pap

Yay for privatisation. All the shít service. No recourse or choice. Only difference is your "commuter tax" now goes to private industry, instead of the exchequer.

I've known one person to die from it. Terrible for the kids left behind.

If that is accurate, then it sounds dangerously subjective. Thing is, all has to be proven, and the burden of proof is "satisfied so that you are sure". If they're caught on camera and whatnot, and that footage convinces a jury, then fair enough. If it's one person's word against another, then it becomes more difficult. May not even get to a court. Moving back to the specifics of the topic, I'm thinking Balotelli may have unwittingly done the world a bit of a favour. It's plain that he's no racist or anti-semite, so it puts the hysteria into a bit of context.

A fact he mentioned very soon afterwards. I'd be entirely unsurprised if Balotelli hadn't spent considerable time discussing both the external perception of blacks and Jews in Italy. Similarly, my grandfather is feted as having the best cache of Pakistani jokes going. I was at the Comedy Store in London a few weeks ago. A Jewish comedian by the name of Ian Stone devoted about a third of his act to external perceptions of Muslims as terrorists. Baron Sacha Cohen did one movie where he denigrated Kazahkstan, and another where he played a tinpot Arab dictator. If a Kazakh-British or an Arab-British comedian did an entire film lampooning the stereotype of Jewish avarice, he'd probably be pulled up on hate charge crimes, like Deudonne was in France for having a pop at Zionism in his shows. I think much of the reason anti-semitism still exists in the public consciousness is precisely because of organisations like the ADL and blogs like cifwatch. ADL in particular needs to be seen to be combating anti-semitism, so purposefully creates mountains out of molehills to justify itself to its backers. Hypothetically, if all anti-semitism genuinely ended tomorrow, what would the ADL do exactly?

Both myself and Sideshow Bob appreciate you posting on the Internet to make your point

I knew about millions dying of starvation under Mao's reorganisation. Bit sketchy on dates; so honest answer without looking it up is "possibly". No-one is talking about a Jewish conspiracy apart from you, mush. FWIW though, I certainly am not an advocate. My experience of Israelis in particular is that they don't give a f**k what they say or who they say it to. Hasbara is not a conspiracy; it's practiced in the open.

Are you offended by that film title? I suspect you'll be about as offended as a black dude when a "racist" white girl assumes he has a big chopper.

Yeah, but how many governments do we have in power that would do the same things as Hitler's lot? The implication is that we've learned f**k all from our previous mistakes, when the evidence says that we have. There hasn't been a general war in Europe since 1945, and with political integration projects like the EU, that prospect gets even farther away. You could argue we've learned, at least on the "general war in Europe is a really bad thing, m'kay" front. Perhaps not so bright in other parts of the world. Anyways, there are plenty of ethnic groups that are well-known for being flush with financial resource. How many people bought into the Fake Sheik idea because of their pre-existing prejudice that Arabs are oil-rich? Are they off the coast of Qatar, ready to exterminate the cash rich despots in the area? Of course not. Hitler isn't around anymore and his ideas no longer hold any traction with the vast majority of the Western world, certainly not at the level where governments are ever going to encourage the active abuse of Jews because the stereotype says they've a bit more cash.

There's no contradiction, and to equate Stalin's carve-up of post-WW2 Europe to the pre-traumatic stress disorder going on in Israel is nonsense. It was more a case of "we've won this war, the Red Army is already in Eastern Europe and who the f**k is going to stop us?". Besides, you're allowed to say what you want about the Russians.

You make the point about Russia. Hitler fancied killing 30 million of them to make room for lebensraum. His plans were contingent on the deaths of the civilian population. His actions eventually led to the deaths of at least 20 million Soviets. As we've gotten further away from the horrors of general war in the 1940s, most have moved on, including the former citizens of the Soviet Union. We're allowed to say that Russia is homophobic based on their decision to ban the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle to minors, despite the fact that Hitler tried to eliminate them too. No-one bats an eyelid when Balotelli talks about black people being able to jump, despite three hundred years of Africans being enslaved and deprived of their identities in the indentured service of whites. However, it's not ok to suggest that Jews are great at acquiring wealth, despite evidence to the contrary. Said this in the Whelan chat, but Jewish people are the top-performing religious group in the US when it comes to per capita wealth. The hyper-sensitivity and organised lobbying interests are why this is a story. The media should absolutely be plastering genuine cases of anti-semitic abuse in the national press, but if it does so, it needs to be even-handed and make prevention from prejudice a priority for all. This is cry wolf crap that'll ultimately lead to the Gentile population becoming disengaged with the genuine issues Jewish people face.

