leicsmac

Good to see Scotland having their one good game of the year again.

Over the finish line, but not really inspiring confidence.

Which Rubio et al are entirely happy to apparently ignore. Still, if folks like him didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all.

Keeping the run rate down by taking regular wickets. We'll only know when the run chase starts, though.

Agreed. Those most vulnerable in terms of cost during such transitions have to be looked after, the same way those in zones vulnerable to flooding etc need to be too. That doesn't mean, however, that such transitions cannot or should not happen.

A suite of approaches is clearly needed from the UK because, as you say, they can only do so much. Switching to renewables where possible, looking at fission units, and beefing up both flood defences and crop robustness in the face of increased flooding and drought events. But yes, chief among that suite of solutions has to be, along with other "second-tier" powers as a bloc, is walking the walk and talking the talk internationally so that at least some of the "first-tier" powers will (eventually) follow. China are making steps. The US and India, sadly less so.

Oh yes, I've heard planning disputes over just a few centimetres of land behind utterly brutal. At an individual level, I understand the need for personal property and the need to delineate between areas of said personal property. What I don't understand, or accept, is the way that people like Rubio apply that idea at a national level to simply further their own self interest and that of their immediate "tribe" at the direct expense of other human beings who have done nothing to deserve the suffering inflicted upon them. And the main reason I don't accept it is because as much as those people go on about "Western civilisation" (as if that's the only one that matters), the way they do things will, at some point soon, bring down all civilisations - including the one they supposedly value above all others.

On that general topic, it truly baffles me how he can spout blatant BS about forward looking countries not switching away from oil reliance with a straight face. Using fossil fuels for energy generation is Paleolithic, Marco. Come out of the cave and put the club away. Boris, for all his faults as a PM, at least understood that very well.

Rubio playing the "good cop" but still using an amazing amount of logical fallacies, chief among them Appeal to Nature. Borders are "human nature", Marco? You know what else is "natural"? Arsenic, botulinium toxin and extinction. Perhaps, as such, we should look to move beyond such ideas that solely appeal to "nature" before they screw us all?

AI is a potential threat to human civilisation, I'm not sure how it can be seen that it isn't. But it is one of many, and may be a contributor to other threats as well as one in its own right. A balanced approach is needed.

Excellent. Good to get on the medal table with not only the gold but a dominant performance to get it.

That's about the size of it, yes. But there's still a way through, if enough people have the power and will, and luck, to find it.

Another reason I was careful with my language too, yes. For what it's worth I think criminal acts are criminal acts and need to be addressed accordingly, I just find it interesting that in some cases the actions of these groups are considered to exist in some kind of geopolitical and environmental vacuum where their actions are hugely noteworthy and the issue itself is not. The same thing was true of Extinction Rebellion.

Reminder: Nixon didn't do time, but his Attorney General did.

And it's one of those situations where England are favourites for both but could also easily lose both.

I know that now that you've actually deigned to communicate it, yes. But pardon me for highlighting the obvious and rather stark moral inconsistency at howling at a group engaged in some criminal activity in the UK and apparent apathy for the issue that they highlight and the people suffering because of it, which is the aforementioned death of at least 50000 innocent people with the counter ticking up every day.

Leaders like Merz, Carney, Albanese and Frederiksen are exactly what is needed in many more places right now. It is true; the current geopolitical game is changing. But leaders like that are necessary to highlight the unity that is needed worldwide now more than ever - even if the US and Russia appear to cling to the destructive old ideas of nationalism and do their best to drag as many other places along with them.

It's true, the death of roughly 50,000 innocent people (citable figure only, actual figure could be rather higher) in a zone a quarter the size of London over the course of a little more than two years, in response to a terrible act that cost roughly thirty times less lives than that, does rather rob one of their tongue. Edit: not entirely sure why mass death is particularly funny, but humour is, after all, very subjective.

That's a fair defence of the man tbh. A man perhaps stuck in a situation where all the choices were bad ones, then.

Fair to say. He got dealt an awful hand to play, but history also shows that he played it awfully as well.

Or Eden, or Chamberlain, or...

Fairly so. But then take at least some comfort in the fact that tribalism and division based upon it is incompatible with the future. So, one way or another, these dark times will end, no matter how much some members of our species wish to pursue the idea of demographic superiority. Either they lose, or everyone loses, including them.

Hopefully by the time the challenges are finished, Trump and his destructive ideology will be much less of a factor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjw0kpd89o Areas across the UK from Cornwall to County Down have seen their wettest January on record continue with heavy rain in February. The deluge the country has been experiencing in the last week has been put down to a blocked weather pattern - a high pressure system over Scandinavia is preventing the wet weather from moving away. The Met Office estimates that at current levels of global warming, wet winters like 2023/24 have gone from being once in 80-year events to once in 20 - and with further warming this could become even more frequent. This could have significant impacts for housing, transport and food supply. One farmer in Somerset told the BBC that he was living on a "knife edge" as his crops were days away from rotting in the floodwater. Welcome to the future, everyone. Arriving ahead of schedule.

It's a problem that stretches much further than immigration policy, but seeing as that's the talking point... I guess the answer to the above comes down to how much value one places on "victims" of any stripe, whether based on number or "tribe". Because the consequences of a lack of empathy for those in need across the world, suffering and dying as we communicate here with the privilege of treating that as a purely theoretical matter, far far outweigh the consequences outlined above in terms of number. Of course, the classic counterargument is that "isn't our problem" and "we can't help everyone", but that automatically places a higher value on one human demographic over another. How comfortable a person is with that idea is clearly up to them.