I challenge you to find the existing thread for such strories.

>>36632
It's about 1,850 posts long, it's time for a new thread.

>>36633
Your mum needs a new thread IYKWIM

>>36636
I'd give her a few days, she's just had a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich.

>Gardaí are investigating the death of an elderly man in Carlow town, whose body was brought into a post office by two other men, in what appeared to be an attempt to claim the deceased man’s pension.

>The bizarre series of events began when a man entered the post office premises of Hosey’s shop and post office on Staplestown Road at about 11.30 am on Friday, seeking to collect the weekly pension on behalf of another man. He was informed by a staff member that the man himself would have to be present if payment of the pension was to be made.

>This man left and a short time later two men, accompanied by a third man in his 60s, entered the post office. These two men are appear have sought pension payment for the third man, who appeared to be propped up. A woman who had become suspicious of the men’s movements alerted a post office staff member and no cash was handed over. The body of the deceased was then left at the scene when the two men fled after suspicions were raised.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/garda%C3%AD-investigating-after-man-s-body-used-in-apparent-attempt-to-claim-pension-1.4782598

>>36691
If such a thing happened, which obviously it never would, I would disapprove of that too. Because you're not meant to tell other countries how to run their business.

>>36692

Unfortunately, countries are a lot like neighbours. You might want them to mind their own business, and you might not give a fuck what they're doing in their own property. But sometimes, you have no choice but to confront them over how they keep leaving their bins at the end of your drive. Only the bins are nuclear missiles.

>>36688
>It is none of Russia's business whether or not Ukraine wishes to join NATO

This. Russia's recent ultimatum to NATO involves an effective sphere of influence in not only Ukraine but even Poland where the US is perceived as in need of grand bargain to counteract China and the European security alliance as faltering thanks to the vanity of France and Germany. But despite the limp-wristed attitude of Biden the West has already seen off one pressure tactic where Belarus attempted to force a refugee crisis.

Its threat that we know from the long-term predictions of the Russian economy will be used in future to bully economic concessions and as we see from the Caucasus and history of Ukraine itself will still seep in to sow internal conflict or even outright annexation. There's a reason even the Swedes are going mental at the moment and its not good at a time when Russia has spent year building up foreign currency reserves while the west is perilously sensitive to Russian gas diplomacy.

On the broader realist perspective; the problem the school has is it too often presumes a state (that you're in at time of writing) to have free-will. NATO expansion was an inevitability and the weight of Poland alone will pull the west deeper into conflict. EU expansion couldn't have been stopped by the US despite Moscow's view that it's a stalking horse and Ukraine fell into the western orbit because the people living in Ukraine (now run by a Jewish fascist president as Mendeleev recently went to point out) threw their puppet government out of power. What the West could've done to avoid all this was to integrate Russia into the west during the 90s and avoid the country becoming a basket case but we didn't so there we go.

>>36693
Or in the case of Eastern Europe, anti-ballistic missiles. Or in Ukraine, the red-line recently moved to having any sort of western military presence such as training a countries military to defend itself against a neighbour that illegally occupies 7% of the country. Whataboutism doesn't really work in this situation.

>>36687

>Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse.

The problem with almost all of U.S. foreign policy has always been that Americans have a hard time admitting when they are wrong. Their world view is that they are the beacon of freedom and democracy, that they are the most compassionate and generous nation on Earth, and that they must spread those values across the globe, much in the same way that evangelists think they have to proselytise their religious faith. It's also maybe no complete coincidence that much of the Ukraine kerfuffle that still persists today happened under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who is a devout Methodist, a Christian fundamentalist denomination that is particularly known for its proselytism and the belief in its own moral superiority and the urge to spread its gospel.

Then again, when it gets down to down-and-dirty power politics, there are enough realists in the American government who know they are only doing it to further and cement the sheer power that the U.S. wields over the rest of the world. There is no room for idealism at that level, it's all about dominance, strategic influence, and access to critical resources and raw materials.

NATO's Eastern Expansion, then, wasn't as much an act of wide-eyed liberalism as the linked article suggests. I'm very sure there were at all times enough hawkish realists in the American government who simply spotted a chance to weaken their old adversary of Russia by diminishing and geographically reducing its sphere of influence. It was probably a welcome side effect that the former Communist satellite states transformed into Western-style capitalist parliamentary democracies that opened up to international trade, but the real Great Game the hawks in the American government and in NATO were playing was a different one.

>>36677
There are other websites available for you to circlejerk.

>>36682
The free market wins again.