That's the thing, though. I think Jewish people are amongst the most, if not the most, protected group of people in the Western world. How many other targets of prejudice have an entire industry devoted to seeking out and highlighting instances of prejudice, and more to the point, how many get the huge amount of column inches for such minor transgressions? Would people even care about anti-semitism if the likes of the ADL didn't keep telling us it was a huge problem? Now I know that there are some extreme right-wingers out there that would genuinely like to cause harm or upset to the Jewish community. If you want a story of actual anti-semitism (not the new kind) in Liverpool, then this is significantly more serious than Balotelli suggesting that a specific group of people are good at acquiring wealth. http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/merseyside-neo-nazis-arrested-after-planning-8072355 Why isn't this national news? Probably because no-one gives a toss about what right-wing thick c**ts say or do, whereas Balotelli is box-office.

I'd think that they were a racist simpleton and would call them out on it. As for the comparator, I think that's wrong too. Probably all the time I've spent in the 'Pool. I love it when people sound off on scousers. Standard response is to get them to replace every instance of the word "scouse" with the word "black", and every instance of the word "Liverpool" with the word "Africa". They tend to realise what they're doing at that point.

I'd say it's more about hypersensitivity and an avowed intent to keep anti-semitism in the news than anything else. Looking out for instances of anti-semitism is a full time job for people like Abe Foxman and organisations like the Anti-Defamation League. The film Defamation by Yoav Shamir goes inside these organisations and explores the motivation behind them. Don't know if you've ever heard the phrase "new anti-semitism", but that was an attempt to broaden what was anti-semitic, largely because most people aren't anti-semitic in the traditional sense. The political party I belong to would be considered an example of new anti-semitism, simply because we voted to support boycotts, divestments and sanctions. Closer to home, cifwatch is a pretty interesting blog. http://cifwatch.com/ At worst, Balotelli's case is stupid stereotyping. He is not about to put on an SS uniform and start opening camps.

This is the second time in recent weeks that the issue of Jewish people and money has come up. Now I can understand why this might have been a HUGE problem in the context of the Weimar Republic, hyper-inflation, wheelbarrows full of money etc. A specific group that appears more prosperous than others is an easy scapegoat, especially if it is culturally set apart from less prosperous groups. Ignorance flourishes, bad shít happens. However, I think it is worth putting into perspective for the modern age and this country in particular. Are we virulently anti-semitic as a nation? I'd say no. Speaking personally, I'm appalled by the actions of Israel, the Jewish state, but would physically put myself in harm's way if someone was being abused here on the grounds of ethnicity and/or religion, which would include Jewish people. For me, this doesn't really constitute that. There are plenty of quips that allude to someone's background or ethnicity. Balotelli implied that white men can't jump (sorta), Irish people have a rep for being somewhat simple, which manifests itself in jokes (the Irish tell the best Irish jokes, btw) and perhaps most appropriately, Scots also have a reputation for being coin-grabbers and/or tight with money. There are 5m Scots in the UK. The Jewish population is between 290K and 350K. Call a Scot tight and it's banter, but Jewish stereotypes are hate crimes and national news. Now I know that the holocaust plays a huge part in this, but I wonder if this reactionary exceptionalism isn't ultimately counter-productive.

Mario Balotelli is in the news today for posting this on Instagram:- Apology already issued. Quite a bit of this being flagged up by the media at the moment. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/dec/02/mario-balotelli-liverpool-apology-instagram

Just arrived in Southampton. Very foggy on the way down. Apt. Driving into the unknown

That's a good read, although the NY Times has got its figures slightly wrong. They reckon we brought in £150m through sales.

A couple of nuggets going around the Internet questioning George Osborne's sobriety in this weeks PMQs. Embedded here:- [video=youtube;V4iXjaoZA-E] Full PMQs session here, to allow people to see it in context:- What do we reckon?

I'm not actually listening to this per se, but the music vid features free running around Southampton. Courtesy of the Echo.

I agree my ursine chum, and I take a LOT of other things seriously Did you see him on MoTD? Proper spouting shíte; Lineker mugged him off with a sarcastic "good point". Whenever I see the f**ker, I imagine there is some stubborn barber somewhere in the East Midlands that refuses to leave the 1980s that has been kept afloat single-handedly by Savage's "demand".

True story. My best mate famously yanked his little fella out at the exact moment the Death Star is in shot and the pilot says "look at the size of that thing" in front of a former girlfriend. I worked it into my best man's speech at his wedding (to another lady) and did not get killed afterwards.

What Mitchell thinks of your and your opinion. Worth repeating, I thought

Green snorts? [video=youtube;V4iXjaoZA-E] (Maybe that's where all the cash has gone )

I trust sir was a gentleman and bought her something from during the cinema's intermission.