 5G


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C137OyVrzVA

[Niall_Quinn]

SciManDan on 5G


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C137OyVrzVA

Excellent video. All factually correct. And a classic example of how science and careful framing can be abused to spread propaganda, either wittingly (doubtful, this guy is just a repeater) or unwittingly (this guy probably feels quite good about himself, despite being catastrophically ignorant).

Anyone who thinks 5G can spread viruses is obviously an idiot. Anyone who feels the need to refute those idiots is, by this stage, so far off the beaten track they literally don't have a clue.

I was going to put up a post last week about a major test the US military ran in space. But I knew it would fall on deaf ears. 5G is most certainly one of the most dangerous technologies to ever be developed. But it has nothing to do with health and everything to do with liberty.

This is why those most invested in 5G have paid nutters to spread this bullshit about viruses and cancer. Didn't take much, just a nudge and the whole factory of loons out there swung into action. Now 5G is all about health. Well played.

You will be able to use your 5G phones without any health implications, bar the usual ones that have been with us all along that are now accepted as normal. But I can't say the same about your privacy and liberty. So get busy upgrading and enjoy the faster speeds. Don't think too hard about it as it may impact your consumer experience.

[Letters]

He is specifically addressing the health concerns. Why do you think 5G is a danger to our liberty any more than any previous network?
I mean, "they" already know where we are. I don't think they're that bothered, but they do.
I was in Baltimore last year with work and suddenly got some Amber Alert on my phone about some missing child or something.
I don't believe there is any malicious intent to that system but I found it interesting that "they" knew my number and knew I was in town.
How is 5G a danger to our liberty more than 4G?

[Niall_Quinn]

He is specifically addressing the health concerns. Why do you think 5G is a danger to our liberty any more than any previous network?
I mean, "they" already know where we are. I don't think they're that bothered, but they do.
I was in Baltimore last year with work and suddenly got some Amber Alert on my phone about some missing child or something.
I don't believe there is any malicious intent to that system but I found it interesting that "they" knew my number and knew I was in town.
How is 5G a danger to our liberty more than 4G?

IoT. Do some reading. IoT is far, far more than smart fridges. It's an interconnected, global system that integrates every other system into a framework that literally allows your every action and interaction to be tracked and analysed. China has already deployed a basic version of this dystopia. Read up on it and figure out for yourself why it's such a terrible thing. Just read. Particularly look for how initially benign technologies have been monopolised and subverted. Blockchain is the best example.

As always, I put up posts that pointed you in the right direction. I actually have people on the phone who are asking me, how do we get into this? The corporations know what is coming. The people are clueless, wondering if 5G can spread Rick Astley songs.

I just don't know why people can't identify repeating patterns that occur over and over again and always lead to their own disenfranchisement and to the enrichment of the few. It's truly remarkable. On the one hand they'll openly boast about 3 men controlling more than 40% of the wealth of America. Then, on the other, if you dig into the details they post up an image of you wearing a tin foil hat. Well done Mac. You sure kicked the shit out of me on that one.

I know 0.1% of the details, because I read. It give me a huge advantage over most people, but, because I only know 0.1%, I can't give you answers - only correlation. Very frustrating. So I always ask, who wins, who loses. The answer is ALWAYS the same and surely that, in itself, warrants at least a question or two?

You are laser focused on Trump. A man with almost no influence beyond the mainstream hullabaloo. He's a dancing puppet. I'm focused on the men who funded him. And the men who fund his opposition. The ones that don't disappear when an election result is declared.

Do conspiracies exist? Yes. Everywhere. The world runs on them. Do people who aren't privy to the details but can join enough dots have theories about what's actually occurring? For sure. The hard part is, when they point out fairly obvious things, the victims of these conspiracies leap on them. This is mainly what the media is for, apart from the stock prices and weather. Changing the narrative. Distracting, diverting, ridiculing when all else fails.

Why is the health service underfunded? Do you think that was one man? Or a collection of individuals who stood to gain? Well that was a conspiracy right there. With Margaret Thatcher and John Major and Tony Blair at the black heart of it. Notice how those party lines we fight about didn't seem to make a difference? And now we ask - how did this happen? Johnson is to blame! Really? If we think that way we can learn nothing. We pick a point in time and ignore the progression of time.

You might think I'm wandering off the point. But I'm not. I'm right on point. The world view you claimed can't fathom is all about conspiracies wrapped in conspiracies. Conspiracies designed to deprive the many at the cost of the few. That is the ONLY WAY a few can abuse the many without being hanged from a lamppost. And if you don't agree, all you are left with is COINCIDENCE THEORIES. Everything just happens to fall their way, by chance. Every time.

Anyway, the health authorities and the trade bodies in the west openly admitted they have skipped the research stage on 5G and are going straight to production. They view it as a vital advantage in a race against the competition. Every other concern is rescinded. So when this video guy says there are no health concerns, he doesn't actually know. He's making an assumption. In the same ways as doctors made assumptions about all those thousands of drugs that had to be recalled because they were harming people. But the profits were already banked. Even so, despite their lack of professionalism, they are probably on the winning side of the gamble with human life, because established science says there is minimal risk. If I can find it, I'll post up a video of some US official boasting about the lack of standard testing.

And then you can take this and wonder if the masters of commerce are genuinely concerned about Coronavirus patients. Where's the profit? Figure out who wins and who loses and you get as close to the truth as it's possible to get without being in the room. And if you apply that rule across every "news" event you'll see the same pattern. And eventually you'll learn how to spot these patterns instantly. Like 911. I knew exactly what happened as it was being broadcast live. Not because I'm smart, but because - who wins, who loses, is there a pattern?

5G. Billions more for tech. Tick. A surveillance grid you can scarcely believe is possible (see the video on Known Identity). Funding? $1K mobile "phones" and expensive data plans when data has a cost of almost zero these days. You'll pay for your own enslavement and all you get in return is a fridge that can order milk? It's a bum deal for sure. But it's CONVENIENT and that's what counts.

Big ramble there. So keywords, IoT (Internet of things), Space Force, Known Identity, ID2020, GDPR. From there it's pretty easy to figure things out.

[Letters]

Come friendly bombs and fall on this house

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52223908

[Mac76]

Come friendly bombs and fall on this house

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52223908

Those guys are going to be fighting over that brunette in no time, i give it five days before there's a punchup

[Niall_Quinn]

Those guys are going to be fighting over that brunette in no time, i give it five days before there's a punchup

Yep, the poor little bastard's arsehole will be bleeding like a gunshot wound.

[Mac76]

High Court Proceedings - Her Majesty against the Government, March 2021

Judge: "I now declare these proceedings open - I call upon the Prosecution to outline its case against the Government in the matter of the charge of mass manslaughter of thousands of British citizens as a result of criminally negligent behaviour during last year's coronavirus crisis"

Lead Prosecutor: " Thank you M'lud - I will by way of introduction present Exhibit A - this article from The Sunday Times, 19 August 2020..."

"THE TIMES ARTICLE
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh

The first Coronavirus Cobra meeting took place on January 24 but it took just an hour that lunchtime to brush aside the coronavirus threat. Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”.

Towards the end of the second week of February, the prime minister was demob happy. After sacking five cabinet ministers and saying everyone “should be confident and calm” about Britain’s response to the virus, Johnson vacated Downing Street after the half-term recess began on February 13.

He headed to the country for a “working” holiday at Chevening with Symonds and would be out of the public eye for 12 days. His aides were thankful for the rest, as they had been working flat out since the summer as the Brexit power struggle had played out.

It would not be until March 2 — another five weeks — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there.”

Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster

BORIS JOHNSON SKIPPED FIVE COBRA MEETINGS ON THE VIRUS

CALLS TO ORDER PROTECTIVE GEAR WERE IGNORED

SCIENTISTS’ WARNINGS FELL ON DEAF EARS.

FAILINGS IN FEBRUARY MAY HAVE COST THOUSANDS OF LIVES

Jonathan Leakeight |Jonathan Calvert,George Arbuthnott and

Saturday April 18 2020, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times

On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world. Passing from person to person and borne on ships and planes, the coronavirus was already leaving a trail of bodies.

The virus had spread from China to six countries and was almost certainly in many others. Sensing the coming danger, the British government briefly went into wartime mode that day, holding a meeting of Cobra, its national crisis committee.

But it took just an hour that January 24 lunchtime to brush aside the coronavirus threat. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”.

This was despite the publication that day of an alarming study by Chinese doctors in the medical journal, The Lancet. It assessed the lethal potential of the virus, for the first time suggesting it was comparable to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people.

Unusually, Boris Johnson had been absent from Cobra. The committee — which includes ministers, intelligence chiefs and military generals — gathers at moments of great peril such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other threats to the nation and is normally chaired by the prime minister.

Johnson had found time that day, however, to join in a lunar new year dragon eyes ritual as part of Downing Street’s reception for the Chinese community, led by the country’s ambassador.

It was a big day for Johnson and there was a triumphal mood in Downing Street because the withdrawal treaty from the European Union was being signed in the late afternoon. It could have been the defining moment of his premiership — but that was before the world changed.

That afternoon his spokesman played down the looming threat from the east and reassured the nation that we were “well prepared for any new diseases”. The confident, almost nonchalant, attitude displayed that day in January would continue for more than a month.

Johnson went on to miss four further Cobra meetings on the virus. As Britain was hit by unprecedented flooding, he completed the EU withdrawal, reshuffled his cabinet and then went away to the grace-and-favour country retreat at Chevening where he spent most of the two weeks over half-term with his pregnant fiancée, Carrie Symonds.

Johnson with Symonds in a selfie posted on social media in February

It would not be until March 2 — another five weeks — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus. But by then it was almost certainly too late. The virus had sneaked into our airports, our trains, our workplaces and our homes. Britain was on course for one of the worst infections of the most deadly virus to have hit the world in more than a century.

Last week, a senior adviser to Downing Street broke ranks and blamed the weeks of complacency on a failure of leadership in cabinet. In particular, the prime minister was singled out.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there,” the adviser said. “And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”

Inquiry ‘inevitable’

One day there will inevitably be an inquiry into the lack of preparations during those “lost” five weeks from January 24. There will be questions about when politicians understood the severity of the threat, what the scientists told them and why so little was done to equip the National Health Service for the coming crisis. It will be the politicians who will face the most intense scrutiny.

Among the key points likely to be explored will be why it took so long to recognise an urgent need for a massive boost in supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers; ventilators to treat acute respiratory symptoms; and tests to detect the infection.

Any inquiry may also ask whether the government’s failure to get to grips with the scale of the crisis in those early days had the knock-on effect of the national lockdown being introduced days or even weeks too late, causing many thousands more unnecessary deaths.

An investigation has talked to scientists, academics, doctors, emergency planners, public officials and politicians about the root of the crisis and whether the government should have known sooner and acted more swiftly to kick-start the Whitehall machine and put the NHS onto a war footing.

They told us that, contrary to the official line, Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.

This made it doubly important that the government hit the ground running in late January and early February. Scientists said the threat from the coming storm was clear. Indeed, one of the government’s key advisory committees was given a dire warning a month earlier than has previously been admitted about the prospect of having to deal with mass casualties.

It was a message repeated throughout February but the warnings appear to have fallen on deaf ears. The need, for example, to boost emergency supplies of protective masks and gowns for health workers was pressing, but little progress was made in obtaining the items from the manufacturers, mainly in China.

Instead, the government sent supplies the other way — shipping 279,000 items of its depleted stockpile of protective equipment to China during this period, following a request for help from the authorities there.

Impending danger

The prime minister had been sunning himself with his girlfriend in the millionaires’ Caribbean resort of Mustique when China first alerted the World Health Organisation (WHO) on December 31 that several cases of an unusual pneumonia had been recorded in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in Hubei province.

In the days that followed China initially claimed the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, which should have been reassuring. But this did not ring true to Britain’s public health academics and epidemiologists who were texting each other, eager for more information, in early January.

Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University, had predicted in a talk two years earlier that a virus might jump species from an animal in China and spread quickly to become a human pandemic. So the news from Wuhan set her on high alert.

“In early January a lot of my global health colleagues and I were kind of discussing ‘What’s going on?’” she recalled. “China still hadn’t confirmed the virus was human-to-human. A lot of us were suspecting it was because it was a respiratory pathogen and you wouldn’t see the numbers of cases that we were seeing out of China if it was not human-to-human. So that was disturbing.”

By as early as January 16 the professor was on Twitter calling for swift action to prepare for the virus. “Been asked by journalists how serious #WuhanPneumonia outbreak is,” she wrote. “My answer: take it seriously because of cross-border spread (planes means bugs travel far & fast), likely human-to-human transmission and previous outbreaks have taught overresponding is better than delaying action.”

Events were now moving fast. Four hundred miles away in London, from its campus next to the Royal Albert Hall, a team at Imperial College’s School of Public Health led by Professor Neil Ferguson produced its first modelling assessment of the likely impact of the virus. On Friday, January 17, its report noted the “worrying” news that three cases of the virus had been discovered outside China — two in Thailand and one in Japan. While acknowledging many unknowns, researchers calculated that there could already be as many as 4,000 cases. The report warned: “The magnitude of these numbers suggests substantial human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out. Heightened surveillance, prompt information-sharing and enhanced preparedness are recommended.”

By now the mystery bug had been identified as a type of coronavirus — a large family of viruses that can cause infections ranging from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars). There had been two reported deaths from the virus and 41 patients had been taken ill.

The following Wednesday, January 22, the government convened its first meeting of its scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) to discuss the virus. Its membership is secret but it is usually chaired by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and chief medical adviser, Professor Chris Whitty. Downing Street advisers are also present.

There were new findings that day with Chinese scientists warning that the virus had an unusually high infectivity rate of up to 3.0, which meant each person with the virus would typically infect up to three more people.

One of those present was Imperial’s Ferguson, who was already working on his own estimate — putting infectivity at 2.6 and possibly as high as 3.5 — which he sent to ministers and officials in a report on the day of the Cobra meeting on January 24. The Spanish flu had an estimated infectivity rate of between 2.0 and 3.0, so Ferguson’s finding was shocking.

��

The professor’s other bombshell in the same report was that there needed to be a 60% cut in the transmission rate — which meant stopping contact between people. In layman’s terms it meant a lockdown, a move that would paralyse an economy already facing a battering from Brexit. At the time such a suggestion was unthinkable in the government and belonged to the world of post-apocalypse movies.

The growing alarm among scientists appears not to have been heard or heeded by policy-makers. After the January 25 Cobra meeting, the chorus of reassurance was not just from Hancock and the prime minister’s spokesman: Whitty was confident too.

��

In early February Hancock proudly told the Commons the UK was one of the first countries to develop a new test for the virus

STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA

“Cobra met today to discuss the situation in Wuhan, China,” said Whitty. “We have global experts monitoring the situation around the clock and have a strong track record of managing new forms of infectious disease . . . there are no confirmed cases in the UK to date.”

However, by then there had been 1,000 cases worldwide and 41 deaths, mostly in Wuhan. A Lancet report that day presented a study of 41 coronavirus patients admitted to hospital in Wuhan which found that more than half had severe breathing problems, a third required intensive care and six had died.

And there was now little doubt that the UK would be hit by the virus. A study by Southampton University has shown that 190,000 people flew into the UK from Wuhan and other high-risk Chinese cities between January and March. The researchers estimated that up to 1,900 of these passengers would have been infected with the coronavirus — almost guaranteeing the UK would become a centre of the subsequent pandemic.

Sure enough, five days later on Wednesday, January 29, the first coronavirus cases on British soil were found when two Chinese nationals from the same family fell ill at a hotel in York. The next day, the government raised the threat level from low to moderate.

The pandemic plan

On January 31 — or Brexit day as it had become known — there was a rousing 11pm speech by the prime minister promising that the withdrawal from the European Union would be the dawn of a new era unleashing the British people who would “grow in confidence” month by month.

By this time, there was good reason for the government’s top scientific advisers to feel creeping unease about the virus. The WHO had declared the coronavirus a global emergency just the day before and scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had confirmed to Whitty in a private meeting of the Nervtag advisory committee on respiratory illness that the virus’s infectivity could be as bad as Ferguson’s worst estimate several days earlier.

The official scientific advisers were willing to concede in public that there might be several cases of the coronavirus in the UK. But they had faith that the country’s plans for a pandemic would prove robust.

This was probably a big mistake. An adviser to Downing Street — speaking off the record — says their confidence in “the plan” was misplaced. While a possible pandemic had been listed as the No 1 threat to the nation for many years, the source says that in reality it had long since stopped being treated as such.

Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,” the source said, “but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs.”

The last rehearsal for a pandemic was a 2016 exercise codenamed Cygnus which predicted the health service would collapse and highlighted a long list of shortcomings — including, presciently, a lack of PPE and intensive care ventilators.

But an equally lengthy list of recommendations to address the deficiencies was never implemented. The source said preparations for a no-deal Brexit “sucked all the blood out of pandemic planning” in the following years.

In the year leading up to the coronavirus outbreak key government committee meetings on pandemic planning were repeatedly “bumped” off the diary to make way for discussions about more pressing issues such as the beds crisis in the NHS. Training for NHS staff with protective equipment and respirators was also neglected, the source alleges.

Members of the government advisory group on pandemics are said to have felt powerless. “They would joke between themselves, ‘Haha let’s hope we don’t get a pandemic,’ because there wasn’t a single area of practice that was being nurtured in order for us to meet basic requirements for pandemic, never mind do it well,” said the source.

“If you were with senior NHS managers at all during the last two years, you were aware that their biggest fear, their sweatiest nightmare, was a pandemic because they weren’t prepared for it.”

It meant that the government had much catching up to do when it was becoming clear that this “nightmare” was becoming a distinct possibility in February. But the source says there was little urgency. “Almost every plan we had was not activated in February. Almost every government department has failed to properly implement their own pandemic plans,” the source said.

One deviation from the plan, for example, was a failure to give an early warning to firms that there might be a lockdown so they could start contingency planning. “There was a duty to get them to start thinking about their cashflow and their business continuity arrangements,” the source said.

Superspreader

A central part of any pandemic plan is to identify anyone who becomes ill, vigorously pursue all their recent contacts and put them into quarantine. That involves testing and the UK initially seemed to be ahead of the game. In early February Hancock proudly told the Commons the UK was one of the first countries to develop a new test for the coronavirus. “Testing worldwide is being done on equipment designed in Oxford,” he said.

So when Steve Walsh, a 53-year-old businessman from Hove, East Sussex, was identified as the source of the second UK outbreak on February 6 all his contacts were followed up with tests. Walsh’s case was a warning of the rampant infectivity of the virus as he is believed to have passed it to five people in the UK after returning from a conference in Singapore as well as six overseas.

But Public Health England failed to take advantage of our early breakthroughs with tests and lost early opportunities to step up production to the levels that would later be needed.

This was in part because the government was planning for the virus using its blueprint for fighting the flu. Once a flu pandemic has found its way into the population and there is no vaccine, then the virus is allowed to take its course until “herd immunity” is acquired. Such a plan does not require mass testing.

A senior politician told this newspaper: “I had conversations with Chris Whitty at the end of January and they were absolutely focused on herd immunity. The reason is that with flu, herd immunity is the right response if you haven’t got a vaccine.

“All of our planning was for pandemic flu. There has basically been a divide between scientists in Asia who saw this as a horrible, deadly disease on the lines of Sars, which requires immediate lockdown, and those in the West, particularly in the US and UK, who saw this as flu.”

The prime minister’s special adviser Dominic Cummings is said to have had initial enthusiasm for the herd immunity concept, which may have played a part in the government’s early approach to managing the virus. The Department of Health firmly denies that “herd immunity” was ever its aim and rejects suggestions that Whitty supported it. Cummings also denies backing the concept.

The failure to obtain large amounts of testing equipment was another big error of judgment, according to the Downing Street source. It would later be one of the big scandals of the coronavirus crisis that the considerable capacity of Britain’s private laboratories to mass-produce tests was not harnessed during those crucial weeks of February.

“We should have communicated with every commercial testing laboratory that might volunteer to become part of the government’s testing regime but that didn’t happen,” said the source.

The lack of action was confirmed by Doris-Ann Williams, chief executive of the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association, which represents 110 companies that make up most of the UK’s testing sector. Amazingly, she says her organisation did not receive a meaningful approach from the government asking for help until April 1 — the night before Hancock bowed to pressure and announced a belated and ambitious target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month.

There was also a failure to replenish supplies of gowns and masks for health and care workers in the early weeks of February — despite NHS England declaring the virus its first “level four critical incident” at the end of January.

It was a key part of the pandemic plan — the NHS’s Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza dated December 2017 — that the NHS would be able to draw on “just in case” stockpiles of PPE.

But many of the “just in case” stockpiles had dwindled, and equipment was out of date. As not enough money was being spent on replenishing stockpiles, this shortfall was supposed to be filled by activating “just in time” contracts which had been arranged with equipment suppliers in recent years to deal with an emergency. The first order for equipment under the “just in time” protocol was made on January 30.

However, the source said that attempts to call in these “just in time” contracts immediately ran into difficulties in February because they were mostly with Chinese manufacturers who were facing unprecedented demand from the country’s own health service and elsewhere.

This was another nail in the coffin for the pandemic plan. “It was a massive spider’s web of failing, every domino has fallen,” said the source.

The NHS could have contacted UK-based suppliers. The British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA) was ready to help supply PPE in February — and throughout March — but it was only on April 1 that its offer of help was accepted. Dr Simon Festing, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “Orders undoubtedly went overseas instead of to the NHS because of the missed opportunities in the procurement process.”

Downing Street admitted on February 24 — just five days before NHS chiefs warned a lack of PPE left the health service facing a “nightmare” — that the UK government had supplied 1,800 pairs of goggles and 43,000 disposable gloves, 194,000 sanitising wipes, 37,500 medical gowns and 2,500 face masks to China.

A senior department of health insider described the sense of drift witnessed during those crucial weeks in February: “We missed the boat on testing and PPE . . . I remember being called into some of the meetings about this in February and thinking, ‘Well it’s a good thing this isn’t the big one.’

“I had watched Wuhan but I assumed we must have not been worried because we did nothing. We just watched. A pandemic was always at the top of our national risk register — always — but when it came we just slowly watched. We could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.”

In the Far East the threat was being treated more seriously in the early weeks of February. Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was in a unique position to compare the UK’s response with Singapore, where he had advised in the past.

“Singapore realised, as soon as Wuhan reported it, that cases were going to turn up in Singapore. And so they prepared for that. I looked at the UK and I can see a different strategy and approach.

“The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked with Singapore in 2003 and 2009 and basically they copied the UK pandemic preparedness plan. But the difference is they actually implemented it.”

Working holiday

Towards the end of the second week of February, the prime minister was demob happy. After sacking five cabinet ministers and saying everyone “should be confident and calm” about Britain’s response to the virus, Johnson vacated Downing Street after the half-term recess began on February 13.

He headed to the country for a “working” holiday at Chevening with Symonds and would be out of the public eye for 12 days. His aides were thankful for the rest, as they had been working flat out since the summer as the Brexit power struggle had played out.

The Sunday newspapers that weekend would not have made comfortable reading. The Sunday Times reported on a briefing from a risk specialist which said that Public Health England would be overrun during a pandemic as it could test only 1,000 people a day.

Johnson may well have been distracted by matters in his personal life during his stay in the countryside. Aides were told to keep their briefing papers short and cut the number of memos in his red box if they wanted them to be read.

His family needed to be prepared for the announcement that Symonds, who turned 32 in March, was pregnant and that they had been secretly engaged for some time. Relations with his children had been fraught since his separation from his estranged wife Marina Wheeler and the rift deepened when she had been diagnosed with cancer last year.

