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I loved Ricky Gervais's thing when he was presenting, something like "don't lecture people, you don't live in the real world, just thank your agent, thank your God, and fuck off".

Obviously someone who's unwell. Not a classy post mate.

An alternative take on it from an Ozzie. I'm not where I stand on it, but is a strong opinion: "Let me ask you a question that nobody in the mainstream media has the balls to ask out loud. While the Middle East is on fire, while the Strait of Hormuz is functionally closed, while Australians are being told to fill their tanks up before prices go through the roof, while the global economy teeters on the edge of the most catastrophic recession in living memory, while Trump is on Truth Social in his nappy typing in capitals at 3am — who exactly is sitting back in a gold-plated fucking armchair, sipping tea that costs more than your mortgage repayment, and quietly counting their money? Go on. Have a fucking guess. Take your time. I'll give you a clue. They're wearing very expensive robes. They own football clubs you support. And they haven't said a single genuinely useful fucking thing in about fifty years. That's right. Say hello to Saudi Arabia. Qatar. The UAE. Kuwait. Bahrain. The Gulf states. The great friends of the West. The noble, peace-loving, definitely-not-funding-terrorism moderates of the Arab world. The magnificent bastards who signed the Abraham Accords and got a standing fucking ovation from Washington for normalising relations with Israel while Palestinians were being turned into rubble and the rest of the world was being told it was complicated. These guys. These absolute fucking guys. Where are they now, you ask? How are they responding to this historic crisis? What bold leadership are they displaying in this moment of global peril? Well. On Sunday, while the bombs were still falling on Iran, while tankers were turning around in the Gulf of Oman, while the world's oil market was having a complete psychological fucking meltdown and ordinary people everywhere were being told to go fill their cars up immediately — OPEC+ held a meeting. A meeting they had already scheduled before the war even started, which should tell you everything you need to know about how utterly gobsmacked they were by all of this. And they announced they would boost production by 206,000 barrels per day. Two hundred and six thousand barrels. Out of the roughly twenty million barrels per day that flow through the Strait of Hormuz. That's like showing up to a five-alarm house fire with a garden hose, a cheese sandwich, and a look of deep fucking concern. That's not stabilising the market. That's performance art. That is the geopolitical equivalent of posting a sad face emoji while your neighbour's house burns down and quietly calling your real estate agent to ask what that's going to do to your property value. Because here's the dirty little secret that everyone in the oil industry knows and absolutely nobody says on television because half of them are funded by the same people. A war that doubles the oil price, at a moment when you can publicly wring your manicured hands and call for de-escalation, when you can point at Iran as the aggressor, when you can issue solemn diplomatic statements in a beautifully pressed robe while quietly pumping as many barrels as your desert will produce at double the fucking price? That is not a catastrophe for the Gulf states. That is better than Christmas. That is Christmas, your birthday, a lottery win, and a happy ending all arriving simultaneously in a stretch limousine. That is the kind of financial event that makes grown men in palaces quietly lock the door, turn the air conditioning up, and do a little fucking dance where nobody can see them. Gold is sitting at over $5,300 an ounce right now. Up over a thousand dollars since January alone. Silver is charging toward $100. Brent crude spiked 8 percent before formal markets even opened Sunday night and analysts are screaming about $100, $120, $140 a barrel if this drags on. Saudi Arabia ships 5.5 million barrels per day. Every single dollar added to the oil price multiplies across 5.5 million barrels. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. Get a calculator out. I'll wait here. Have you done it? Are you okay? Do you need a moment? Perhaps a little lie down? Now here's where it gets really interesting, because these crafty fuckers are not stupid. Morally bankrupt? Absolutely. More two-faced than a novelty fucking clock? Without question. But not stupid. They can read a calendar. They can see the EV revolution coming like a freight train with its headlights on full. Electric vehicles are eating into oil demand for transportation faster than OPEC's own projections predicted, and every oil sheikh with half a brain cell knows that the age of the petrodollar has a use-by date stamped on it in letters ten storeys high. The golden goose is not going to lay forever. The party ends eventually. So what do you do when you can see the golden goose is getting old and tired and the fucking vegans are already lobbying to have it released into a sanctuary? You grab it by the throat and you squeeze every last fucking egg out of it while you still can. You build your NEOM vanity city in the desert. You buy every European football club that isn't nailed down. You fund your Vision 2030 economic diversification plan. And you quietly thank whatever deity you pray to that a spray-tanned American lunatic in a USA cap just lit the Middle East on fire and temporarily doubled your income, right in the window before EVs eat your lunch. You're welcome, Riyadh. Truly. Our pleasure. And here — here is the part that should make your blood absolutely fucking boil until it evaporates. Yes, Iran targeted Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE with retaliatory missiles. Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE dramatically closed their airspace. There were explosions in Doha. There was footage. There were deeply serious, deeply concerned statements issued with the gravity of men who have never experienced a single consequence in their entire lives. Saudi Arabia confirmed that Iran targeted Riyadh and the kingdom's eastern region — and in the same breath, in the very same fucking statement, quietly revealed that they had already told Iran in advance that they would not allow Saudi airspace or territory to be used to target Iran. They gave Iran a heads up. A private, diplomatic, cosy little whisper. Don't worry mate, we won't let them use our backyard to come at you. And yet there they sit, hosting American military assets, participating in US-brokered normalisation with Israel, watching Iran get systematically demolished by their American sugar daddy — and then issuing press releases of shocked outrage when Iranian missiles arrive in return, wearing an expression of absolute fucking innocence that would make a golden retriever look shifty by comparison. You cannot sit at every table, take money from every hand, make quiet promises to every party, sleep in every bed, eat everyone's breakfast, steal everyone's wallet, and then act like a startled fucking virgin when someone finally notices. These are not innocent bystanders. These are not horrified observers. These are nations that have spent decades playing every side of every conflict in the region with the moral consistency of a politician at election time. Funding whoever was useful. Abandoning whoever wasn't. Normalising with Israel while Palestinians were being starved and bombed and bulldozed by the millions. Issuing tasteful statements of concern about civilian casualties while placing fresh orders for the American weapons causing those casualties. Sending thoughts and prayers to Yemen while simultaneously helping blow the living shit out of it. And through all of it, through every war and every atrocity and every humanitarian catastrophe that has made the Middle East what it is today, making absolutely fucking certain that the petrodollar system that made them obscenely, dynastically, generationally wealthy continued to function without a single interruption. They don't give a shit about Palestine. They never fucking did. That was always just a talking point, a card to play, a crowd to gesture toward when it was politically convenient. They don't give a shit about Iran. They don't give a shit about Lebanon or Yemen or any of the other places their geopolitical maneuvering has helped turn into catastrophes. They don't even give a shit about each other, if we're being honest, because when Iranian missiles were landing in Qatar, Saudi Arabia's first instinct wasn't regional brotherhood and solidarity — it was to quietly confirm that their East-West pipeline infrastructure was undamaged and their production capacity was fully operational. Nothing personal, Qatar. Just business. Because that's what all of this has always been. Strip away every layer of religious rhetoric. Remove the geopolitical posturing. Throw away the high-minded diplomatic language and the United Nations speeches and the beautifully worded communiques about peace and stability. Get all the way down to the bare bones of what is actually happening here and what you find, every single time, without exception, is one thing. The dollar. The petrodollar. The arrangement hammered out in the Saudi desert in 1945 between Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz that essentially said: you price your oil in American dollars, you buy American weapons by the shipload, you support American foreign policy wherever it leads, and in return America will protect you, arm you, and look the other way while you do absolutely whatever the fuck you want to your own people, your neighbours, and anyone else unfortunate enough to get between you and the arrangement. That deal has never been about democracy. Not for one single fucking second. It has never been about human rights or regional stability or any of the other gorgeous words that get deployed in press releases while the bodies are still warm. It has been about money. It has only ever been about money. It will always only ever be about money. And right now, with the Middle East on fire, with the Strait of Hormuz closed, with oil spiking and gold smashing records and the global economy hurtling toward the correction it has been building toward for eighteen long and reckless fucking years, that arrangement is paying its biggest dividend in decades. To the people who were already so wealthy they've run out of things to buy. While you're wondering whether you can afford to fill your tank this week. The house always wins, mate. It just never fucking wins for you".

