sadoldgit

This is the problem though Weston, you don’t think. If you did you wouldn’t respond with so much drivel. It sounds like Sunak has nicked Labour’s plan to bring in an anti smoking policy. Just heard Penny Mordaunt’s speech from the conference. For someone trying to position herself as less barking mad than the rest of her colleagues she took a massive step backwards. Maybe all that sword bearing at the coronation has addled her brain? What is is with all the stand up and fight rhetoric? (Wrong thread 😩)

Indeed. The point was made that if they had started in Manchester they wouldn’t now be cancelling the Birmingham to London section. I remember when the plan was launched the focus was on the time shaved from travel to and from London but as we are hearing now, the benefits would have been widespread. https://midlandsengine.org/news-events/true-benefits-of-hs2-revealed/ Sunak is desperate to find something to fight a campaign on. The non existent war against the motorists, supposed “wokery”, the supposed threat to us all from trans people, the supposed hurricane of migrants (are they now going to be trafficked across the Channel by huge wind machines?), smoking (is that really what we all worry about all day?). He can’t fight on the major issues of the day because he and his Party are either responsible for them or have been mismanaging them for years. A commentator said yesterday that he is desperately playing the “looking at the future” card because he knows that the opposition is going after him on the mishandling of the past. Why on earth would you trust the Tories with another 5 years (although some will 🙄) after the clusterfuck of the last 13 years? That is their best shot! The timing of the Partygate film was excellent but his defence of the indefensible will be that he is focussed on the future. I don’t think many will forget that he was also hit with a fine, though not in the thousands like many of us normal people. Nor will forget the ridiculous Eat Out To Help Out campaign that costs millions and helped spread the virus further or that he was a senior part of one of the most incompetent governments in history. If Starmer can keep a lid on his party’s own internal divisions and present a stable and competent alternative he should be on for a landslide next year. We should also see a reemergence of the LibDems as a political force at the expense of some of these horrendous people in what have been safe Tory seats. The Tories look set to implode as the incompetent but almost presentable right faction fight the crazy as a box of frogs far right faction for control of the party. Given that Sunak’s pledge about bringing back integrity to his Party lasted about 30 seconds and that his colleagues have no problem using gutter tactics on a Trumpian level, it looks like it could be the dirtiest campaign on record this side of the Atlantic. If Sunak had a shred of decency he would go to the country now so we have a year less of this suffering. Given that he was beaten by a colleague who didn’t last as long as a lettuce though he will cling on as long as possible in the vain hope that something will happen to help bail him out of a hopeless position.

Even you should understand that it is not illegal to seek asylum when migrants arrive. They only become “illegal” if they don’t seek asylum and disappear. Many of them have to cross the channel as there are so few “legal” routes open to them. Sunak also talked about Starmer’s alleged “legal” migration numbers which he poured scorn on. Show me the bit in his speech where he said he welcomes migrants (even though we need them). You know, like his parents. His voice irritates me too. He sounds like a effete vicar talking to an ever dwindling and disinterested congregation. Even Mad Liz managed to drum up more enthusiasm from her audience, although granted, they are all crazy as a box of frogs.

Things are getting more bizarre today. Mrs Sunak is being used as the warm up act for her husband’s conference speech and in doing so references how his migrant parents came here and built a successful life. Isn’t that an example of multiculturalism working and of migrants being a good thing? Someone should have told Braverman before her speech.

The number of outright lies is so depressing. What is even more depressing is that people still defend these people and vote for them. When you use your major conference to say that you know what a woman is you know they are scraping the bottom of the barrel (although it will appeal to the hard of thinking). We also have the Tory candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, trying to tell us that the Jewish community feel threatened by Sadiq Khan. Even when several high profile Jewish community leaders come out and say that is not true, she doubles down on her statement. For those who pretend that this Tory Party isn’t lurching to the right, you only have to look at Patel and Farage (yes, the man wearing Union Jack socks at the Tory Conference) dancing together or listen to Patel bigging up GB News (which is not a news service, it is a campaigning mouthpiece for the far right). If you want some idea of what has happened to the Conservative Party, perhaps read Rory Stewart’s new book. When the Tories get kicked out at the next election, watch them turn even further right as the few moderates left will disappear. Jenrick now saying we need to have more babies. Not so long ago we were told not to have babies if we couldn’t afford them. Isn’t the argument about the migrants that we can’t take so many because we are full up as a country? If childcare is already a problem for many how is going to have more babies going to work? It almost as if they have completely run out of ideas and are just plucking stuff out of thin air to make it look like they haven’t.

