General News Thread

[Md9]

And for 1 million Dollars you can get a gold card to work in America , probably last 2 months before ice pulls up to your house and takes you away again 

 

and how can that moron sit and talk about people having a low I.Q does he not hear himself speak 😂 

Enough internet for me tonight its all a like of shite 

[Lionator]

23 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

To be fair, whoever gets the Donbass gets a bombed out strip of land that's good for nothing until a few billion is spent on it. Kind of a white elephant.

Yup, two bald men fighting over a comb. Everyone involved in this conflict is an idiot. 

[Salisbury Fox]

6 hours ago, Lionator said:

Yup, two bald men fighting over a comb. Everyone involved in this conflict is an idiot. 

You’re right, how dare Ukraine think it has the right to defend itself. 

[leicsmac]

Good to see the US proving its moral calibre to be different from places like Russia and China again. 

 

... right?

[Trav Le Bleu]

17 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Good to see the US proving its moral calibre to be different from places like Russia and China again. 

 

... right?

Anyone who slightly thinks communism might be ok is evil - Joseph McCarthy c. 1950

[bovril]

Anti imperialist, anti war Trump once again distinguishing himself from the neoliberal establishment

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Anyone who slightly thinks communism might be ok is evil - Joseph McCarthy c. 1950

The added twist here being that Trump is in hock to Putin who some people think is a Communist, but clearly isn't because otherwise why would he be nice to him?

[CornwallFox]

49 minutes ago, bovril said:

Anti imperialist, anti war Trump once again distinguishing himself from the neoliberal establishment

Yeah but if Ukraine relents and plays ball it will offset the coming -1 of Venezuela in the wars stopped space

[Trav Le Bleu]

50 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

The added twist here being that Trump is in hock to Putin who some people think is a Communist, but clearly isn't because otherwise why would he be nice to him?

Russia, and indeed the USSR, haven't been Communist since the 1930s.

[Sampson]

6 hours ago, Salisbury Fox said:

You’re right, how dare Ukraine think it has the right to defend itself. 

Yeah fr. Imagine if France invaded and bombed out south west England and everyone living there fled to the midlands and the north and you said “oh Bristol is just a bombed out shell nowadays, we should just give it up it’s like we’re like a bald man fighting over a comb.

 

But Bristol is where people grew up and lived their whole lives, they feel memories of Clifton deep in their core; it’s where their parents and grandparents are buried as well as all the memories they had with them etc.

 

I grew up in Leicestershire and also lived in Portsmouth for many many years, if either Leicester or Portsmouth got invaded, it wouldn’t just feel like “oh it doesn’t matter, it’s just a city; and I can go and move to Newcastle and start a new life there as that’ll still be British territory. Places where people spend years with their loved ones are important to people, trying to bat that off as Ukrainians fighting over a comb feels like a very sad and unempathetic way to view humans and humanity. It’s not a game of Risk where people are just fighting over dots on a map for the people living there, people are fighting over their identity and memories of loved ones. 

Edited 11 December 2025 by Sampson

[leicsmac]

41 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Russia, and indeed the USSR, haven't been Communist since the 1930s.

It is an unfortunate fact that far too many people haven't pulled their heads out of that or the 1950s timeframe.

[st albans fox]

Is trump trying to start a war with Venezuela so he can agree a ceasefire and claim another conflict sorted ………..

[Sampson]

10 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

It is an unfortunate fact that far too many people haven't pulled their heads out of that or the 1950s timeframe.

I mean, it was a pretty much solely state distributed economy where the factories, farms and mines were collectively owned and the goods made by them were distributed by the state rather than individuals or corporations with money used essentially only as tokens, that sounds like a pure socialist economy to me.
 

The USSR wasn’t like modern Russia where it’s lots of partially-state owned corporations competing with each other in the market owned by oligarchs or whatever. Nor modern China which hasn’t been communist since the 90s.

 

Feels a bit “real Brexit has never been tried” when people say this. 
 

That being said talking about socialist and communist economies is a bit redundant in modern post-industrialised service and data driven economies of 2025. Debates about who should own the factories, farms and mines and the resources made by them are kind of irrelevant when most people work in service or distribution. 

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Is trump trying to start a war with Venezuela so he can agree a ceasefire and claim another conflict sorted ………..

I think it's also to do with the current approval rating. 

[Zear0]

6 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I think it's also to do with the current approval rating. 

Think you'll find he has the highest approval rating of any human in any job in the history of the universe. 

[skolfoxes]

My suspicion is that he is going to try and use something like this as a way to defer the midterms, this seems too far out for that though.