The divorce also had to be finalised. Midway through the break it was announced in the High Court that the couple had reached a settlement, leaving Wheeler free to apply for divorce.

There were murmurings of frustration from some ministers and their aides at the time that Johnson was not taking more of a lead. But Johnson’s aides are understood to have felt relaxed: he was getting updates and they claim the scientists were saying everything was under control.

400,000 deaths

By the time Johnson departed for the countryside, however, there was mounting unease among scientists about the exceptional nature of the threat. Sir Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist who is a key government adviser, made this clear in a recent BBC interview.

“I think from the early days in February, if not in late January, it was obvious this infection was going to be very serious and it was going to affect more than just the region of Asia ,” he said. “I think it was very clear that this was going to be an unprecedented event.”

By February 21, the virus had already infected 76,000 people, had caused 2,300 deaths in China and was taking a foothold in Europe with Italy recording 51 cases and two deaths the following day. Nonetheless Nervtag, one of the key government advisory committees, decided to keep the threat level at “moderate”.

Its members may well regret that decision with hindsight and it was certainly not unanimous. John Edmunds, one of the country’s top infectious disease modellers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was participating in the meeting by video link but his technology failed him at the crucial moment.

Edmunds wanted the threat level to be increased to high but could not make his view known as the link was glitchy. He sent an email later making his view clear. “JE believes that the risk to the UK population [in the PHE risk assessment] should be high, as there is evidence of ongoing transmission in Korea, Japan and Singapore, as well as in China,” the meeting’s minutes state. But the decision had already been taken.

Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College, was in America at the time of the meeting but would also have recommended increasing the threat to high. Three days earlier he had given an address to a seminar in which he estimated that 60% of the world’s population would probably become infected if no action was taken and 400,000 people would die in the UK.

By February 26, there were 13 known cases in the UK. That day — almost four weeks before a full lockdown would be announced — ministers were warned through another advisory committee that the country was facing a catastrophic loss of life unless drastic action was taken. Having been thwarted from sounding the alarm, Edmunds and his team presented their latest “worst scenario” predictions to the scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling (SPI-M) which directly advises the country’s scientific decision-makers on Sage.

It warned that 27 million people could be infected and 220,000 intensive care beds would be needed if no action were taken to reduce infection rates. The predicted death toll was 380,000. Edmunds’s colleague Nick Davies, who led the research, says the report emphasised the urgent need for a lockdown almost four weeks before it was imposed.

The team modelled the effects of a 12-week lockdown involving school and work closures, shielding the elderly, social distancing and self-isolation. It estimated this would delay the impact of the pandemic but there still might be 280,000 deaths over the year.

Johnson returns

The previous night Johnson had returned to London for the Conservatives’ big fundraising ball, the Winter Party, at which one donor pledged £60,000 for the privilege of playing a game of tennis with him.

By this time the prime minister had missed five Cobra meetings on the preparations to combat the looming pandemic, which he left to be chaired by Hancock. Johnson was an easy target for the opposition when he returned to the Commons the following day with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, labelling him a “part-time” prime minister for his failure to lead on the virus crisis or visit the areas of the UK badly hit by floods.

By Friday, February 28, the virus had taken root in the UK with reported cases rising to 19 and the stock markets were plunging. It was finally time for Johnson to act. He summoned a TV reporter into Downing Street to say he was on top of the coronavirus crisis.

“The issue of coronavirus is something that is now the government’s top priority,” he said. “I have just had a meeting with the chief medical officer and secretary of state for health talking about the preparations that we need to make.”

It was finally announced that he would be attending a meeting of Cobra — after a weekend at Chequers with Symonds where the couple would publicly release news of the engagement and their baby.

On the Sunday, there was a meeting between Sage committee members and officials from the Department of Health and NHS which was a game changer, according to a Whitehall source. The meeting was shown fresh modelling based on figures from Italy suggesting that 8% of infected people might need hospital treatment in a worst-case scenario. The previous estimate had been 4%-5%.

“The risk to the NHS had effectively doubled in an instant. It set alarm bells ringing across government,” said the Whitehall source. “I think that meeting focused minds. You realise it’s time to pull the trigger on the starting gun.”

Many NHS workers have been left without proper protection

At the Cobra meeting the next day with Johnson in the chair a full “battle plan” was finally signed off to contain, delay and mitigate the spread of the virus. This was on March 2 — five weeks after the first Cobra meeting on the virus.

The new push would have some positive benefits such as the creation of new Nightingale hospitals, which greatly increased the number of intensive care beds. But there was a further delay that month of nine days in introducing the lockdown as Johnson and his senior advisers debated what measures were required. Later the government would be left rudderless again after Johnson himself contracted the virus.

As the number of infections grew daily, some things were impossible to retrieve. There was a worldwide shortage of PPE and the prime minister would have to personally ring manufacturers of ventilators and testing kits in a desperate effort to boost supplies.

The result was that the NHS and care home workers would be left without proper protection and insufficient numbers of tests to find out whether they had been infected. To date 50 doctors, nurses and NHS workers have died. More than 100,000 people have been confirmed as infected in Britain and 15,000 have died.

This weekend, sources close to Hancock said that from late January he instituted a “prepare for the worst” approach to the virus, held daily meetings and started work on PPE supplies.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Our response has ensured that the NHS has been given all the support it needs to ensure everyone requiring treatment has received it, as well as providing protection to businesses and reassurance to workers. The prime minister has been at the helm of the response to this, providing leadership during this hugely challenging period for the whole nation.”"

[Niall_Quinn]

On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world.

Factually incorrect. Can't even get the opening sentence right. Case dismissed. Please do homework and try again.

[Niall_Quinn]

One day there will inevitably be an inquiry into the lack of preparations during those “lost” five weeks from January 24. There will be questions about when politicians understood the severity of the threat, what the scientists told them and why so little was done to equip the National Health Service for the coming crisis. It will be the politicians who will face the most intense scrutiny.

There certainly will be, and it will be one of the most important events in our nation's history. For once, the politicians will be pitched against the deep seated, permanent government as opposed to in lock-step. It will be a rare opportunity to reveal the nature and full extent of those unelected individuals and corporate entities that control so much with so little scrutiny. Whether the temporary political class has the wherewithal to lift the rock on this common enemy is questionable, but they'll be forced to try, if only to do what they do best - cover their arses.

[Ollie the Optimist]

There are several flaws in the times article.

The first being that the PM does not chair every Cobra meeting.

Secondly, it was announced on march 2nd that Boris would be chairing the cobra that day and it was the 6th meeting. Hardly an exclusive now when they told the media two months ago!

[Niall_Quinn]

There are several flaws in the times article.

The first being that the PM does not chair every Cobra meeting.

Secondly, it was announced on march 2nd that Boris would be chairing the cobra that day and it was the 6th meeting. Hardly an exclusive now when they told the media two months ago!

Several? The whole thing is an exercise in omission and jaundiced perspective. These people need to finally accept we have left the EU. But they just can't seem to do it.

[Mac76]

There certainly will be, and it will be one of the most important events in our nation's history. For once, the politicians will be pitched against the deep seated, permanent government as opposed to in lock-step. It will be a rare opportunity to reveal the nature and full extent of those unelected individuals and corporate entities that control so much with so little scrutiny. Whether the temporary political class has the wherewithal to lift the rock on this common enemy is questionable, but they'll be forced to try, if only to do what they do best - cover their arses.

oh dear, another poor deluded soul who believes in the Sir Humphrey myth - i thought i'd explained that to you - i'm afraid that idiots like Johnson and Gove really do run (if you can call the choaos over which they preside 'running') the country - that's the really scary thing - i'd actually be much calmer if i thought there were shadowy figures with clipboards and trilbies preventing these useless nutters from doing the damage they do

[Mac76]

Several? The whole thing is an exercise in omission and jaundiced perspective. These people need to finally accept we have left the EU. But they just can't seem to do it.

read it again - it's the Times, owned by leave-supporting Murdoch

[Niall_Quinn]

read it again - it's the Times, owned by leave-supporting Murdoch

Get out of it. It's dripping with salty tears about Brexit and spends half it's time targeting the personal behaviour of Johnson who is hated by the remoaners. They start it out as a legal pleading and then disintegrate into remoaning and personal attacks, while carefully apologising for the real culprits at every opportunity. This would be laughed out of a court and sanctions could well be levied against the pseudo-lawyers bringing this nonsense.

The argument is so ill conceived it defeats itself in several key places and opens itself up to actually highlight the parties it tries to conceal. Case in point, the delivery of supplies to China. There's a huge story behind that which in turn leads to the next huge story, and so on. No lawyer would build a motorway through his own argument like that, literally providing a straight route to drive the whole case elsewhere at high speed.

A real legal argument would focus on the facts as they stand, and the harm or damages arising from those facts. Plus it would deliver a motivation to explain why those facts came about.

This is just a silly whinge about Brexit and Johnson, disguised in a highbrow and solemn manner than might be impressive for those who use the Times as a fashion accessory. But in normal times it'd be fun to hear the sniggers from lawyers on the train as the read through that nonsense.

[Niall_Quinn]

oh dear, another poor deluded soul who believes in the Sir Humphrey myth - i thought i'd explained that to you - i'm afraid that idiots like Johnson and Gove really do run (if you can call the choaos over which they preside 'running') the country - that's the really scary thing - i'd actually be much calmer if i thought there were shadowy figures with clipboards and trilbies preventing these useless nutters from doing the damage they do

I have always found it futile trying to explain the self evident realities of political theatre to those who are heavily invested in the tribal nature of it. Blue, Red, my side, your side, good, evil, moral, immoral, lies, truth, etc, etc. Obvious playacting for the purpose of causing division. But many people are fundamentally invested in it, to their cores. It's a lifelong affliction for many. They infect their children with the same and generations pass. Even when their tribe reverses every belief it ever claimed to hold inviolable, they about-turn and invest themselves wholeheartedly in the new gospel.

Gove and Johnson are in charge. Sure they are. That's what is says in the job descriptions and that's how it will be until, suddenly, somebody else is in charge of a system that never changes and always benefits a minority over the majority (which must be an unbroken streak of coincidence I suppose).

[Ollie the Optimist]

read it again - it's the Times, owned by leave-supporting Murdoch

Didn’t the Sunday times back remain? or was it the Times backed remain and ST went brexit. Either way, one of them certainly backed remain.

[Letters]

This deserved a reply. Now don't shout but I'm only going to reply to a couple of points because some things I either don't have much to say about or don't want to go down those rabbit holes


IoT. Do some reading. IoT is far, far more than smart fridges. It's an interconnected, global system that integrates every other system into a framework that literally allows your every action and interaction to be tracked and analysed. China has already deployed a basic version of this dystopia. Read up on it and figure out for yourself why it's such a terrible thing. Just read. Particularly look for how initially benign technologies have been monopolised and subverted. Blockchain is the best example.

My stance on this has always been that I don't care. I don't care if there's CCTV everywhere. I don't care if "they" are looking at my emails or my web browsing history. If they are then they're probably a bit bored because I'm not doing anything particularly interesting.
I actually don't think they are doing these things. I mean, no-one is sitting there checking what I'm up to. Sure there are probably face recognition algorithms which can tell where I've been, there are definitely algorithms looking for patterns or keywords.
I guess the reason I'm not that bothered about this is that, so far, I don't really feel it's affected my freedoms or my day to day life.
Sure, it means I'm getting targeted adverts but I don't see that as particular sinister. The companies are trying to sell me things I'm interested in. If I am interested then I'll buy their products. The company gets my money, I get something I want. No-one loses.

There is obviously a danger here. An authoritarian government could use all that data to severely restrict our freedoms. So I get the concern.
Personally though, I don't find it likely. People have been wringing their hands for decades about this sort of thing. And their fears have never materialised.
You might disagree, but it hasn't affected my day to day life. Even now with the "lockdown". I'm sure "they" could use tracking information from people's phones to see if I'm going out more than once a day and issue automatic fines if I do - given that I'm not a key worker, and "they" also know that.
I don't think "they" are doing anything like that. They could, they have all the data they need to do it, but they aren't.
If you object to the very fact that they could then fair enough, I guess. If it's the principle you object to then fine. But personally I can't get worked up about it simply because it's never affected my life and I don't believe it will. I may be wrong of course, but that's how I see it.