Carbohydrates

Not in 18 months or whatever it's been. It'll take a couple of terms and a shit load of money to get us anywhere near where we should be.

Free

As has been said, it was a civil court finding on the balance of probabilities, not a criminal court where the jury were convinced beyond all reasonable doubt. They're two completely different things - it isn't semantics. It's worth remembering that a UK High Court Judge found on the balance of probabilities in a civil case that Jonny Depp had done all sorts to Amber Heard. There's no way he'd have been convicted in a criminal court on the same facts and evidence. That's because Civil court decisions, based on little more than hunches and gut feel, are a world away from a criminal conviction.

Fair point.

Yep. The rules based system doesn't exist for the big boys. The West sitting back and tolerating Crimea set this off, and at it's simplest, Trump will do wtf he wants without meaningful international opposition.

I think your last sentence is the crux. We're not privy to the negotiations, and have no idea what was said or not said. I suspect the truth is there was no imminent danger as such, but more of a let's stop wasting time with these idiots and end them.

Article 51 is crystal clear. If there was an imminent threat, preventative action was legal. If there wasn't, it was illegal. Doubtless we'll be told what the imminent threat to the US and Israel was.

Anyone who's apparently worked on criminal prosecutions knows that a guilty verdict only follows a criminal prosecution. It's not semantics, it's a different thing.

The point was in the context of what they were asked to concede to do a deal, not what's happened previously. The last point was relevant to that, and according to the Omani mediator, it was conceded, thus saying yes wasn't enough.

Took a while, with a few casualties.

The point is the instability etc post regime change. I doubt Iranians will want the instability that other Muslim countries have suffered, and US / Israeli interference.

Our friends at ChatGPT are between us: "Many Iraqis are relieved that Saddam Hussein is gone, especially groups that suffered most under his regime. But widespread disappointment with instability, corruption, and violence after 2003 means that satisfaction with how things turned out is far from universal". In short, regime change hasn't gone down a storm.

Yep, sadly, they're run ins are favourable. Last week looks costly, but there's loads of points to play for and other teams will have dips, injuries, suspensions etc. It'll be touch and go.

It's not for countries to enforce regime change on others. When has it ended well after US meddling? Would the average Iraqi or Libyan prefer what they had pre western enforced change, or what they've had since? How did it go on Afghanistan? Years of war, displacements, etc, and back where they started. I bet they're dead grateful for that.

I think it's fair to say that neither of us know how the average Iranian feels, or what they want. They probably want this regime gone, but not, I suspect, at the expense of foreign (US) interference and/or instability. Would I prefer to see the Iranian regime replaced, absolutely, but we've seen time and time before how it goes when the US enforce regime change. There'll be al sorts of fallout and instability - look at Libya and Iraq as examples. In short, there shouldn't be enforced regime change in this way. There also shouldn't have been killings of kids, and the indiscriminate response from Iran. There's also a sad irony of the military being used to do this being under the control of two appalling leaders who lead pretty messed up regimes. The wider picture is why Israel and the US want a compliant Iran. Whilst they want to be safe at the hands of the proxies, understandably, another way of putting that is that they don't want any armed opposition to the IDF. If the Iranian regime are toppled and Iran weakened, which seems likely, I'd bet you a pound to a penny that Israel's expansion will go up a notch.

You're an angry chap mate. Calm it. You're clear in your own head only.

Oh, you weren't clear in saying that this was Iranian fire in your view. Blimey. So no chance it was Israeli, whether deliberately or inadvertently?

Biased, no, just not so naive as to believe that the US are protecting it's interests and/or acting in the interests of the Iranian people. It staggers me that people buy that nonsense. The US and Israel together, in this mood, make the world a more dangerous place than Iran do imo. Other views are available.

To be fair, I think that was to be his role. Hopefully Stewart will be ready for next time.

You were waffling as per so it wasn't easy to see the wood for the trees. Thanks for clarifying. If the Iranians strike a school, I assume you'll give them the same benefit of the doubt.

Yep. Although we all wanted a back 4, it was clear we couldn't put a credible one out there with what we had. Great that he's back.