Will, are you an incel by any chance? Go do some research about how vulnerable many women feel when they are around men they don’t know, and some they do. Go look at the figures for rape and sexual assault. Go look at the figures for domestic abuse. It is quite possible to be wary of the threat they carry whilst not hating the whole gender. Did she mention that she wouldn’t shag anyone in the panel during her interview? No of course not. Your efforts to try and pretend that somehow his comments were okay because you think hers were not haven’t worked mate. Whatever her views on men, during the interview it seemed to me that she was just trying to balance up the discussion. Are men’s mental health issues really more of a concern than women’s to the extent that they should have their own minister? Of course not. She also made the point that women’s suicide rates would be much higher but they have a lower success rate. Does that make their issues less of a concern? Fox’s comments were indefensible and embarrassing by well done for trying. He and the people who support him are one of the reasons who woman have problems with men.

I watched the interview and didn’t see her laugh at male suicide rates. I also don’t think that stating that there should be a minister for mental health (all sexes) instead of a minister for men makes you a man hater. Fighting for women’s rights does not make you are man hater. So no, not really a tough one at all. If Fox had issues with anything she had to say about the issues being discussed then he should address those issues, not focus on her sexual attractiveness or otherwise. Incredible that we are still wandering into the “9 Pinter” territory in 2023.

Why doesn’t it surprise me that you have a problem with people who don’t want themselves or others, including children, run over by people going about their daily lives by breaking the speed limit. Actually it does surprise me given the fuss you made about Ray Wilkins and his drink driving issue. Very selective about which laws you think it is okay to break and which ones it is not okay to break. Very Farage of you Duckie. I find it incredibly sad that grown men with children and grand children think it is perfectly okay to break the speed limit in residential areas. [For the two “confused” posters - emojis below - I am referring to Duckie’s comments about about the speed check we did in our village and those who supported his comments]

There have been discussions about bringing in 20mph limits around schools for years. The likelihood of dying or serious injuries being hit by a car at 20mph is significantly reduced and the extra braking distance helps to avoid the possibility of a collision in the first place. Unfortunately a great many people already drive over 30mph in 30mph zones anyway. We carried out a speed check on cars travelling through our village a couple of years ago and the average was around 35mph. If it helps bring the average speed down even if it doesn’t achieve 20mph it will still help. I can’t see it happening though. Sunak seems to think that people care more about the supposed “war on motorists”, ULEZ and canning HS2 than they do about the cost of living crisis, the winter fuel bills, high mortgages, crumbling schools and the state of the NHS. You can expect him to make a big deal about scraping plans for 20mph zones as part of his cunning plan to deflect from the mess his party have already made of the country.

Another misleading bit of red meat thrown out by Braverman to whip the gammons into a frenzy shown to be a lie. I’m sure Batman must be busy otherwise he would have posted this earlier. 🤔 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/28/braverman-ethnicity-child-grooming-gangs-false-mail-on-sunday

Don’t worry, they are only going to be worn in the warm up. No doubt some will still complain that it will detract from our focus on the match in some way though 🙄

Nothing wrong with campaigning for equality, unless you don’t agree with it of course. It really doesn’t matter what the shirt looks like, the whole point is to raise the issue and get people talking about it, which this is doing.

