Sampson

Diamond Lights is a genuinely good song. If it were by Tears for Fears or Depeche Mode instead of Hoddle and Waddle it would be an 80s new wave classic rather than a bit of a punchline to a joke.

Tbf the expanded Fosse Park is genuinely well done. One of the best things that's been done in Leicestershire the past decade.

It essentially doubles the city's population overnightvand makes Leicester supposedly bigger than Sheffield or Bristol(?) Is there a date on it yet. Bbc article talks about new Council elections in March 2027 due to tye changes but doesn't say when the city officially changes its borders.

I know some people don't like the data concerns withage verification but I think it's a really good thing that the past couple of years, governments are waking up to social media addiction in the same way they do about alcohol, drugs or gambling addiction- and I'd argue social media addiction has become far more dangerous to society than all those 3 put together (but thats just a poorly researched opinion off the top of my head and not a hill I care about dying on). Personally, if I was in government, I'd ban autoplay features and infinite scrolling and regulate algorithms (though im not sure how practical that last one is in practice) and go with the more discouraging advertisements similar to those that massively helped reduce smoking over a generation in the 00s and 10s. Like, after every 5th post in your twitter or Facebook or reddit feed or after every 5th tiktok clip and 3rd advert on YouTube being like those anti-smoking adverts on packaging but things like "social media addiction is bad for your mental health and social experience - here are things you can do instead... " "remember that many of those people who's opinions you are reading are either not human nor not who they say they are, even on the smallest of groups and pages - many are from countries who wish to do Britain harm" etc. Almost like the walls have ears posters in ww2.

Hyperion was fantastic. Hadn't realised Hyperion and tge Fall of Hyperion were originally meant to be one book, so hadn't expect the tongue-in-cheek non-ending, but made me want to start reading Fall of Hyperion straight away.

Yeah. It's the Charlie Kirk thing over again - the ever freedom-defending right are showing themselves to be the real snowflakes - I'm not going to say anything personally about Widdecombe, but people in a free country like ours should be allowed to ay un-nice things about politicians who they feel have caused suffering to people whether they just died or not. You can't call people snowflakes one moment and then go on defensive rants when someone says un-nice things about a right wing politician, you really do yourselves no favours at all.

I was thinking the same thing. The keeper just catches it after his own player hit it. Surely should've been a pass back?

The Office was definitely a good show. I never rated it as much as some of its contemporaries like Alan Partridge, Father Ted, Monkey Dust or Brass Eye and I think it gets a lot of historical praise for popularising cringe comedy when in reality Partridge had already done that a few years earlier and The DayToday and Brass Eye had already done the satire of television genres a few years earlier too. I think I also slightly prefer the US version. But i still rare tge uk version as a good show.

For me, the one thing that helps me sleep is listening to audio books of books I've already read and enjoy.

The guy playing Binface must be having the time of his life right now.

Definitely. One candidate who thinks he's from Sigma IX vs one candidate who thinks he's from America.

Argentina really haven't convinced me against Cape Verde or Egypt. I'm really not convinced that they'll beat Switzerland.

What a complete and utter waste of everyone's time and tax payers money.

Haha, the tune was actually a slight variation on "Skip to my lou, my darling".

We learnt a song of all the Kings and Queens from 1066 onwards in primary school, I still remember it to this day: Will, Will, Harry, Stee. Harry, Dick, John, Harry three. One two three Neds, Richard two, Henrys four, five, six, then who? Edwards four, five, Dick the bad, Henrys twain and Ned the Lad Mary, Bessie, James the vain, Then Charlie, Charlie, James again. William and Mary, Anna Gloria, Four Georges, William and Victoria, Edward, George then Edward eight, Married and had to abdicate. Then came George the sixth's reign, And now we have Queen Bess again. And after that, if all goes right, King Charles will reign with all his might.

Oh yes, don't get me wrong, it was not saying people from other countries are any different, it was just in response to bovril's post - saying you can't expect us to care about other countries halfway across the globe when so many don't even know about the more recent (post-ww1) divide with our closest geographical and closest cultural neighbours, part of which is still even part of Britain. I think most people in most countries just don't really care that much about history if we're honest.