 

As it relates to Venezuela, I think it's more likely that they want to install a friendly regime in order to gain access to their resources.

[bovril]

A lot of people on the British left have obviously never forgiven Eastern Europeans for breaking free from communism which is why they like to portray their countries as corrupt shitholes that deserve to be ruled by Russia. 

[Sampson]

BBC is definitely starting to change its wording to become softer towards China and less soft towards the US now. Don’t know if it’s an editorial decision or just a subconscious one as the British public’s views on both countries are changing but there’s no way you’d have seen the main headline of this story being “US seizes oil tanker off Venezuela as Caracas condemns 'act of piracy' “. That act of piracy quote would’ve been buried at the bottom of the article 18 months ago, not as a way to frame the headline.

Edited 11 December 2025 by Sampson

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, Sampson said:

I mean, it was a pretty much solely state distributed economy where the factories, farms and mines were collectively owned and the goods made by them were distributed by the state rather than individuals or corporations with money used essentially only as tokens, that sounds like a pure socialist economy to me.
 

The USSR wasn’t like modern Russia where it’s lots of partially-state owned corporations competing with each other in the market owned by oligarchs or whatever. Nor modern China which hasn’t been communist since the 90s.

 

Feels a bit “real Brexit has never been tried” when people say this. 
 

That being said talking about socialist and communist economies is a bit redundant in modern post-industrialised service and data driven economies of 2025. Debates about who should own the factories, farms and mines and the resources made by them are kind of irrelevant when most people work in service or distribution. 

 

8 minutes ago, bovril said:

A lot of people on the British left have obviously never forgiven Eastern Europeans for breaking free from communism which is why they like to portray their countries as corrupt shitholes that deserve to be ruled by Russia. 

The whole mentality belongs back in the 20th century, and that's being generous. 

 

Mind you, has there ever been a time when there hasn't been a lot of people with massive nostalgia filter affecting the way things are done in the present?

[CornwallFox]

2 hours ago, Sampson said:

Yeah fr. Imagine if France invaded and bombed out south west England and everyone living there fled to the midlands and the north and you said “oh Bristol is just a bombed out shell nowadays, we should just give it up it’s like we’re like a bald man fighting over a comb.

 

But Bristol is where people grew up and lived their whole lives, they feel memories of Clifton deep in their core; it’s where their parents and grandparents are buried as well as all the memories they had with them etc.

 

I grew up in Leicestershire and also lived in Portsmouth for many many years, if either Leicester or Portsmouth got invaded, it wouldn’t just feel like “oh it doesn’t matter, it’s just a city; and I can go and move to Newcastle and start a new life there as that’ll still be British territory. Places where people spend years with their loved ones are important to people, trying to bat that off as Ukrainians fighting over a comb feels like a very sad and unempathetic way to view humans and humanity. It’s not a game of Risk where people are just fighting over dots on a map for the people living there, people are fighting over their identity and memories of loved ones. 

I'd love being part of France and not the UK TBF 

[leicsmac]

23 minutes ago, Sampson said:

BBC is definitely starting to change its wording to become softer towards China and less soft towards the US now. Don’t know if it’s an editorial decision or just a subconscious one as the British public’s views on both countries are changing but there’s no way you’d have seen the main headline of this story being “US seizes oil tanker off Venezuela as Caracas condemns 'act of piracy' “. That act of piracy quote would’ve been buried at the bottom of the article 18 months ago, not as a way to frame the headline.

I think that's a possibility tbh. Perhaps the above mentalities are changing a bit. 

 

Given recent history it's too much to call China anything close to a friendly, but the fact remains that they're the only big player doing the long game anywhere close to how it needs to be done and if the UK can collaborate in that particular area if no other, then it should.

[bovril]

5 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

I'd love being part of France and not the UK TBF 

Henry VI has so much to answer for

[Sampson]

3 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

I'd love being part of France and not the UK TBF 

Haha. Well my preference by this point, especially after the US and Russia have now semi-formally allied up against us  would be a United States of Europe spanning from Iceland to Ukraine but that’s pipe dreams.

[leicsmac]

7 minutes ago, Sampson said:

Haha. Well my preference by this point, especially after the US and Russia have now semi-formally allied up against us  would be a United States of Europe spanning from Iceland to Ukraine but that’s pipe dreams.

"Commonwealth of Democratic States" involving all of those nations plus Canada, Oz, NZ, Japan and (South) Korea please. 

 

That's a lot of soft power. 

[Md9]

What a load of shite he talks 😂