>>36682

Or you could just stop posting the same shit over and over. This place moves slowly, people start to notice the same sorts of posts cropping up. Even class warrior lad gives it a bit of a rest between bouts of furious marxism.

>>36677
I'm pretty sure you're equating anyone who disagrees with you as one person. I quite enjoy winding you up like clockwork so I'm bound to be a Thatcherlad as well even if I sometimes have to work.

>>36685
There are only three of us here, lad.

>>36511

I would very much like to make a pilgrimage before I/this place dies. Maybe a selfie next to a sign, with my cock in a cup of tea.

>>36512
I would very much like a real flag. I wish I knew someone at the BAS - there used to be an army base there, but not any more. I do have a radio contact on the Falkland Islands, where the SGSSI "government" is based. Might just write a random email and see where it gets to.

>>36512
https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/gb/antarctic/south-georgia

Cheapest cruise I can find is 8 grand. Looks great though.

We're in the news again, sort of: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60010608

>South Georgia: The museum at the end of the world reopens for business

>On the icy, southern edge of the Atlantic Ocean, just above the Antarctic circle, is a British island, a ghost town, and a museum.
A British island, a ghost town and a museum? I guess you could say we're like that.

>The island is a tough place to work. The nearest airport is a four-day boat ride away. Fresh food is rare, the internet is "poor to non-existent" and, at times, the wind is strong enough to tip over helicopters.
Your mum is poor to non-existent m8

>There are no permanent residents on South Georgia, just 20 or so workers, from scientists to maintenance staff.
Okay now this is getting creepy. I'd better stop.

>>36680
Order of magnitude over-estimation of the population.

>>36187
What's Orwellian is trying to have a rulebook of the English language at all. When it comes to how to use the language we're not Frenchmen bowing before an Académie on matters of the langue française and we're not Oceanians bowing before a Ministry on matters of Newspeak. We're Englishmen and in English every man's idiolect is his castle. Simple as.

>>36188
I don’t think the mods share your radical new thinking.

>>36187

>Some deaf people describe themselves as Deaf with a capital D too.

That's a fantastically useful linguistic invention, providing a distinction between people who can't hear and people who have a different native language and cultural identity. You could use a term like "culturally deaf", but that has subtly different connotations to "big-D deaf" that make it a less useful identifier for the Deaf community.

The house of Lords voted down every (14) of the bits of the policing bill that they possibly could, last night.

It's too late for the gypsies (see earlier in the thread) but at least that can still be protested about.

>>36678
So they protected our freedoms and rights, but didn't protect gypsies? God I love the House of Lords. They are amazing and democracy is overrated.

>>36652
>Why don't you like the BBC

Face it lad, there's not much worth watching on the BBC. That's the real reason it has become a vote winner to scrap the tv licence and why so many people dodge the detector van.

>and what alternatives do you prefer?

Like otherlad I spend a surprising amount of time watching Youtube these days. I don't really need to have content curated to me by some central body and where I do I prefer more specialised content either to my tastes, what internet people recommend or what I stumble upon. Not HIGNFY taking clips off of youtube because they've long-since run out of ideas.

Think of television as like watching a 24 hour news channel, you might get some things you want but it's surface deep and buried under shit you don't care about to the degree that it actually makes you angry how little control you have.

>>36657
Are competition laws really the reason they don't do that? One reason I've always resented the licence fee is that despite the public funding old programmes, if they want to re-watch them they're still expected to buy a DVD or Bluray (at full price) rather than being made available freely or at nominal cost. That rather feels like double-dipping - get the public to pay for production costs, then rake in more cash on selling the finished product.

>>36667
>Are competition laws really the reason they don't do that?

I don't know chapter and verse, but I do recall about 10+ years ago this being a big thing; there was a general feeling that if the BBC had completely free rein to do what it liked online, it would stifle a lot of other potential websites - I believe the actual argument was over the "recipes" section of the BBC site.

>>36666
>I spend a surprising amount of time watching Youtube these days

Me too and I'm relatively late to the party - I am likely to replace the TV license spend with a YouTube Premium account.

>>36667

>Are competition laws really the reason they don't do that?

Not quite, but the BBC Charter (and how it is interpreted by the BBC Governors and Ofcom) has massively stunted iPlayer.

11. Market impact
(1) The BBC must have particular regard to the effects of its activities on competition in the United Kingdom.
(2) In complying with this article, the BBC must-
(a) seek to avoid adverse impacts on competition which are not necessary for the effective fulfilment of the Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes;
(b) have regard to promoting positive impacts on the wider market.

