palordrolap

My first thought was that this was arranging to put fish in a barrel, to allude to a certain metaphor, but then I realised that it was more likely the other way around and it’s a concentration camp, and your comment was already here.

And then I remembered how camps usually go and that it would be both at the same time.

At present? Keeping an eye on Russian ships “just out for a walk” so to speak, in waters nowhere near their immediate interests that happen to be a lot closer to British interests.

Why does that need to be a jet? To remind those ships that if they were to bring their own jets for whatever reason, not that they’d ever even have the remotest possibility of the merest inkling of a thought to do such a thing, we’d be prepared.

Mild sabre rattling. Also known as “international diplomacy”.

We’ll only rejoin if it makes the rich people who live here a lot of money, and that would have to be as soon as possible after that happens.

Otherwise, picture a child sitting, pouting and petulant, arms folded tight, sat on a stool in a corner saying “no!”

There’s a vague possibility of long-term gains turning their heads as well, but the armchair physicist and psychologist in me thinks that the gain would need to be proportional to the square of time in order get through their greedy little brains.

Edit: See responses for why this probably wouldn’t work. Nonetheless, if I was a grower I might look into it anyway just to see what happens. How much could a dry corner of a field affect margins anyway…

Fun fact: Rice can be grown in the dry. The reason it’s grown in the wet is that, unlike other grasses, it tolerates being grown in the wet, and so the water protects the rice from unspecified environmental factors.

My point here being the question as to whether the factors that destroy rice in the dry are worse than these flamingos. And if not, there’s a solution presenting itself here.

https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619

This article states that injuries are alleged to have resulted from the group’s actions. I should have added this to my original comment in the first place, but better late than never.

I was adding an edit to that part of my comment to clarify as you were submitting yours. I agree that it doesn’t even look like they’re seeking to injure anyone.

You’re right. I wasn’t clear. It doesn’t look like they’re going out of their way to cause grievous injury though.

So you can now be a terrorist without blowing anyone up or otherwise killing anyone. Merely inconveniencing and injuring (Edit 2: through carelessness rather than malice, by the look of it) is sufficient.

Therefore the UK government, in that act where they took away benefits, inconveniencing and causing indirect injury to many, is by this definition a terrorist organisation. (And likewise the government before them.)

Edit: Forgot the obvious point: Clearly, since the IDF like blowing up and killing people and are not classified as terrorists, that either means that such actions are not terrorist actions any more and only the milder actions now qualify, or they are the worst kind of terrorists and should be labelled as such.

Edit 3: Source stating there may have been injuries associated with the group’s actions: https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619

Has Putin started being paranoid about his food and drinks yet?

If, as rumours suggest, the DPRK is in the habit of punishing the families of defectors, I can only hope he was an unattached man with no family.

At the very least, I’m sure someone in charge of the border patrol at the north side is going to get a stern talking to.

As to those family punishment rumours, I can imagine the DPRK might like people to believe them, even if they’re not true. It would go some way to discourage people from doing things like this.

Well, once you’ve had your country invaded by rabid psychopaths, there’s bound to be some gene admixture (to put that far too mildly) and so you’ve a chance that their descendents, even if it’s recessive and rare, will have the desire go on to do the same.

Of course, rabid psychopathy and the urge to invade other places can also come about on its own, but when you look at the way the Vikings and their Germanic cousins invaded western Europe a thousand years or so ago, and then note what happened a few hundred years later, it has to make you wonder whether it might have only happened the once.

“will protect the most vulnerable,"

It’s often useful to imagine that they know what people will think they mean when they say things like that, but that they actually mean an entirely different “most vulnerable” group: MPs, their friends and associates.

For anyone who has somehow missed this bit of business knowledge, it’s extremely common practice to delay paying something for as long as legally possible, if not longer, to the point it’s expected that your debtors will do this, and that you’ll do the same to everyone else in return. It was set up so that small businesses got time to pay for things, but of course, it was immediately corrupted by large businesses to screw over the little guy as well.

I worked for a company that used the pay late tactic, and did this often enough and long enough to one smaller creditor that the creditor managed to issue a winding-up order, which was - or so I gathered - a nuisance to have to sort out.

The downsides are 1) you have to get creative with the “prove [company] cannot pay” clause that’s required, especially if they’re big and wallowing in cash, 2) it costs roughly £3000 that you’ll only get back if you’re successful and 3) If you involve your own legal representation, that might cost extra that you definitely won’t get back.

For the first one, an incompetence argument might work. Or else that the fact they haven’t paid means that their assets, however large, cannot be made liquid enough to pay. For the second, that money comes back from the debtor if you win, so it costs them more money. For the third and for everything else, good luck with that.

Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer has his arm stuck in a drink vending machine and it becomes clear that he would have been free if only he’d let go of the soda can inside it? And everyone laughs at him?

Here we see “Homer” Putin with his army stuck in a war holding onto a Ukraine. He even has the same haircut. D’oh!

The given reason is that it enables gambling. Presumably they’ll also be banning the other sports and games that are mentioned in the article, including those deeply beloved of whoever it is setting these rules.

If not, we can safely assume that the ban is probably because it’s something that might get the ordinary folk thinking for themselves, and that won’t do. Can’t be having the proles thinking for themselves, let alone practising an approximation of military strategy.

Alternatively, the top brass can’t get their heads around chess and they’re jealous that other people can, so therefore they ban it. (For this one, I cite myself. I’m so bad at chess that I can lose any game from a winning position by playing the moves I genuinely think are best, so I’m kind of jealous of anyone without this amazing anti-power. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’d ban it, but if I was running a country, maybe that’d go to my head and I would.)

I would have worded this differently, but you’re right in that it’s probably a good idea not to give anyone an extra excuse.

“Oh but we had to” isn’t a great excuse, but it is one, and if you take away the threat, it takes it away that argument.

“Reasonable”, unfortunately, is subjective. Just ask Rupert Murdoch.

Religious conservative nuts feel the same way about people who are in favour of abortion as many people in the US feel about health insurance CEOs.

From certain standpoints, assassinations appear acceptable.

A senseless loss of life. All to stroke the egos of old men - one in particular - with rose-tinted memories of the days of empire.

Would it be too much to ask for a Scrooge-like turnaround? A million restless dead ought to be more than enough.

It’ll be interesting to see if they try this with Northern Ireland next. Politically a bit more of a hot, well, er, maybe “potato” isn’t the best choice of word in this instance, but as far as sharing a land border with an EU nation goes, it could smooth over a few problems that Brexit created in that part of the Isles.