Very few Brits even know or care about the foundation of Ireland or Northern Ireland, I don't know why you'd expect them to care about America. Most people don't care about any history than WW2.

I've never read any their books but I think that's a common opinion about both George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, once they got popular and made their money they seem to have disappeared and can't be arsed to finish their series anymore. I do get that if you have a lengthy popular book series that people love, it must be quite difficult to finish as you're always going to disappoint some fans, and there's very few endings that havent been done and arent going to be called a derivative of something else at this point. But there's definitely a point where it feels like they've just taken the piss and run off and taken the money,

He's put forward plenty of ideas though, it's more about how they'll be financed. It all comes back to what many of us said before the election and also as to why changing the leader is going to actually be hard to change this - I think saying we'll do all this house building and re-industrialisation while saying you won't raise income tax just feels a bit non-credible. Morgan McSweeney's overly defensive election strategy was just always going to fail, I remember many of us discussing as much here in the lead up to the election. After 14 years of cuts and decline, I think the country was more than prepared to pay higher taxes to get some investment into infrastructure, rejuvenation of public services and town centres and house building, and promising to not raise income tax over 5 years in this day and age is silly enough even without that. They would've got enough votes for a majority regadless, why they had to come out with this stuff and limit the levers they could pull and back themselves into a corner I didn't understand in the run up to the election and still don't. I voted LibDem not Labour last election, but I genuinely want him to succeed and hope he succeeds.

Even if they close them down, they'll just become another business, it was car washes and 2nd hand cd stores in the past. Neither the council nor police have many powers to get involved in people's economic business, so you can't block all these fake shops coming up so will never be sorted - but that's what right-wing economics is all about - small state, low taxes, limited beurocracy, limited power to interfere in the way people make their living. You're never going to change this when people have spent the past 47 years voting for neoliberalism and shout "you will hurt growth and take away our freedoms" anytime government regulation of economic activity is suggested - that's not necessarily wrong, but these are the inherent downsides that you have to live with in free market capitalism, if you think that's a fair trade off fair enough, Britain high streets are seen as an easy touch because our high streets and job market is so much less regulated than our more social democratic European neighbours, and tge French have been for years making the argument that if we want to stop the pull factor of people crossing the channel then we need to be more in line with the rest of Europe as its so much easier in the uk for people without permission to work here to disappear in and so much easier to wash money through, because the job and business markets are so less regulated. It's nothing new that right wing economic policy and right wing social policy are at odds with each other though. If you want to stop this kind of thing, you ultimately have to vote for more socialist governments who would make the economy more regulated and increase checks and beaurocracy on our high street stores, but the UK for better or worse is still too bedded to arguments of Thatcherism which are inherently against that stuff that we don't consider the trade offs worth it.

That's what he did do, if you read his post again. I'm not a religious person either, but I've got a lot of time for the current Pope, loved his recent stuff on AI taking away our humanity.

I think the current Pope is one of the most tolarenr and progressive political leaders and best political speakers about these days, and hed probably be the first to agree with you that religion is so often used to sow division. I'm not going to blame him for crusades from 800 years ago.

Traitor's Blade was good fun. Great banter and good swashbuckling adventure 3 musketeers type story. Happy to read the other 3 books in the series at some point. Going back to doing another series now though, so starting the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons tomorrow. I know there's a couple of fans on here, so looking forward to it.

Sure, but if someone has been a convicted criminal or refused assylum in France, Czechia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Denmark or wherever then as soon as they tried to apply in another European country even with a different name then as soon as they get their fingerprints taken as part of the application process their criminal record or refused application throught Europe will show up straight away. Since Brexit, that is no longer the case in the UK. To use a Farage-ism - it's just common sense politics that Brexit has increased the pull factor towards the UK for these kind of applicants who are trying to hide criminal records or have been refused asylum elsewhere in Europe.

It's much more simple than that - and already explains it in the article - now that we're no longer part of the EU we don't have have access to French immigration or criminal records so we were unable to know what this guy had been convicted of in France nor his fingerprint or biometric records so had no way of knowing of his real identity, We're weak on people smuggling of people coming into Europe, because its a shared European problem and we have decided to isolate ourselves from that and remove ourselves from shared European systems.