You are laser focused on Trump. A man with almost no influence beyond the mainstream hullabaloo. He's a dancing puppet.

I disagree. I mean, I'm a bit focused on him simply because he's so high profile and vocal. And I basically disagree with everything he says.
But I don't agree he has no influence. I never understand this argument that the president is just a figurehead.
I mean, I'm not saying he's running the whole show single-handed. Of course he isn't.
But there's no doubt about his influence. Billions were approved for his infernal wall, he's made decisions about the Covid-19 situation.
He's obviously not the sole decision maker but he's not just announcing things which others have decided either.
His fingerprints are all over a lot of the decisions being made in the US right now.

[Mac76]

Didn’t the Sunday times back remain? or was it the Times backed remain and ST went brexit. Either way, one of them certainly backed remain.

Well given you've presented precise killer facts in such an effective manner, who am i to argue :rolleyes:

[Ollie the Optimist]

Well given you've presented precise killer facts in such an effective manner, who am i to argue :rolleyes:

I got it wrong, the times backed remain not the Sunday times. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/which-newspapers-support-brexit_uk_5768fad2e4b0a4f99adc6525

So just because Murdoch owns the paper, doesn’t make it a brexit supporting one.


Interestingly, i didnt realise the Mail On Sunday backed remain!

[Mac76]

I have always found it futile trying to explain the self evident realities of political theatre to those who are heavily invested in the tribal nature of it. Blue, Red, my side, your side, good, evil, moral, immoral, lies, truth, etc, etc. Obvious playacting for the purpose of causing division. But many people are fundamentally invested in it, to their cores. It's a lifelong affliction for many. They infect their children with the same and generations pass. Even when their tribe reverses every belief it ever claimed to hold inviolable, they about-turn and invest themselves wholeheartedly in the new gospel.

Gove and Johnson are in charge. Sure they are. That's what is says in the job descriptions and that's how it will be until, suddenly, somebody else is in charge of a system that never changes and always benefits a minority over the majority (which must be an unbroken streak of coincidence I suppose).

So you’re basically saying that, for example, any other government, with any other set of politicians, would be leaving the EU a) at all, b) at such headlong speed and c) at the risk of a disastrous no deal?

BOLLOCKS - it’s the actual particular bunch of cunts who are in charge that are making that happen

Let’s look at the alternative scenario - If a sane Labour leader had been in charge at the last election and won or formed a coalition with the Lib Dems we’d have had another referendum, there is a decent chance there’d have been a remain majority and if so we wouldn’t be leaving

THAT’s the difference particular politicians make

[Niall_Quinn]

So you’re basically saying that, for example, any other government, with any other set of politicians, would be leaving the EU a) at all, b) at such headlong speed and c) at the risk of a disastrous no deal?

BOLLOCKS - it’s the actual particular bunch of cunts who are in charge that are making that happen

Let’s look at the alternative scenario - If a sane Labour leader had been in charge at the last election and won or formed a coalition with the Lib Dems we’d have had another referendum, there is a decent chance there’d have been a remain majority and if so we wouldn’t be leaving

THAT’s the difference particular politicians make

Firstly, I don't know where you get "headlong speed" from. This has dragged on for years. And there's no evidence at all there's a risk in no-deal, which in itself is a misnomer because "no deal" actually means deal, but on different terms to those controlled by the EU, in this case the WTO. So by removing your framing of the question, to answer the question:

There are two major competing economic factions in the western world at present (three if you include the influence of the outlier Russia), promoting competing ideologies (or more accurately, strategies). Globalisation and a move towards governance by (in their mind) benevolent, unelected, undemocratic, multinational bodies (such as the EU), while mainting the illusion of political representation throughout the process. Then there's the traditional, balkanised map of nation states governed by theoretically democratic and elected politicians, in the main - the system most are familiar with due to its longevity.

These politicians are selected and placed into power by competing economic entities, the multinational corporations, the banking system, sufficiently influential individuals and cartels. These entities purchase the political system and run their pre-appointed representatives through the election process in order to achieve their economic objectives while preserving the illusion of political representation for the larger population, to deter dissent and sow the vital seed of division. The revolving door relationship between politicians and large corporations best shows how the buy now, pay later procedure operates.

During the past few decades the globalists have held sway. All political parties have endorsed and delivered globalisation, much to the detriment of millions of people who have paid the social cost of the private profits banked by the controlling minority. The victims of globalisation, sold a raft of lies and now having endured the realities of this global gravy train for the few, were identified by a faction of the ruling class as a means to gain advantage over their competitors by pointing out the obvious inequalities inherent in globalisation and rallying the victims around symbols they had previously identified with, the nation state, cultural identity, religion, greater self-reliance, etc. These are the "nationalists" so despised by the globalists and their politically illiterate foot soldiers.

The "nationalists" (or the red crime syndicate) are much feared by the globalists (the blue crime syndicate) because the former threatens to derail almost every project that has carefully been constructed, under the guise of a series of benefits to mankind (despite the inevitable one way flow of actual benefit). This is why Trump is so vigorously hated, he's the rallying symbol around which the old school crime syndicate has regained control of the most influential regional economy. Previously the globalists have worked diligently on every level to displace the American economy (with its expensive labour force) to their preferred alternative project in China, where the advantages of a slave labour workforce and strict authoritarianism can yield (never before seen in human history) increased profitability.

That's the underlying framework in very brief and simple terms. As to Brexit. That was a rare mistake played out by overconfident globalists. Globalists that hadn't realised, or realised too late, the extent to which citizens from around the world had woken up to the harsh realities of the global marketplace. It was hardly surprising, in hindsight. Years of austerity brought about by a global robbery that had to be conducted in the open finally alerted enough people to the reality of the globalisation project and what it had actually delivered for them - less, or nothing at all. Meanwhile, everything had changed around them, supposedly in terms for the better should they listen to the virtue signalling globalists who spoke of rights and equality and social justice, but in reality in practical terms far worse - no jobs, no stability, enforced cultural change occurring at breakneck speed. The globalists pushed to far too fast, forced into it by their dreadful mismanagement of the global economy and their insatiable greed and mistaken belief the tide they had created could never be reversed.

And so the red side seized its chance and, using the very technology the globalists had created to solidify their own projects, against all the odds defeated the blues in a referendum that was always meant for show and to extract the once and for all consent of the public. Remember Theresa May? David Cameron was the politician selected to deliver this foregone outcome. Every resource of the state and the media was deployed to that end.

And then disaster. The unwashed went and voted the wrong way.

So they selected Theresa May to fix the problem. And instructed Corbyn to reverse his life long position by 180 degrees. And had the Scots pile in with their never ceasing threats of independence, and you know how it went. Again, every asset at their disposal deployed to counter and eradicate the democratic virus that had escaped the lab. They couldn't just rule it null and void, as the EU has done in the past, because by that stage the "nationalists" had solid and tangible support from their allies in the US. The globalists were under attack on two fronts and their usual method of ignoring the people wasn't going to wash on this occasion. Civil unrest would have been a real possibility.

It was too late. The combination of the Trump faction with the disastrous outcome of the Brexit mistake had let the enemy slip into the globalist perimeter and embark on a wrecking spree. All the globalist projects started to go up in flames. Pan-national trade deals (NAFTA), global stitch-up to place yet another tax on the global population (Paris Accord), the mass movement of slave labour work forces, ludicrously one-sided trade policies designed to maximise profits for the corporations operating in China - all burning down.

None of this had anything to do with the flip-flopping politicians rolled out to maintain the illusion of representation during these grand economic struggles. I already told you, Trump was a liberal before he became the opposite.

The "Sir Humphrey" idea you have, but accuse me of having. These are just the grey men that persist between rotating shifts as politicians come and go. The civil servants remain to enact the real business of state, which is always to do the bidding of those who buy the most influence. Anyone who doesn't think it works that way really isn't paying much attention, or looking at the consistent results produced by these political systems.

[Letters]

Booked some theatre tickets via a GroupOn voucher, we were going to see "Magic Goes Wrong" but obviously the performance didn't happen. With other shows we've booked I've heard from the people we booked with about the performances being delayed. I'd heard nothing about this one and I'd actually forgotten it was a GroupOn deal. Checked my emails last night and so had a chat with one of their customer support people.

Me: "Hi, this performance never happened. So what happens now?"
Him: "The voucher is already redeemed"
Me: "Yes, but the performance didn't happen so can I rebook when the theatres reopen?"
Him: "The voucher has expired so we wouldn't be able to process a refund"
Me: "I don't want a refund if I can rebook for another performance"
Him: "There is no option to rebook"
Me: "Right, so can I get a refund?"
Him: "No, because the voucher has expired".
Me: "Right, so I've paid for a show which didn't happen, you have no option to re-book and you're not going to give me my money back?"

End scene.

He said he'd refer it to his manager and they'd get back to me. These fuckers had better give me a refund or...I may be forced to tut really quite loudly.

[GP]

Call your Credit Card and get them to do a charge back.

[Letters]

Call your Credit Card and get them to do a charge back.

Joke's on you, I didn't pay by credit card :cool:

:(

I don't really believe in credit cards as I like to know where I am, so I use Debit Card, but that does mean you're not as protected when it comes to stuff like this. Meh, we'll see. I've generally found GroupOn pretty good so I suspect they will refund me. We'll see.

[Niall_Quinn]

Booked some theatre tickets via a GroupOn voucher, we were going to see "Magic Goes Wrong" but obviously the performance didn't happen. With other shows we've booked I've heard from the people we booked with about the performances being delayed. I'd heard nothing about this one and I'd actually forgotten it was a GroupOn deal. Checked my emails last night and so had a chat with one of their customer support people.

Me: "Hi, this performance never happened. So what happens now?"
Him: "The voucher is already redeemed"
Me: "Yes, but the performance didn't happen so can I rebook when the theatres reopen?"
Him: "The voucher has expired so we wouldn't be able to process a refund"
Me: "I don't want a refund if I can rebook for another performance"
Him: "There is no option to rebook"
Me: "Right, so can I get a refund?"
Him: "No, because the voucher has expired".
Me: "Right, so I've paid for a show which didn't happen, you have no option to re-book and you're not going to give me my money back?"

End scene.

He said he'd refer it to his manager and they'd get back to me. These fuckers had better give me a refund or...I may be forced to tut really quite loudly.

Pretend you have suffered mental distress. Tell them you are a single lesbian feminist in the process of having a sex change and you are relying on this refund to pay for the operation. Tell them you work for the NHS.

If all that fails, tell them you know where they live and you'll be around later tonight to extract all their teeth so you can get the refund from the tooth fairy.

[Ollie the Optimist]

Joke's on you, I didn't pay by credit card :cool:

:(

I don't really believe in credit cards as I like to know where I am, so I use Debit Card, but that does mean you're not as protected when it comes to stuff like this. Meh, we'll see. I've generally found GroupOn pretty good so I suspect they will refund me. We'll see.

Can’t you take out a credit card and just pay it off in full every month? That way you get the protections from credit cards but no interest payments.

[Letters]

Can’t you take out a credit card and just pay it off in full every month? That way you get the protections from credit cards but no interest payments.

I guess I can. But I like the fact that with a Debit card you check your account and you know where you are. You don't have to remember that you don't have as much money as you think you do because you've spent 'x' on the Credit Card.
But I am thinking I should get one because a few things like this have happened recently and it would afford more protection.

That said, if this goes on much longer we'll probably be back to a barter system anyway so it'll all be a bit moot.