My point is that this is not an isolated issue. We have senior government officials who think it is perfectly ok to lie and spout racist rhetoric. We have large parts of our media which support these lies and the racist rhetoric. The Sun used to be the low bench mark but it has been super ceded by the Mail, Express and Telegraph who are happy to trot out and support this rubbish daily. Sexual offences are through the roof and not being prosecuted. Hate crimes are climbing. We are being bombarded with a view that we should be scornful of people who are fleeing persecution but feel sorry for others who can afford to send their children to public school and are being asked to pay more. There are more and more reports of the country being “broken” so sticking your head in the sand and pretending that everyting is fine (when you are ok yourself, so why worry?) seems a bit lame to be honest. It’s a bit hard to get excited about news stories of a nice sunny day in September or looking at pictures of baby bunnies when the leader of a party who will contest the next election denigrates a women by claiming on a national news programme that no one would shag her (and although few people would have seen the original interview but it is main news now). When yet another male celebrity is called out for sexual assault. When our Home Secretary makes official speeches that most people would describe as racist in nature if made by a person with white skin. When one of the main high profile projects in levelling up is now in doubt. When young people cannot afford housing and the rental sector cannot cope with the numbers. Strikes are continuing to cripple the country. The NHS has a record waiting list and people are finding it hard to get to see a doctor in the first place. Another teenager has just been stabbed to death this morning. The rivers and seas around the coast are still being polluted with effluent. Our government is rowing back on green issues because they think there are votes in it for them. I could go on with hard evidence that the country is going down the pan but I am now going to look at a picture of a puppy instead and apparently then all will be well 😎

GB News and Laurence Fox sink to a new low. https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/breaking-gb-news-issues-urgent-31036747.amp What is happening to this country? Rupert Murdoch might be standing down from his position as chief purveyor of crap to the public but his legacy lives on.

The dreadful woman has completely managed to trash the success of multiculturalism that led to her, the daughter of immigrants, rising to a senior cabinet position and serving a Prime Minister who is also the benefactor from immigration. She also managed to repeat the lie that asylum seekers have to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive at. No they do not and have not had to following the Refugee Convention in 1951. No doubt this is a grandstanding stunt aimed at currying favour with the gammons ahead of a leadership bid when Sunak gets kicked out.

I think that he was expressing a little annoyance. Anyway, the little annoyance I have today is the right wing media kicking off about Labour’s plan to apply 20% vat to private school fees. Don’t they tell us if you can’t afford children, don’t have them? Perhaps they should extend that argument to if you can’t afford to send your children to private school, then don’t?* *Unashamedly pinched from the James O’Brien LBC show this morning.

I would imagine it is to try and give justice to the parents and family of the child. If I was one of the parents of the babies that there was no verdict given, I would feel let down by the process. They wouldn’t bring another prosecution if they didn’t think that there was a reasonable chance of a verdict.

That’s the thing though egg, these types of allegations play out through social media all of the time. There were Phillip Schofield stories flying about on social media long before the news broke in the main stream. There is a social media site, not Mumsnet, mainly populated by women that carries loads of stories about celebs, politicians, sports stars, influencers etc daily. The current threads about Brand would make your toes curl. How much of it is true I have no idea but there are people there claiming to have sex with him or friends of people who have had sex with him washing their dirty linen in public. There was a lot of rumours about Dan Wooten behaviour on there months before the news broke in the mainstream. Some of this stuff goes back years. I’m amazed that the place hasn’t been sued out of existence given some of the stuff they publish from people. As for not being a sex addict, no me neither, which is just as well as I wouldn’t be able to do much about it!

This is the thing though egg, I get addiction although I don’t have an addictive personality myself thankfully. I know people addicted to smoking, drinking and gambling. What I don’t get is Brand’s particular brand of sex addiction which only seems to extend to exceptionally attractive women and excludes normal looking women or what Duckie would class as 9 pinters. Surely if you were addicted to sex you would take it where you would get it? His sex addiction seems to be more about feeding his own ego rather than just getting off, which he can do with porn or anybody but only seems to target a certain type of look to scratch his itch. Two are based in the US. One has just come forward from the UK and the girl who was 16 at the time is from the UK and was forced to have oral sex against her will which would count as sexual assault if they decide to prosecute.