Initially, Ofcom were reluctant to allow iPlayer to include whole series rather than just the last episode; box sets of old series were totally out of the question. Only in the last couple of years have the BBC been allowed to upload iPlayer-only content that hasn't been recently broadcast on TV. The BBC aren't allowed to just make the best streaming platform they can, but have to prove that any improvements they make won't harm their commercial competitors.

ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC wanted to launch a combined streaming platform in 2009, but this was blocked by the Competition Commission. BritBox was eventually allowed because of the rise of increased commercial competition from Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Message too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>36251
Nope. It's a good thing this kind of behaviour is getting explicitly mentioned, but in terms of practical changes the impact is minimal.

>>36250
>inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offence

Imagine making 20k a year and having to arrest blokes for complaining about women down the pub. "Ello ello ello, not all women are such an utter pain in the arse that you consider pursuing a homosexual relationship with your effeminate friend who has now grown his hair out."

Or complaining about the way our society is structured that has alienated young men, however poorly the argument is made and whose fundamental complaint of isolation has been twisted by the only people in the world who seem to give a fuck about them. It's really quite shocking how we brush this issue under the rug like we're not going to end up with a society run by alt-right and Peterson fanatics in a generation.

>cornering someone

How did the mating ritual of Japanese anime people lead to a police officer rape-killing a woman?

>>36251
We have to have special rules for women now because we forgot how liberal humanism works.

>>36253

>It's really quite shocking how we brush this issue under the rug like we're not going to end up with a society run by alt-right and Peterson fanatics in a generation.

You know, the longer it goes on the more I'm starting to think that's part of the plan. The ruling elite has decided allowing the fisherperson and larger civil rights and sexual revolution of the 60s happen was a mistake and we need some good old fashioned social norms bringing back into society.

Of course, that men will have to carry on enduring all the harmful things men endured before feminism, that fisherpersons never did anything about even though they constantly talk about doing things about them, but now they will carry on enduring them after feminism has been defeated too. Thank goodness for that eh.

It's almost like the whole thing was a diversion in the first place to stop us getting carried away making actual structural, material societal changes at a time of great historical turbulence. Of course, we're in much steadier waters in current year, we needn't bother with all those concessions.

>A Metropolitan Police officer accused of a string of sex offences is facing further charges linked to another four victims including six counts of rape, prosecutors said.

>David Carrick, of Hertfordshire, will be charged with nine further offences, the Crown Prosecution Service said. In total he is accused of 29 crimes against eight women from 2009 to 2020.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-59944241

It's just one or two bad apples, lads.

>>36613
Rape of civilians is part and parcel of having a police force.

>>36601

>In my experience, every single time a person or an organization has used that "boo hoo hoo forgive me please I am just dumb" excuse, it was a lie to cover for something much worse than that.

Really? Then you must live in a much more competent world than I do. Horrendous fuck-ups happen all the time, because a) human beings are very fallible and b) most organisations are at least somewhat dysfunctional and lacking in accountability.

Where malice is involved, it's frequently in the form of a cover-up of incompetence rather than a deliberate intent to cause harm. The Post Office scandal is an obvious example of this - nobody wanted to wrongly prosecute nearly a thousand people for fraud based on completely false evidence, but lying to the court for a decade was easier than admitting "we spent a billion quid on a useless IT system and we don't know what to do about it". The worst miscarriage of justice in British history was just a schoolboy lie taken to extremes.

The bleak reality is that most people are actually quite shit at their jobs and we've created a culture that allows powerful people to evade accountability. There's no grand conspiracy, just a tacit omerta. Nobody in a position of power wants to hold anyone else to account, because they might be next in line. Some people really do have terrible skeletons in their closet, but the secret most people are hiding is simply that they have no idea what they're doing and spend most of their working hours trying not to get caught out.

>>36601

Are you by any chance the sort of person who wholeheartedly believes and accepts the accuser's story in every big sex scandal, because "I knew he was one of 'em"? The sort who can spot a carpet-bagger at forty paces?

The sort who is frequently wrong, is what I'm getting at.

>>36603

You will have to admit that UK has a lot of carpet-baggers in its ruling caste. I wonder if we will see a British Epstein in our lifetimes.

>>36604
>I wonder if we will see a British Epstein in our lifetimes.

Jim'll?

>>36602

Cyril Smith and Jimmy Savile were quite competent at their job!

>>36499

I just don't see a world in which they're an unhinged deviant and playing three dimensional idpol chess at the same time.

>>36500

Then you are very naive. It's barely even one dimensional. It's a plain simple "But but, I belong to [protected group], you have to go easy on me!" plea that wrong 'uns like that have been using since forever.