[Mac76]

Joke's on you, I didn't pay by credit card :cool:

:(

I don't really believe in credit cards as I like to know where I am, so I use Debit Card, but that does mean you're not as protected when it comes to stuff like this. Meh, we'll see. I've generally found GroupOn pretty good so I suspect they will refund me. We'll see.

you can still 'know where you are' with a credit card.

i have one, for the protections you refer to, and it takes the total of what i've paid with it out of my bank account by DD once per month - i have never paid a penny of interest

as long as you keep track of what's in your current account there's no difference, and you'd have to do that whichever type of card you;re using

[Niall_Quinn]

Can’t you take out a credit card and just pay it off in full every month? That way you get the protections from credit cards but no interest payments.

But what happens if you accidentally max out all your credit cards in the first month and can't afford to pay them back? Bang goes your clever plan! Not so clever after all.

[Letters]

you can still 'know where you are' with a credit card.

i have one, for the protections you refer to, and it takes the total of what i've paid with it out of my bank account by DD once per month - i have never paid a penny of interest

as long as you keep track of what's in your current account there's no difference, and you'd have to do that whichever type of card you;re using

Right. But if I have, say £500 in my bank account and I've spent £200 on my card then my current account is going to say £500 but in reality I only have £300. I have to check how much I've spent on the card to get the true picture, no?
Not the hardest thing to do of course, but I've got used to looking at the amount in there and knowing that's really what I've got to spend, especially after the first few days of the month when all the big stuff goes out.
Gotta say, we're going to save good money while this goes on and I'm not commuting and we're not going out.
So long as I keep getting paid, if not then...not so much.

[Mac76]

Firstly, I don't know where you get "headlong speed" from. This has dragged on for years.

i'm talking about continuing with crucial negotiations in the middle of a worldwide crisis while the PM is at least semi-capable - no responsible government which genuinely wanted to come out with a solution to best help our economy would be doing that at the moment.


Globalists that hadn't realised, or realised too late, the extent to which citizens from around the world had woken up to the harsh realities of the global marketplace.

in the case of our leave-voting citizens, they hadn't woken up to anything, in fact they were and are living in the narrow-minded little hate-filled racist world projected onto them by a few right-wing newspaper owners and deceitful politicians.

the only element of a wider force is actually Russia's fake-news involvement plus Trumps' encouragement to leave which when you think about it, in both cases is based on two megalomaniac national leaders trying to undo an important economic and social peace project, for the sake of creating world disruption for their own ends

there's a little bit of accuracy somewhere in terms of some of the EU leaders pushing ever-closer integration but of course that's been greatly distorted and exagerrated, however things like TTIP did admittedly confuse the simple-minded like Corbyn into having doubts

[Mac76]

Right. But if I have, say £500 in my bank account and I've spent £200 on my card then my current account is going to say £500 but in reality I only have £300. I have to check how much I've spent on the card to get the true picture, no?
Not the hardest thing to do of course, but I've got used to looking at the amount in there and knowing that's really what I've got to spend, especially after the first few days of the month when all the big stuff goes out.

well i'm not the best with those things but i've managed it all these years so if i can do it so can you

the alternative is at best the situation like the one you're in now and at worst being victim to significant fraud if you're unlucky

[Ollie the Optimist]

I guess I can. But I like the fact that with a Debit card you check your account and you know where you are. You don't have to remember that you don't have as much money as you think you do because you've spent 'x' on the Credit Card.
But I am thinking I should get one because a few things like this have happened recently and it would afford more protection.

That said, if this goes on much longer we'll probably be back to a barter system anyway so it'll all be a bit moot.

True but then again these days with all the apps on my phone, it takes 30 seconds to check my bank account & credit card amount to know where i am.

I use my credit card as a debit card effectively and just pay it off in full every month so that i can collect air miles (although they are probably worth fuck all now!)

Although saying that, i work out my monthly budget after all bills etc and just put that in an app. I then just put in everything i spend whether on a credit or debit card and use that to tell me how much i have left for the month. Quite easy that way

[Letters]

well i'm not the best with those things but i've managed it all these years so if i can do it so can you

the alternative is at best the situation like the one you're in now and at worst being victim to significant fraud if you're unlucky

Hmm. Yes. I'm thinking I probably do need to do something about this. I think for most day to day things I'd still use a Debit Card but for certain things I probably should be using a Credit Card. Let this be a lesson to me :(

[Marc Overmars]

I haven’t used my debit card in years, I only carry it incase I need cash. I use my 2 credit cards and pay them off every month. Very easy to manage with the apps and I’m always checking every account I have so I know where I am. Especially the joint incase the wife is putting her nonsense beauty treatments on there. :angry:

[Niall_Quinn]

i'm talking about continuing with crucial negotiations in the middle of a worldwide crisis while the PM is at least semi-capable - no responsible government which genuinely wanted to come out with a solution to best help our economy would be doing that at the moment.



in the case of our leave-voting citizens, they hadn't woken up to anything, in fact they were and are living in the narrow-minded little hate-filled racist world projected onto them by a few right-wing newspaper owners and deceitful politicians.

the only element of a wider force is actually Russia's fake-news involvement plus Trumps' encouragement to leave which when you think about it, in both cases is based on two megalomaniac national leaders trying to undo an important economic and social peace project, for the sake of creating world disruption for their own ends

there's a little bit of accuracy somewhere in terms of some of the EU leaders pushing ever-closer integration but of course that's been greatly distorted and exagerrated, however things like TTIP did admittedly confuse the simple-minded like Corbyn into having doubts

Then I guess you'd better vote for Labour at the next election and hope that by doing the same thing over and over you'll eventually get a different result.

[Mac76]

Then I guess you'd better vote for Labour at the next election and hope that by doing the same thing over and over you'll eventually get a different result.

well i can only repeat that if the last election had turned out differently then we would be in a very differnt sitauation right now, precisely because it would be a different set of politicians.

it doesn't matter whether you think it's a good or bad idea to leave the EU i was just using it as a very clear example which contradicts your claim which, once you get rid of all your pseudo-well-infomrmed-analysis, is just you saying 'them politicians is just all the bleedin' same'...'

you could point to any number of changes that have happened under particular governments to show that it was those particular governments and politicians that changed things, back to the creation of the NHS and before, it's not The Force or The Man or David Icke or whoever you think it is

[Niall_Quinn]

well i can only repeat that if the last election had turned out differently then we would be in a very differnt sitauation right now, precisely because it would be a different set of politicians.

it doesn't matter whether you think it's a good or bad idea to leave the EU i was just using it as a very clear example which contradicts your claim which, once you get rid of all your pseudo-well-infomrmed-analysis, is just you saying 'them politicians is just all the bleedin' same'...'

you could point to any number of changes that have happened under particular governments to show that it was those particular governments and politicians that changed things, back to the creation of the NHS and before, it's not The Force or The Man or David Icke or whoever you think it is

So you are suggesting it's a conspiracy theory to propose the world is organised and directed in such a way as to serve the interests of the ruling class. And that, in reality, it is we the people who set the agenda and dictate the outcomes? I could equally call you a conspiracy theorist for holding such outlandish views.

[GP]

Lenny = white
Carl = Black

[Letters]

Might pop up to the loft conversion :popcorn:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11438821/how-to-see-starlink-elon-musk-spacex-satelite-uk/


Musk :bow:

[Letters]

Well. That was a waste of time <_<

Couldn’t see nuffink :(

[Letters]

Oil prices in the US go negative for the first time in history :wacko:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52350082

[GP]

Oil prices in the US go negative for the first time in history :wacko:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52350082

Trump :doh:

[Niall_Quinn]

No movement of people. No cars on the road. Reduced agriculture. Yet there's an oil glut being driven by the Ruskies and the ragheads designed to keep supply high when demand is low because shale extraction costs are higher than the stuff under the ground in Russia and the OPEC shithole territories. Economic warfare, which the smaller economies can't win in the long run. Coke adverts and one world harmony doesn't look so great now, does it?

[Letters]

The "One World Together At Home" thing was mostly awful.
Pretty amateurish home performances from a load of people loudly applauded by Dermot O'Leary, Winkleman and...someone as if the louder they applauded the more it would cover up how much what we'd just seen smelled.

[Niall_Quinn]

The "One World Together At Home" thing was mostly awful.
Pretty amateurish home performances from a load of people loudly applauded by Dermot O'Leary, Winkleman and...someone as if the louder they applauded the more it would cover up how much what we'd just seen smelled.

They are realising just how relevant they are in the grand scheme - which is not at all. A childish distraction run by childish minds for childish minds. Naturally I didn't watch a moment of it, because you don't have to. You already know what happened, well in advance of it happening. They are a virus that attacks the brain, and kids are rushing out to get infected. Licking the Hollywood toilet bowl and the cultural titans that control the flush (like Harvey Weinstein).

[Letters]

Warmists :sulk:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52380157

:ninja:

[GP]

I don't believe in the moon, I think it's just the back of the sun.

[Mac76]

my bet's on a giant frisbee

[Globalgunner]

Fact of the matter is we are all on a giant Warner Bros soundstage. None of this is real. Letters is AI, thats for sure.

[Letters]

The original LettersBot code was pretty simple

10 PRINT "Wenger is great"
20 GO TO 10

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52383212

I think I'm on the virus's side tbh. We are terrible.

[Mac76]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52383212

I think I'm on the virus's side tbh. We are terrible.

"The 15-year-old is popular thanks to her dance skills and choreography routines."

yes...

of course...

what other reason could there be...

[Mac76]

this is clever - i love the bit with the hand sanitiser :lol:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1253016359455383552

[Globalgunner]

Brian Dennehy RIP.

Never saw him in a bad role

[Letters]

"The 15-year-old is popular thanks to her dance skills and choreography routines."

yes...

of course...

what other reason could there be...

I bet Cripps follows* her :coffee:


*if that's what one does to someone on TikTok.

[Mac76]

Brian Dennehy RIP.

Never saw him in a bad role

hadn't heard of him tbh but looked like he was regularly working (we'll overlook 2014...)

can't say i've seen much of the things he did except Ratatouille, which was obviously a voicepart - no wonder i didn't recognise him...

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001133/

[Letters]

this is clever - i love the bit with the hand sanitiser :lol:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1253016359455383552

Got a bit bored tbh.
It is good and clever and funny but goes on a bit too long with not enough variety.

[Letters]

Hmm. The good people at GroupOn have deigned to give me a credit for those tickets so I can buy more GroupOn shit.
I guess that means I can buy something nice from them and pretend that I'm getting it for free. <_<

[Mac76]

Got a bit bored tbh.
It is good and clever and funny but goes on a bit too long with not enough variety.

agree it could lose about 45 seconds but still funny

[Niall_Quinn]

Erm... why did the Coronavirus thread get locked?

[Letters]

Erm... why did the Coronavirus thread get locked?

I had enough of your shit tbh.


More seriously...I don't know. Think I've opened it again.

[Niall_Quinn]

Environ-mentalists - behold your green future. And if you won't listen to sane people, then maybe you'll listen to (of all people) Michael Moore. Careful though, interwoven with the main theme is an even more evil agenda that ties right into more immediate events.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE&t=173s

[Niall_Quinn]

Lefties are now campaigning to have Moore's new documentary censored off the Internet. Their liberalism only goes so far I guess.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQxaUVtmUA

[Letters]

Michael Moore is a cat funt.

[Niall_Quinn]

Michael Moore is a cat funt.

I knew that already. Long, long before he became a darling of the left. But the useful idiot tree huggers simply won't listen to sane people because... bought by big oil (the irony). So I thought they might listen to a raving leftie that speaks their fanaticism. But apparently not. The gospel according to Gore is unimpeachable in all instances.

The environ-mentalists won't listen to anyone except themselves. Their belief system doesn't permit it. They have a doom prophecy, like many cults, and they are steadfast in their belief and doubly so against the growing mountain of evidence that comprehensively debunks their prophecies. Which is fine, provided they don't prevail of course. I wouldn't expect a Christian or a Muslim to abandon their faith just because... centuries of carnage. But even religious types can hold their hands up and admit, okay, that bit was a bit bad. Warmists can't even do that, there's no shifting blind belief mechanisms.

