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Anyone who calls America imperialists but doesn’t say the same about China doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

Yes, some estimates put it closer to 55 million. But still, anything the Han Chinese do is an “internal matter”. Move along Tibet, nothing to see here.

Yeah cause it’s not like China is itself a massive empire of Han dominance over other literally tens of other ethnic minority groups concentrated in certain parts of its massive territory that has, throughout its Communist history and even well before it, sought to impose the values of one people on the rest.

Any arrivals from Afghanistan, including U.K. citizens, will be required to enter one of the quarantine hotels after they clear border control at the airport because it’s a red list country for Covid purposes, unless they are on the list of exemptions. I don’t think many will be exempt from the requirement but some groups will be exempt from the charges.

A few weeks ago dad had a funny turn and woke up saying he couldn’t see. Cue a trip to the Beatson and they put him on some steroids and pause his chemo. Steroids did the world of good getting his symptoms back under control. Actually put him in a better place outwardly than he’d been when he was down here with mum a couple of months back. The kick in the stones though is that they did a follow up scan and his tumour isn’t just resisting the chemo; it’s now spread to the right side of his brain, including the area responsible for vision (explaining his sight and reading issues). They’ve permanently discontinued the chemo and we are now into end of life chat and overtly palliative care. We’ve been lucky in some senses: he’s still physically quite fit and he’s now gone beyond the 18 months they gave him last March, but it’s only going to get harder from here on in. They’ve *finally* started getting community nurse support coming in to help mum with him which seemed to take forever. All just a bit shit really, but nothing we didn’t expect.

That’s grim, Jimi. These setbacks are always hard. I hope the treatment does some good and that it doesn’t take too much out of you.

f**k me, I've typed up a fire risk assessment, had a brew, face fitted three staff and driven an hour home in the time it took you to produce that irrelevant drivel. Well done. “I typed up a fire risk assessment”

I think (though I could be wrong about this) that the government introduced certain exemptions from the charge after it was legally challenged by others a few months back. I suspect refugees will be more likely to qualify than others.

(a) America is currently a superpower. (b) America still relies on drafting in civilian transport to execute key military operations. (c) reliance on civilian transport to support key military operations is not a key indicator of superpower status. (d) it therefore does not follow, as a matter of basic logic, that the UK's reliance on civilian boats in 1982 is in any meaningful sense indicative of its status in the world at that time, or now (e) even if one can perfectly reasonably argue, for other reasons, that the UK was no longer a superpower, or is not now. If the goalposts have been shifted, it's because you left them unassembled in the stand, and Left Back has, very politely, assembled them and placed them on the goal line. You are standing five yards out in the penalty box crying foul after kicking the ball into your own face, off the post and wide, despite everyone holding up big signs at an empty goal with no goalkeeper, saying "shoot here".

We go live to WhiteRoseKillie, Summa Cum Laude from the University of Life in the Class of Nineteen Canteen.

WhiteRoseKillie has always been a complete and utter "yer da" on this forum. I'm just surprised it took him this long to get found out this time round.

I’d have gone with “you’re all at sea here, just like the Belgrano” but this works too.

It's much much much better to have dull presidents.

f**k off, grasshopper.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/7590168/man-charged-hate-crime-arbroath-partick-thistle/

Your patter is so fucking honking.

Simon Jenkin has never been right about anything in his life.

Only the post bomb footage though.

Your patter is fucking rotten and that's coming from me.

Yes, but Sneddon is already proven to be complete and utter garbage. Stone is merely in the process of proving the same.

Excellent content. Would up vote again.

One can know better than someone but lack the means to displace or replace them. For example, both you and I know better than Jeff Bezos about what it is ethical and acceptable for Amazon pay their workers. We know this because he imposes work conditions that mean they often are not paid the minimum wage. You and I (I presume) both think that paying the minimum wage is an absolute bare minimum requirement to be a morally acceptable employer. But neither of us have the power, influence or money to (a) confiscate Amazon from Jeff Bezos (b) force him to pay his workers properly or (c) to ensure his workers are otherwise given fair income for the work they do. So Jeff Bezos continues to exploit those people until an entity sufficiently powerful imposes the letter and spirit of the minimum wage properly on his company. The same is true in international relations. We know better than the Taliban about the absolute baseline for how women and girls should be treated in the 20th, let alone the 21st, century. We also know better than the Saudi state. But we know there is no viable route involving military means that would achieve those goals with the Saudis, so we don't gratuitously invade them. By contrast, we know that we were big enough and strong enough to displace and replace the Taliban in large parts of Afghanistan. And once we did so, we assumed the moral obligations for ensuring that those who had been freed from Taliban oppression retained the most basic of human rights. The mere fact that they physically could not defend themselves against the Taliban does not mean that they accept or are content to live under their diktats.

At absolutely no point have I said that you can “go from A - Z immediately without milestones”. My point was exactly Savage Henry’s: that the viability of soft power measures sometimes depends, as an unavoidable prerequisite, on the new or continued presence of external military forces. Nothing he has said there contradicts what I have said. If a Muslim man thinks that what is best for his 14 year old daughter is that he as her father gets to decide who and when she marries, that her husband is allowed to force her to have sex without his consent, that she is not allowed to be in a public place without her male chaperone on threat of being whipped, and that she is not allowed to go to school, then yes I know better than him what is good for Muslims.

You are though.