>>36500
It's a bloke in a dress mate, snakes and ladders is a push.

>Russia, China, Britain, U.S. and France say no one can win nuclear war

>China, Russia, Britain, the United States and France have agreed that a further spread of nuclear arms and a nuclear war should be avoided, according to a joint statement by the five nuclear powers published by the Kremlin on Monday.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-china-britain-us-france-say-no-one-can-win-nuclear-war-2022-01-03/

>>36558>>36559
I'm fairly certain if they polled middle-aged people and boomers their results would be even worse due to the heightened brain power on Facebook.

>>36560
>heightened brain power

Oh, mods! You little scamps!

>>36561
What did you originally say?

>>36562
Brain-rot. It wouldn't surprise me if mind worms was filtered as well.

Hivemind?

>>35841

>but it makes me slightly horny every time I see it

Right you are.

>>35844
Why do they wear those glasses, lads. It's like the fashion accessory version of doing that 'hilarious' smeagol voice.

>>35851
They wear them to make me hard.

>>35851

Big glasses make your face look smaller by comparison. Bloaty face or moonface = wear big bold glasses to separate your features a bit.

>Hobnobs maker warns biscuit prices set to soar

>Biscuit maker McVitie's says the prices of many of its best-selling brands are set to soar. The firm, which is owned by Pladis Global, said brands such as Jaffa Cakes, Penguins and Hobnobs could go up in price by as much as 5%. It blamed staff absences, more expensive ingredients and higher labour costs which it says it has to pass on to consumers. However, it said its "humble chocolate digestive" would be less affected.

>Pladis's UK managing director, David Murray, said: "Omicron disruption, absenteeism, and the rising cost of business going forward present a big challenge for us. "At the end of the day, like in many other categories, it will flow through to higher prices." Pladis, which also manufactures Jacob's crackers and Go Ahead fruit bars, said it had seen double digit-percentage cost rises on ingredients such as cocoa beans recently.

>Higher wheat prices have also hit the business. "We've dealt with substantial challenges in the past in the food industry - whether it's natural disasters, inflation in the economic crisis," Mr Murray said. "It's the compression of the challenge, combined with the scale of some of them [that is different this time]," he added.

>Shortages of many goods, including building materials and computer chips, are causing supply problems and pushing up prices across industries. The cost of living surged by 5.1% in the 12 months to November, up from 4.2% the month before, and its highest level since September 2011.

>Food and drink firms recently warned that they had seen "terrifying" price rises which would have a knock-on effect on consumers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59728325

Check the padlock on your shed, the neighbours will soon be coming over.

At this point I'm certain the majority of mainstream ECKY discourse is a psyop. It's 2+2=5 brainwashing mind fuck propaganda. The point isn't the narrative, the point is making people submit to what they're told is the truth.

I must clarify that I'm not a trans-denier, they certainly exist and I support their right to exist. But their movement has been weaponised; much like giving weapons to the mujahideen who would go on become Al Quaeda and provide the justification for nearly two decades of manufactured conflict, the various factions of transit vans and surf'n'turfs and what have you are being used as unwitting cultural mercenaries.

Engaging with the subject in good faith, as such, feels like nothing but wasted time.

>>36374
A fine example of middle old people shithousery.

>>36376
>ECKY discourse

?

>>36379

evangelist christian korean youtuber. evangelist christian korean youtubers.

I'd really quite like to give that 'rescue a stray' thing a go, but as far as I'm aware we don't really have a problem with feral animals in the UK - though I did encounter a very thin cat last night, assumed lost from home.

Why have we sided with the monkeys on this?

>>36355
> though I did encounter a very thin cat last night

It just has cat aids. Or that thyroid problem they get.

https://sambadenglish.com/monkeys-kill-250-puppies-in-act-of-vengeance-after-dogs-kill-one-of-their-infants/

>A troop of revenge-driven monkeys has killed at least 250 puppies by throwing them to the ground from high places. The motivation for such fury is said to have stemmed from an incident in which a pack of dogs mauled a baby monkey to death.

What would happen if one of these revenge driven monkeys bit a human?

>>36368
Covid-21.

>>36214
I figure it couldn't be that big, since it was a piece pulled from his private arsenal.

>>36214
>>36226
I don't think we have enough here- Is that length, diameter, circumference, what are we really dealing with here?

>>36227
I think that the quoted dimension is generally the diameter of the bullet-y bit. If he'd got the whole shell in, you'd have to have some grudging respect.

>>36230
or it could have been one of these beauties.

>>36230>>36231
It was a mortar bomb, which, in so far as any military ordinance is, shaped like a butt plug.