Environ-mentalism is a cult and, as with all cults, the cult leaders are deceiving the followers and getting absurdly rich in the process. I think that's a terrible thing, of course, though I have never had much sympathy for cult followers. I, like most rational people, am a genuine environmentalist, concerned about real issues such as pollution from real toxins (rather than life giving atmospheric gasses that have been around for billions of years), and the real world abuse by governments and corporations that work together at the expense of mankind. Abuses these cult leaders profit from.

Remember. Greta wants all fossil fuels banned within the next 5 years and replaced with "green" energy alternatives. In effect she's calling for the extinction of the human species. And world leaders are sitting down with her and pleading, "Tell us Greta, what should we do?"

Bit mad. Isn't it?

[Niall_Quinn]

Kim Jong-Un is either dead or on holiday. If he's dead then that's probably bad because... power vacuum. Apparently this is very bad, for reasons the media never explain. Not sure if they are discussing a geopolitical crisis or a particularly energetic Dyson.

If he's on holiday then stay there and don't come back.

Suggestions are his sick, sadistic sister may take charge. You go girl!

[Niall_Quinn]

Has anyone ever heard of Tara Reade? Or dementia? Or corruption in the Ukraine and nepotism? Or actual racism? Or child abuse? Just wondering.

[GP]

Has anyone ever heard of Tara Reade?

She was in American Pie.

[Niall_Quinn]

She was in American Pie.

Yeah, I think she had a hand in that.

[Niall_Quinn]

Two more "believe the" women (are we still doing that, believing them by default?) have come forward to describe their encounters with Dementia Joe. I guess the mainstream media is too busy with other things to run 24/7 coverage.

[GP]

Isn't it funny how you didn't care when literally dozens of women accused Trump of the same thing.

[Letters]

Isn't it funny how you didn't care when literally dozens of women accused Trump of the same thing.

To be fair that was only Trump's word against...er Trump
#grabembythepussy

[Niall_Quinn]

Isn't it funny how you didn't care when literally dozens of women accused Trump of the same thing.

How do you know I didn't care?

No, my main concern here is that the women should be believed, without evidence. And I'd like to see Biden dragged through the mud on live TV, 24/7 because... the women.

That's how we do it now, isn't it? Or have the rules changed again?

[Globalgunner]

So these women or this woman Tara Reade was ok with him being VP for 8 years and 1 Obama suicide from being president but now 25 years after the event she cant take it anymore. Sounds fishy to me.

[Niall_Quinn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpMnOIsxZPs

[Mac76]

All you need to know about the next USA election

1. Biden is a fairly useless old man

2. The alternative is Trump again

3. Vote Biden

[Niall_Quinn]

All you need to know about the next USA election

1. Biden is a fairly useless old man

2. The alternative is Trump again

3. Vote Biden

So you finally agree - the politicians don't control anything? I mean there's no way they'd ever let a dementia patient who can't even read an autocue actually *be* in power? Right? Yet here he is, running for president. Odd? Suspicious? Like when the Russian army used to roll out presidents on trolleys and move their lower jaw for a badly dubbed effect?

The election part is neither here nor there. Trump has that won already, regardless of what the Soros boys and their media think they can do. ChinaGate has already blown up on the launch pad. Not even trailer park Americans believe that shit any more. and even with all the dead Covid victims voting for Biden (probably several times), he still can't win.

The interesting aspect of this is the blatant manner in which they are running a man suffering from advancing dementia, almost as if they don't care anymore if people know how crooked they are and how much of a sham the whole thing is. If the majority can't twig when it's slapping them in the face then they never will.

[Mac76]

i agree politics and democracy have failed due to humanity's inevitable tendency to let everything turn to shit, but if you can't see the difference between what one set of politicians would do and what another would do yu really aren't paying attention, we've already been through this

[Niall_Quinn]

So these women or this woman Tara Reade was ok with him being VP for 8 years and 1 Obama suicide from being president but now 25 years after the event she cant take it anymore. Sounds fishy to me.

The 1993 Larry King tape has been found which corroborates the claim this assault was reported way back then at the time it happened. So very much the opposite circumstances to Ford's claims, where no evidence emerged at all. I don't really care much, in that respect. More useful is the beacon fire the mainstream media has lit that illuminates their bias in a manner that's incontrovertible. Couple that with the ridiculous fake news they have been pumping out for 3 years solid, but even that's not the main concern. It's expected.

Of utmost importance is that these scum don't get a bailout. They are dying, faster and faster each passing day. It's critical they die and stay dead and don't somehow get resurrected. Hopefully bias of this degree will wake more people to their fake news and in turn deter public money being used to keep this stinking industry alive.

And added bonus is it will cut the legs out from under deeply censored platforms like Twatter, Faceboot and Themtube who have been so busy censoring anything but the mainstream bullshit, they'll have nothing left and thy might die too.

Big opportunity for some real journalists and broadcasters to step up and find new audiences, outside the Silicon Valley controlled propaganda network.

[Globalgunner]

If it not new allegations I'm fine with that. Right now MSM over in the US has completely ignored the issue. They are awful. I posted a comment against the lovely lady Hilary on Yahoo once. It was quickly removed by the obsequecious censors there

[Niall_Quinn]

It was Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept that corroborated in a detailed article that harkens back to the old days of investigative journalism. A left wing publication doing its job, regardless of where the facts lead. No lovers of Trump, for sure. On the front line debunking the ridiculous Russiagate hoax too. Hopefully journals like this will gain traction as the mainstream continues to embarrass itself.

[LDG]

Is Kim dead?

[Niall_Quinn]

Is Kim dead?

He's not answering his phone. Never writes, never calls.

[LDG]

He's not answering his phone. Never writes, never calls.

“Are you sure we can’t tempt you out to play?? We’ve got some fucking mega rockets to show you”

[Letters]

He's only 36. Rumours abound. Seems he's recovering from some surgery. Not very well if he's dead but who knows?
I'm sure at some point we'll find out if the oompa-loompas* start singing


*leave it... :angry:

[GP]

He's only 36.

Get the fuck out of here!

[Niall_Quinn]

“Are you sure we can’t tempt you out to play?? We’ve got some fucking mega rockets to show you”

From what I have read, and I assume most of it is bullshit, either:

1. He's on holiday. His train is parked up at his holiday retreat.
2. He's in a coma (so no change there). He had a heart attack and the surgeons from the health service he paid so much attention to tried to fix him up. But they fucked it and now they've had to put him in an induced coma until the Chinese doctors pitch up.
3. He's done this before, disappearing and not reemerging for weeks.

I've tried to figure out why this might be so important. Apparently it creates a power vacuum and that means World War III. But I can't seem to find any details. The power vacuum by itself seems to be enough.

Whatever is happening, I assume either the great leader will return or some equally obnoxious despot will take power and it's all back to Animal Farm.

[Letters]

Get the fuck out of here!

I know! Born in 1984, which is kinda ironic given his Orwellian tendencies.

[Mac76]

I know! Born in 1984, which is kinda ironic given his Orwellian tendencies.

And in complete contrast to every other N Korean leader of course... :rolleyes:

[GP]

Biden has denied all allegations, so that's the end of that.

[Niall_Quinn]

Biden has denied all allegations, so that's the end of that.

Yeah, but he was molesting a 2 year old while he was making that denial. So it's back on.

[Niall_Quinn]

Now that Strzok is tightly hooked for his corruption, will he save his arse by ratting out Comey? If he does, we already know Comey will do whatever it takes to escape justice.

[Letters]

Musk is properly mental

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52504187

[Niall_Quinn]

Musk is properly mental

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52504187

He knows what money really is so he also knows a 14 bill wipeout is the same things as you or I losing a fiver. Neither here nor there unless we're on the breadline. He's not. Musk has his contracts with the US military so he'll never be short of a bob, neither will his company ever be allowed to fail. Too big.

He's a bit of a wildcard though. I still can't figure out which side he's on.

[Letters]

Kim :bow:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52508437

[LDG]

Kim :bow:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52508437

Yeah!

As his Dad once said.

Fuck you Hans Blix!

[LDG]

You want inspection?

Well inspect that you butt-fucking piece of shit!

[Letters]

He's so ronery :(

[Niall_Quinn]

Yeah!

As his Dad once said.

Fuck you Hans Blix!

He'll have loved the attention. Must have been laughing his nuts off. and now he's back to open a shit processing factory? That can't be accidental either.

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52513103

Wilfred?! :lol:

[Mac76]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52513103

Wilfred?! :lol:

Bit German-sounding for such a xenophobe.... ;)

[Niall_Quinn]

More women coming out to accuse Dementia Joe. This is hilarious.

It doesn't actually matter whether these women are telling the truth or not. It's irrelevant (although if they are lying they should pay a price for that, if the waaaaaahmen thing still allows it). What really matters is mega-turds like Biden energetically created this cesspit while it was playing in their favour. But they didn't stop to think about what blind accusations and media juries actually meant for society. They were tumbling over themselves to capitalise on the political benefits of tearing up every check and balance when the winds were in their favour. Now the winds, as they are want to do, have changed. And Biden is deluged in a shit pile he strained to produce. Every last lump Joe.

That's justice, as it happens. Live by the sword and die by it.

[Niall_Quinn]

#meToo is not available to take your call right now. But please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as the next Republican is accused of sexual misconduct.

[Niall_Quinn]

The drunkard (good for her) Pelosi slurrs.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AeCnf1EgZo

[Globalgunner]

The Democrats are an insidious bunch. They desperate and prepared to do anything to get rid of Trump. Anything except of course put up an inspirational candidate against him. If this pandemic has a human origin. I wouldn't put it past them and their deep state cohorts to organise this. They are well capable.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_6MT_B96qA

[Niall_Quinn]

The Democrats are an insidious bunch. They desperate and prepared to do anything to get rid of Trump. Anything except of course put up an inspirational candidate against him. If this pandemic has a human origin. I wouldn't put it past them and their deep state cohorts to organise this. They are well capable.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_6MT_B96qA

I think we can let that one slip under the radar because... COVID19! Not that it wasn't obvious from day one of that BS Russia hoax.

Last week they tried to get a China collusion hoax launched for round 3 of this nonsense, but even the media wouldn't go with it.

[Niall_Quinn]

WSJ running an ad, posing as a news piece, for the biotech industry.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjSe-0vSRMY

John Hopkins, again. Coincidence. And another coincidence, Tyson Foods and Bill Gates have signed a deal to push this on the public within the next 2 years. Watch out for labelling regulations being modified so they can put this shit in all your food.

"Nutrient dense serum", mentioned in the advert, is a euphemism for animal blood, btw. Not sure if the animal donated or if it came from slaughtered animals in much the same way as all "sustainable" products need (allegedly) unsustainable resources hidden behind the marketing hype to facilitate them.

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52517996

Did the plans include street parties and a national singalong of Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead?

That’s a sort of community spirit I could get on board with.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Bringing in a necromancer to avoid the prospect of Raab fully taking over I'd imagine.

[Letters]

Oh dear God.

Now they're talking about "street parties" on Friday but all in your own front garden.

:ilt:

[Mac76]

I hope it rains

a LOT

[Letters]

:lol: Unfortunately the forecast is looking quite good. We don't really have a front garden, we have a drive. With a car in.
We could sit next to it I suppose on the side with the neighbours we actually ever talk to. Although they know the ones the other side of us so will probably be shouting across us at them.
I suspect if we do go out there it'll all be very awkward.

In other news I fixed my extended desktop. I'm so happy! I've been working at home...what, 7 weeks now? I've lost count. And on the TV I connect to the desktop was going off the screen. I found the setting on the TV now which fixes it. I am very happy about this :patrice:

[Mac76]

:lol: Unfortunately the forecast is looking quite good. We don't really have a front garden, we have a drive. With a car in.
We could sit next to it I suppose on the side with the neighbours we actually ever talk to. Although they know the ones the other side of us so will probably be shouting across us at them.
I suspect if we do go out there it'll all be very awkward.

