buctootim

Roatan is a little less scary, fantastic diving. But Honduras has almost the highest murder rate in the world, something like 80 times higher than Britain!

Stay in Positano and rent a speedboat for a couple of hours and travel up the coast. Amalfi itself isnt the best place to stay.

An American friend of mine is always literally awestruck when he visits London. He calls it the Capital of the World - and he is a guy who travels 200 days a year, lives in Washington DC and before that New York.

I go to Ukraine a lot - 15 times in the past year. I'm there tomorrow. Tomorrow night I'll have dinner with an ethnic Russian Ukrainian woman whose brother was killed in Donetsk airport. Russia had asked for a truce so they could collect their soldiers bodies. The Ukrainians agreed. After the truce when the Ukrainian soldiers returned to the airport the Russians detonated explosives they had planted during the truce and killed 85 men. Crimea there might be some justification for reunion as historically it was part of Russia, even though it was done in a unlawful and underhand way. The Donbass is a totally different situation. The large majority of ethnic Russian Ukrainians are loyal to Ukraine, not to Russia. They have had 100 years of being tied to Russia, poor and unable to travel and now they want to be European. They look at how the eastern bloc countries like Poland have transformed over the past 25 years and want the same. They want some hope for the future, not more of the same. Russia put paid agents into Ukraine to foment a rebellion when their man Yanukovych was ousted. He was ousted because he reversed his election pledge of seeking closer ties with the EU and instead signed an association deal with Russia. Yanukovych was immensely corrupt had been bribed by Putin with $1billion to sell out his people. He also appropriated state assets. Putin miscalculated and his plan of dividing the country in two failed. He has been left with a dysfunctional scrap of land - half of the Donbass, which has now turned into a mob law hellhole. Around 2.4 million people, two thirds of the population have left. Tellingly the large majority of these ethnic Russians have opted to relocate within Ukraine (1.85 million) rather than go to Russia (450,000), despite Russia offering free entry and right to work. You should distinguish between ordinary Russians and Putin's Kleptocracy. https://informnapalm.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2017/05/Donbas_v_Ogni_ENG_1-5_web.pdf

The St George's Cross looks a lot like the national flag of Georgia (former USSR republic). The Russian's hate them even more than us and currently occupy part of the country, like Ukraine.

In some industries there is a reverse gender gap - women are paid more than men with same experience. The large majority of women have children and most of those mothers choose to have career breaks to care for those children whilst the fathers are expected to provide. It sounds stone age but its still the reality for most. The result is that most women have a disjointed career and accumulate less professional experience. The higher up the tree you go the more those missing years matter. When I worked in the NHS most women senior managers didn't have kids. There are only a small number of solutions, neither of them fair. 1. Force both parents to take equal amounts of time off work for childcare - this will be especially unpopular with many mothers who want to stay at home. 2. Pay women who have kids the same even if they don't have the same level of experience.

Did you see 'Putin the New Czar'? Very good programme. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09vb7m3/putin-the-new-tsar#

There is a real need in Parliament for MPs like Corbyn, Dennis Skinner and even people like Farage and George Galloway. They might even be good as Ministers with a domestic portfolio. But they are too principled / blinkered / dogmatic to the leader of HM Opposition.

Again, if it were an incident in isolation you'd be right imo. As part of a continuum of invading Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, killing 200 Russian journalists since 2000, suppressing and killing political opposition, killing Litvinenko and maybe up to 15 other Russian exiles in the UK its a totally different matter. There was a good article in the Kiev Post a couple of days ago, circumstantially connecting Russia with chemical weapons in Syria. Again not conclusive in itself, but taking all the parts together, yes absolutely. https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/uk-expells-23-russian-diplomats-spy-poisoning-russia-blames-ukraine-instead.html

Nobody here actually knows what the evidence is for Russian guilt so its a moot point anyway. Taken in isolation does it sound absolutely conclusive Russia did it deliberately? no, maybe only a 70% probability. But its not an isolated incident. Its part of a very long pattern of Russia being aggressive and disruptive. Against that background their culpability is beyond reasonable doubt. In any event what is clear is that Russia didn't declare Novichok to the convention on chemical weapons, lied about making it and - if it wasn't them who used it - failed to keep it secure. Which makes them guilty as charged imo.

Talking of weasels - you're claiming your vision of Brexit was always Canada+++ - the deal that didnt even exist at the time the bet was made.

Hughes would be okay temporarily, but I'd hope we'd be able to find someone younger and more up and coming over the summer.

I like this tribute @GaryDelaney RIP Sir Ken Dodd. One of the all time greats. The funeral will be held on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and most of Saturday.

Can you really not see the difference between simply listening to what the EU had consistently said and predicting the collective results of tens of millions of people voting independently? Thought not. Pre referendum I relied on what the polls said. Post referendum I relied on what was bleeding obvious. You going to send the cheque now or just post date it?

Its true, and has been so since the referendum. Its been a wasted 20 months - all because of hard brexiteers denial of reality.

Sample size depends on how accurate you want the final result to be. At a basic level if you are measuring how many Brits will vote Tory and want a 99% probability that you will get the right figure + or - 0.1 you will need a much larger sample than, for example, you want a 95% probability you will get the right figure + or minus 5. There are plenty of calculators out there, like this one. https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm There are more nuances (its been a while since I left university) but if you learn a little bit about stats you will understand when a figure given is pretty much nailed on to be right and when its just a ball park figure. Political polling can be notoriously difficult though as people are more coy about revealing their voting intentions than what brand of cat food they buy. Also you cant assume one thing follows another. for example the fact somebody voted for a Eurosceptic party doesnt necessarily mean they would vote to leave the EU in referendum. Sometimes people vote as a protest and sometimes on other policies of the same party, eg immigration.

You don't quite do it justice - "The US is offering Britain a worse “Open Skies” deal after Brexit than it had as an EU member, in a negotiating stance that would badly hit the transatlantic operating rights of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic"

At least try to keep up ffs "The leader of Italy’s Eurosceptic Northern League, which enjoyed a surge in popularity to become the country’s largest conservative party, said the centre-right coalition had won the national elections and his party would lead it in forming a government. Speaking at the Northern League headquarters in Milan, Matteo Salvini said the euro was — and remains — a mistake, but he ruled out a referendum on whether the single currency area’s third-largest economy should leave as “unthinkable”. " https://www.ft.com/content/e2f16fc0-2064-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11

Fancy a bet on who lasts longest? Deutsche or our alki fuelled friend?

Her share of the vote shrank but they mostly went to other mainstream pro-EU parties. AfD got 12.6% of the vote, the same as UKIP in 2015. Whatever happened to them?

Merkel is back then. I could have sworn she was finished, along with the whole EUSSR. Tsk

Ive been visiting the Daily Mail and Express websites for the past few weeks to look at the Brexit related news and comments. The headbangers are still in a majority, but there is is a very noticeable change in tone in the past few days. May's speech today went down like a bucket of cold sick. Seems to me reality is dawning for many that they were sold a pup.

Hm. I know, lets draw a line between two totally unrelated events. Critics condemn new Tory strategy for continuing the ‘war on drugs’ http://www.thenational.scot/news/15413008.Critics_condemn_new_Tory_strategy_for_continuing_the____war_on_drugs___/ Church Leaders In Philippines Condemn Bloody War On Drugs https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/20/544855446/church-leaders-in-philippines-condemn-bloody-war-on-drugs Same thing innit?

Can you post up Labours draft budget so we can compare them?