In other news I fixed my extended desktop. I'm so happy! I've been working at home...what, 7 weeks now? I've lost count. And on the TV I connect to the desktop was going off the screen. I found the setting on the TV now which fixes it. I am very happy about this :patrice:

lucky you - i guess that means you'll now be able to read all NQ's long posts in full :lol:

[Letters]

Oh yes, I hadn't thought of that :(

It means that I can maximise the windows and the edges don't go off the sides. :dance:

[Mac76]

the next thing is to get a second monitor - i first got one for editing photos (so you can have the photo fullscreen on one monitor and the editing dashboard on the other) and found it incredibly useful for everything else too - e.g. you can have your mailbox open in one screen while working on a document in the other or have a doc you're quoting in one screen and your own doc in the other etc etc - there's just no going back once you've done it

[Letters]

When I was doing development work I had 2 monitors. Now I'm using my laptop as one screen and the TV as a second one.
Works pretty well. I'd definitely struggle just losing the laptop screen.

[Mac76]

ah i get it, cool

[Niall_Quinn]

New levels of insanity invade the left.


An anti-Trump Democratic-aligned political action committee advised by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal is planning to deploy an information warfare tool that received initial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s secretive research arm -- transforming technology originally envisioned as a way to fight ISIS propaganda into a campaign platform to benefit Joe Biden.

The Washington Post first reported that the initiative, called Defeat Disinfo, will utilize "artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president’s claims on social media," and then attempt to "intervene" by "identifying the most popular counter-narratives and boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country — in some cases paying users with large followings to take sides against the president."

Social media guru Curtis Hougland is heading up Defeat Disinfo, and he said he received the funding from DARPA when his work was "part of an effort to combat extremism overseas." He explained in an interview with the Post that he was unhappy that top social media accounts often supported Trump, and had effectively defended the president in recent days from claims that he had suggested Americans inject themselves with disinfectant.

The poor guy is unhappy because social media platforms support Trump, and if that's not in a high enough orbit for you, he's pissed because the fake news story about Trump was effectively debunked by the actual video footage on which the fake news was based. If that's his standard definition of bias and disinfo, it's not difficult to imagine what his artificial intelligence (meaning the software, not him) will be used for.

(Wasn't it the lefties moaning about bots supposedly influencing elections? And now they want to use... bots to influence elections?)

So remember, when you are on social media and 25,000 accounts suddenly scream, "That's WACIST! Sleep 5. Load 2. BUT CLIMATE CHANGE! Error. Voting machines cannot be hacked until election day.", that'll be leftie hi-tech in the wild.

[Letters]

Has NQ crashed? :unsure:

[Niall_Quinn]

Has NQ crashed? :unsure:

I'll post something with pictures next time, be patient.

[GP]

Elon Musk named his kid X Æ A-12

Guy's a fucking loon.

[Mac76]

Elon Musk named his kid X Æ A-12

Guy's a fucking loon.

His own name is Elon Musk - what did you expect him to call him, John Smith?

[Letters]

Adele got hot :blink:

https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/06/adele-highlights-weight-loss-stunning-dress-celebrates-32nd-birthday-self-isolation-12660164/

[Niall_Quinn]

That was the last piece in a complex geopolitical puzzle I have been trying to fit together for weeks. Thanks.

[GP]

Adele got hot :blink:

https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/06/adele-highlights-weight-loss-stunning-dress-celebrates-32nd-birthday-self-isolation-12660164/

Well, she got thin...

[Mac76]

Well, she got thin...

:gp:

[Letters]

Well, she got thin...

:lol: Miaow!

[WMUG]

Just found out that sharp knife in Latvian is ass nazis.

So that's fun.

[Letters]

We’re doomed. Doooomed. Dooooooo...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52566030

[Niall_Quinn]

Case against Flynn dropped. Trump calls the Obama administration "human scum" and promises there will be a big price to be paid for their "treason".

No more words Trump. Get it done. You've been arresting that crook Hilary for years but she's still walking around. So no more talk now, action needed.

[Niall_Quinn]

I can smell Comey from here. That's quite a load he just dumped in his pants.

[Letters]

I can smell Comey from here. That's quite a load he just dumped in his pants.

I was going to say “well, that’s old age for you”
Thought you said Coney tbh

[Niall_Quinn]

I was going to say “well, that’s old age for you”
Thought you said Coney tbh

Coney lives. What more proof do you need this is all a giant fraud?

[Letters]

Half hearted street party going on a bit further up the road.
There’s obviously a group of houses who know each other a bit.
No one around us though so will probably leave it.

[Niall_Quinn]

My whole street is decked out in Union flags and bunting. Looks like the whole street will be out.

Except me.

I have work to do and I'm very conscientious about that sort of thing.

[WMUG]

Honestly don't think I could've told you what VE Day was before today.

[Letters]

Honestly don't think I could've told you what VE Day was before today.

Really? :blink:
A well earned: kids :rolleyes:
It helps that I have a mum who is old enough to remember it.
Not many round our way have decorated.
We do one lady up the road so we might go and say hello (probably not).
Had it been a proper street party we’d probably have joined in so we weren’t “those weirdos at number x who never come out of their house”, but as no one near us is doing anything it seems a bit silly sitting outside on our own

[Mac76]

somebody actually played the Last Post on a bugle near me at 11am - it was a bit unexpected but ok

i'm not a big fan of flags and overt nationalism though it's not too bad around here, it is actually nice to hear people talk about their memoreis and so on,

i just really object to the Tories grabbing the opportunity to ignore May Day though, how ironic given it celebrates workers, who even the government are telling us are important

[Letters]

Tbh I have no idea what the holidays in May are actually for

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Sounds like some kind of cruise ship sing off is happening here. Not with me, obviously.

It's what the veterans would have wanted.

[Letters]

Our neighbours have some people round.
*calls police*

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Seems fair. It might be alright by Monday so get the complaints in quickly.

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

It's all just a bit bizarre. At least with the stupid clap my weirdo neighbours were talking to each other across front gardens, but half the street is out, everything adorned in Union flags obviously, Vera Lynn blaring, and they're all just.... standing around.

And they've been there all day.

Freaks.

[Letters]

Seems fair. It might be alright by Monday so get the complaints in quickly.

It’s a set of grandparents. I’m twitching the shit out of the curtains and they seem to be keeping their distance.
Tbh I don’t see anything much wrong with that.
Maybe on Sunday Boris will tell us he doesn’t either.

[Letters]

It's all just a bit bizarre. At least with the stupid clap my weirdo neighbours were talking to each other across front gardens, but half the street is out, everything adorned in Union flags obviously, Vera Lynn blaring, and they're all just.... standing around.

And they've been there all day.

Freaks.

At last curtain twitching they were still all there in their front gardens.
No music.
I heard some rumours of some singalong later which sounds horrific.

[Globalgunner]

somebody actually played the Last Post on a bugle near me at 11am - it was a bit unexpected but ok

i'm not a big fan of flags and overt nationalism though it's not too bad around here, it is actually nice to hear people talk about their memoreis and so on,

i just really object to the Tories grabbing the opportunity to ignore May Day though, how ironic given it celebrates workers, who even the government are telling us are important

If it was celebrating Theresa's birthday. They might give a fk.

[Niall_Quinn]

It's all just a bit bizarre. At least with the stupid clap my weirdo neighbours were talking to each other across front gardens, but half the street is out, everything adorned in Union flags obviously, Vera Lynn blaring, and they're all just.... standing around.

And they've been there all day.

Freaks.

Didn't know we lived in the same street.

[Globalgunner]

Case against Flynn dropped. Trump calls the Obama administration "human scum" and promises there will be a big price to be paid for their "treason".

No more words Trump. Get it done. You've been arresting that crook Hilary for years but she's still walking around. So no more talk now, action needed.

Lets not forget that before the elections Obama reassured the American people that Trump would NEVER be president.

[Niall_Quinn]

I went out for 5 minutes but got collared by a Ned Flanders type who told me in many, many different ways how it could all be much worse.

I think he was still talking when I left.

[Letters]

It was nice to see you <_<

[Mac76]

It was nice to see you <_<

:lol:

I was thinking NQ had simple encountered a mirror... ;)

[Marc Overmars]

My street went all out with the shitty flags, bunting and music. Some freaks even had Union Jack printed outfits on. Then a fair few of them gathered outside along the open space we’ve got that leads up to the canal, which also happens to be my running route. Made a point of steam rolling right through them. :lol:

Then I heard a few of them earlier for the singalong. Sounded more ridiculous than I thought it would be.

[GP]

Jingoistic bullshit

[Letters]

Little Richard :rose:

[LDG]

Little Richard :rose:

Did you die :o

[Letters]

:lol:

No :angry:

Tbh, I didn't know he was still alive.
Well, he isn't. But you know what I mean.

[GP]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-52571038


Reckon Letters will win again

[Mac76]

Little Richard :rose:

RIP

I still have my vinyl copy of 'Little Richard - The Great Ones' i bought when i was 16

Whatever your preferred musical genre/s his songs and persona were truly immense

[Letters]

Katherine Jenkins has a good set of pipes.
She can sing well too.

[Mac76]

Katherine Jenkins has a good set of pipes.
She can sing well too.

:tumbleweed:

:lol:

[Letters]

:lol: I don't think I've seen this before


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6NY4Kl8Ms

[Niall_Quinn]

"I don't believe people can live ethically, trivially."

Damn. The guys sums it up the decline of the west in one phrase.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwFdrGcdMnw

[GP]

Could you confine your crackpots and conspiracy theorys to the Crackpots and Conspiracy Theories thread please?

[Mac76]

Could you confine your crackpots and conspiracy theorys to the Crackpots and Conspiracy Theories thread please?

seconded

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52662171

They could always reduce the pay of the drivers who have spent the last 20 years holding the city to ransom every 5 minutes.

:fingers:

[GP]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52662171

They could always reduce the pay of the drivers who have spent the last 20 years holding the city to ransom every 5 minutes.

:fingers:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohDXxLzuws

[Niall_Quinn]

Could you confine your crackpots and conspiracy theorys to the Crackpots and Conspiracy Theories thread please?

What's up? Was the bad man talking about you? Looking at you?

[Niall_Quinn]

seconded

Boris paid me to post it. It's all part of his secret plan to boost his image by making GP feel self conscious, or even conscious would suffice.

[GP]

What's up? Was the bad man talking about you? Looking at you?

Fuck knows, I'm not watching that shit.

[WMUG]

I've finished uni, potentially permanently.

It's a little while until I'll be able to start work.

The sky is grey.

Nobody can go anywhere.

There's plenty to eat and drink.

There's plenty to watch on telly, do on the internet or both at the same time.

There's plenty of people I can talk to digitally, but doing it in person is a massive effort and is potentially against the regulations. Blessed be the regulations.

Wall-E was ahead of its time.

[Niall_Quinn]

I've finished uni, potentially permanently.

It's a little while until I'll be able to start work.

The sky is grey.

Nobody can go anywhere.

There's plenty to eat and drink.

There's plenty to watch on telly, do on the internet or both at the same time.

There's plenty of people I can talk to digitally, but doing it in person is a massive effort and is potentially against the regulations. Blessed be the regulations.

Wall-E was ahead of its time.

You still have the group clap on Thursday.

[WMUG]

You still have the group clap on Thursday.

Fuckin hell :doh:

[Letters]

Oh sod off! :rolleyes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52690931

[dazthegooner]

Well lets just put it out of it's misery and find out.

[Niall_Quinn]

One giant loony bin.

[GP]

https://twitter.com/SJ_Watson/status/1261948792766640128

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52699104

:doh:

Can everyone just stop being mental for 5 minutes?

[Mac76]

Oh sod off! :rolleyes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52690931

I regard myself as fairly liberal-minded but this whole LBGTQ+ alphabetsoup-blah stuff has gone nuts

[Letters]

Chuckle


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCx7G9wxspk

[Mac76]

some good camera work here - i'm assuming the guy on the yellow bike was not too badly hurt and on that basis... :haha:

https://twitter.com/zouz76320/status/1262314824131842048

[Letters]

Gunnersaurus, you need to up your game...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av3LmldsGyU

[Letters]

Sir Tom

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-52732300

[dazthegooner]

Bet David Beckham will be pissed :pal:

[Niall_Quinn]

The CCP is putting the boot down in Hong Kong. The west won't do a thing about it. Most of the politicians here and in the US are already in the pockets of the corporations that are in bed with the communists. We had to go into Iraq to "liberate" the people? Let's see how well that principle stands up in this case. Yeah, right.

Hopefully Taiwan will stand up and force us to act.

DO NOT BUY CHINESE SHIT. That's the only thing you can do to stand against the shitty CCP regime and the corporations that cosy up to them.

When you are in the stores - ask. Is it from China? If they say yes, hand it back.

[dazthegooner]

What even with free prawn crackers? ;)

[GP]

That's lacist.

[Niall_Quinn]

What even with free prawn crackers? ;)

Well, fair enough, prawn crackers are exempt.

[Niall_Quinn]

That's lacist.

All joking aside, at least half the Chinese population would support an embargo. They want rid of that shitty regime 10x more than we do.

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52798358


Elon Musk and Grimes have changed their baby's name

For a moment I thought that meant they'd changed it to...well, you know, a name. But no. Now it's

X Æ A-Xii

:doh:

[GP]

Musk is a fucking idiot.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Poor kid. School isn't going to be much fun for them, assuming they go there of course.

[Mac76]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52798358



For a moment I thought that meant they'd changed it to...well, you know, a name. But no. Now it's

X Æ A-Xii

:doh:

"The roman symbol for the number 10 is X and the numeral for the number two is ii"

for a moment i thought 'no sh*t sherlock, who do they think we are, kids?'

then i realised the story was from Newsround :lol:

[Letters]

My go to news source :sulk:

John Craven :bow:

[GP]

https://i.redd.it/x44dhjlya2151.jpg

"Celebrity"

[Mac76]

i know 3/20 of those

[GP]

I can do 4.

John Barnes, Judy Murray, Phil Daniels and Matthew Pinsent.

And advances on 4?

[Mac76]

I can do 4.

John Barnes, Judy Murray, Phil Daniels and Matthew Pinsent.

And advances on 4?

those were mine too, with the exception of Phil Daniels - normally i'd be embarrassed at not spotting Phil Daniels but tbf he looks pretty different there, never seen him with glasses before...

and btw without the forenames i might not have got Pincent either, he's looking old these days, must be all those 4am starts ...

[Letters]

Yeah, I got the same 3. I looked up "Bago". I hope "he" dies in an oven.

[Mac76]

'Baga' isn't it? or that's what it sez there

Sam looks quite 'saucy' btw (geddit?)

[Letters]

Ah yes, Baga. "Baga Chipz". Some drag queen :rolleyes:

[GP]

https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/1265347622660739072


100% true

[Niall_Quinn]

Environ-mentalists - behold your green future. And if you won't listen to sane people, then maybe you'll listen to (of all people) Michael Moore. Careful though, interwoven with the main theme is an even more evil agenda that ties right into more immediate events.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE&t=173s

Lefties censoring lefties. "An Inconvenient Truth?"

LOL.

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52815624

Calls on Jimmy Fallon to resign for black face sketch he was in.

TWENTY YEARS AGO

:haha:

Yes, that is definitely the most important thing going on in the world right now

:doh:

[dazthegooner]

Just read it and he done a impression of Chris Rock... I think that if there had been a problem with this 20 years ago Chris Rock would have had something to say about it as he isn't quiet when it comes to black issues.

[Letters]

It was 20 years ago and it was BROADCAST ON TV. If there had been any outrage it should have been at the time.
Are we going to reassess every past TV show and retrospectively hammer anyone involved for it not being thought appropriate by today's standards?
Had he done it last week then yeah, I think a lot of people would be thinking "well that was ill-judged".
But he didn't. So STFU, morans.

[Letters]

Also, Trump :haha:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52815552

No, Donald, they're not stifling free speech. Your Tweet wasn't removed. It's just that Twitter thought to warn people that you were probably talking bullshit.
As someone who rails against "fake news" that's a good thing, isn't it? :)

[Niall_Quinn]

Leftie loons eating leftie loons. It's all good.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Bad weather stops the SpaceX launch. :lol:

[Letters]

Bad weather stops the SpaceX launch. :lol:

Ah. I did briefly go upstairs to see if I could see it - apparently visible from here.
That explains why I didn't!

[Globalgunner]

Trump just signed an executive order that stops social media from editing or banning lawful speech. I'm no Trump fan but I am all for this. Social media is now being weaponized. Just watch and hear Democrats wailing about how free speech impairs human rights. No irony liberals.

[Letters]

He had a hissy fit because he said something that wasn't true and Twitter flagged it as such. What he said wasn't removed or edited.
This is a tricky area. If someone spouts bullshit then they should be called out on that, especially if that someone is, say, the president of a very powerful country whose tweets can have consequences. The tricky bit is who is the arbiter of truth.

[GP]

I am

[Globalgunner]

He had a hissy fit because he said something that wasn't true and Twitter flagged it as such. What he said wasn't removed or edited.
This is a tricky area. If someone spouts bullshit then they should be called out on that, especially if that someone is, say, the president of a very powerful country whose tweets can have consequences. The tricky bit is who is the arbiter of truth.

If you want to fact check someone with real facts. Don't use CNN or the Washington post as your references then. The difference with Trumps hissy fit as you call it is that he can and has done something about it. Good on him in this instance. I've made several posts criticising Democrats that were removed for no reason. That will now stop.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Trump should fuck off.

[Globalgunner]

4 more years. You know its true. If the Dems really wanted to unseat him. They wouldnt have put up a demented, serial liar and a man who cant remember not to put his fut in his mouth every time a microphone is in front of him. This Corona pandemic is their hail mary strategy. Its unsafe to queue up and vote so lets all just send it in by post. They have form when it comes to cheating by vote. Just ask Bernie

[GP]

Yes, out of Biden and Trump, it's Joe who's the demented, serial liar.

Good one.

[Letters]

The difference with Trumps hissy fit as you call it is that he can and has done something about it. Good on him in this instance.
Yes, he's done something about it, because he has the power to. But what is the "it" and is what he's done an abuse of his power?
He Tweeted something that wasn't factually accurate. Twitter didn't edit or delete the Tweet, they simply flagged it with something to direct people to an article which gave the facts. Where's the issue? Trump got to say his piece but people were also directed to something which gave the facts.
One of my issues with Trump is that he wants to be able to say and do whatever he wants without consequence or scrutiny.
That is never OK for the leader of a country, it's particularly not OK for a serial liar like Trump.

Trump actively tries to undermine the press - those who try to hold him to account are "fake news". Now he's trying to stop people like Twitter from scrutinising him. You could argue it's not their job to but someone has to. If he Tweets that people should definitely drink bleach to cure Covid-19 (I know he hasn't, but let's say) then should they just publish that with no warning? You'd like to think that people could work out that it's bad advice but people are pretty stupid.
Trump comes across as a tinpot dictator - ignore the press, you get your news from ME.

The things leaders say and do should be held up to scrutiny. Trump tries to prevent that. It's dangerous.


I've made several posts criticising Democrats that were removed for no reason. That will now stop.

I don't believe you. There was obviously a reason - and I don't think the reason was "the man" crushing your opinion. What did you Tweet?

[Globalgunner]

i wont get into a back and forth with you Its a waste of time. If you have an issue with his executive order. You can mount a legal challenge to it
or watch and pontificate on here like you always do

[Globalgunner]

Yes, out of Biden and Trump, it's Joe who's the demented, serial liar.

Good one.

You obviously are unaware of Bidens track record of Lying and plagiarism. He was forced to drop out of a presidential elcection because of it. You should try and vet your heroes a bit better

[Mac76]

You obviously are unaware of Bidens track record of Lying and plagiarism. He was forced to drop out of a presidential elcection because of it. You should try and vet your heroes a bit better

yes, whatever, but i think his point is that the other guy is Trump - i.e. everything that's bad about Biden x100

[Letters]

Trump only won the last one because the "other guy" was Hillary Clinton. Even then she won the popular vote.
If the Dems put up anyone half decent they will wipe the floor with him, but I fear they won't :(

[Mac76]

Sure i wasn't suggesting Biden will beat Trump - i think he's a terrible candidate

But if ever there's a time you could just put up a cardboard cutout and hope to win...

[GP]

You obviously are unaware of Bidens track record of Lying and plagiarism. He was forced to drop out of a presidential elcection because of it. You should try and vet your heroes a bit better

Again, compared to Trump...

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Trump has had one of his posts hidden by Twitter at ease of reference. :lol:

I think it was the "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" part of it that did it.

[Niall_Quinn]

He had a hissy fit because he said something that wasn't true and Twitter flagged it as such. What he said wasn't removed or edited.
This is a tricky area. If someone spouts bullshit then they should be called out on that, especially if that someone is, say, the president of a very powerful country whose tweets can have consequences. The tricky bit is who is the arbiter of truth.

Wasn't true? WTF?

There are already allegations of fraud being investigated. On both sides. Even the ACLU is moaning about it, and usually they are all for fraud and tampering. There's no tricky area here, and how you can reach such a conclusion is astonishing. Trump expressed the opinion postal voting would to lead to fraud. Twitter (and Dorsey has now admitted he was wrong) "fact checked" an opinion about a future outcome by referring its users to two demonstrably and openly biased organisations that made false statements, arguing that postal voting fraud is not an issue. This at a time when major allegations of postal voting fraud are being discussed in the same mainstream media.

Literally everything Twitter did here was a total fuck-up. They couldn't have got this more wrong.

Yet your conclusion is Trump said something wrong and this is a "tricky area"?

It beggars belief how far some people will go to discredit one man just for the sake of it and in absolute defiance of the facts.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.

And the arbiter of truth, by the way, is truth. Politically biased organisations "fact checking" opinion has nothing to do with truth.

[Niall_Quinn]

Trump just signed an executive order that stops social media from editing or banning lawful speech. I'm no Trump fan but I am all for this. Social media is now being weaponized. Just watch and hear Democrats wailing about how free speech impairs human rights. No irony liberals.

It won't help with all the bullshit shadow banning and other politically motivated manipulations levied against a subset of users the owners and operators of these platforms don't like.

[Globalgunner]

This is classical trump Derangement Syndrome.....Everything Trump is bad. everything was hunky dory until Trump came along. the Democrats always pick the worst possible candidate and expect people to fall in line...cos Trump. trump is the creation of the Dems decades of lying mendacity pretending to be the peoples champions while participating wholescale in the routine raping and pillaging of economies, foreign and domestic. Hillary was a terrible candidate and they scoured the nether regions of their stash of awful candidates and found another just as bad.

Biden. Copied a Neil Kinnock speech word for word and claimed it as his own
Biden. Claimed he graduated "top of his class" when he actually came 175th out of 185
Biden. Claimed he went to South Africa and was arrested protesting for Mandela`s freedom. Not found in any public records
Biden. Used his VP office to make cash grabs for his son and get a prosecutor fired.

and Letters. pls stop showing your ignorance by claiming Hillary won the public vote. Its nonsense because that is not the game at all. You can win the vote and lose the election. Thats what the system is. Same as first past the post in UK. How many popular votes have Tories lost and still occupy the PM slot

[Niall_Quinn]

4 more years. You know its true. If the Dems really wanted to unseat him. They wouldnt have put up a demented, serial liar and a man who cant remember not to put his fut in his mouth every time a microphone is in front of him. This Corona pandemic is their hail mary strategy. Its unsafe to queue up and vote so lets all just send it in by post. They have form when it comes to cheating by vote. Just ask Bernie

Absolutely. Now the borders are closed and they can't import their votes, so the whole Dem strategy relies on postal fraud. That's what led to them stepping on Trump's landmine.