I have only just seen this so although I have probably covered it in another post it is probably worth making my point yet again. I am sure that you understand that juries are human and prone to error. I have previously mentioned one of the biggest of all, OJ Simpson’s squirrel of double murder. You may have a strong case but if the prosecutor doesn’t make it well and the defence barrister manages to muddy the water enough to cast doubt in the juries minds you can easily not get the verdict. This has nothing to do with proper justice, it is part of the vagaries of what can never be a perfect system. You can protest someone’s innocence all you like because they got a favourable verdict in court but it doesn’t mean to say that they didn’t actually do what they were charged with. Defence lawyers might actually believe their client could be guilty but they have a job to defend them and to get them off. it is particularly difficult to get a verdict in a sexual assault case. Once upon a time the defendant just used to claim it wasn’t them. DNA and improved forensics have put paid to that. Now it is all about consent. The defence will go out of their way to destroy the reputation of the victim. She was willing. She has a history of this sort of thing. You get the picture. This was what happened in the second Evans trial when the “new evidence” provided had nothing to do with the case and argued, unsuccessfully by the CPS barrister, that it should not have been allowed. The CPS believed that both Evans and his chum were guilty of rape according to the law as it stands. The verdict of the second jury does not change anything other than the prosecutors were not able to effectively combat the “new evidence” effectively enough. I’ll remind you again that this evidence came about because Evans’s soon to be father in law put up a large sum of money for people to come forward with information that might help their case. The CPS believed that the two new witnesses were primed by the Evans’s and that the evidence was tainted. Not getting the verdict doesn’t mean that the prosecutors were wrong. A jury’s verdict is no more definitive than VAR and is liable to the same human error. If the system was a fail safe as you would like to believe there would never be any miscarriages of justice. If a jury told you that Nathan Jones was our best ever manager, according to you we would all have to agree. It is entirely possible to respect the system without agreeing with the final outcome. Of course Brand is innocent until found guilty if any of these cases go to court. It doesn’t mean that he hasn’t actually raped or sexually assaulted anyone though. The women who have come forward so far certainly believe that is what has happened to them.

I agree that, legally, as it stands at the moment, he has not been found guilty of rape or sexual assault in a court of law. That doesn’t minimise the experiences of the woman who have given testimony so far and the new ones who have come forward. It could well be that none of these accusations go to court but that doesn’t mean that he actually has not raped or sexually assaulted anyone. Given the low rates of rape and sexual assault cases that either make it to court in the first place or end up with a successful prosecution, there are many rapists and sexual assault perpetrators walking the streets today that have managed to avoid justice. I need to back track on my original posts. When the story first broke as the main news event on the BBC the other night I was of the opinion that Brand was no longer a major player and the story should have been further down the news order. What I didn’t realise was that he is still around and has 6.6m followers on YouTube. I didn’t realise that he has now shifted to the right and is peddling the anti Pharma conspiracy theories to his fan base and has the likes of Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and now Katie Hopkins coming out in support (MLT soon no doubt). Their narrative is that the establishment want him silenced because of his views. Forget about these alleged victims of sexual assault, he and they would have us believe it is part of the big conspiracy. Hogwash. This about his alleged conduct with these women,possible criminal behaviour and the BBC were right to make a big deal about it as it falls right into the same area in the way that Savile was left to also operate “in plain sight” because he was famous and a big media personality. No one is untouchable no matter how big their egos. Even if it goes to court and he is found not guilty on all counts, there is another issue here of abuse of power and influence. We have seen it with Weinstein, to a lesser extent with Schofield, with Spacey and now Brand. People with massive egos who use their position to hit on people for sex or groom starstruck individuals for their own needs. No, it isn’t illegal if they have consent, but even when they don’t they have the money and lawyer power to shut people down with gagging orders of threats of legal action. As has been mentioned, the “talent” (that is the golden geese) need to be pandered to and no one else matters. He is already playing the victim and has passed off his behaviour as “addictions”. It doesn’t mean it is okay mate. You are a grown man and you have choices. Before you excuse him again Duckie, perhaps listen to the testimony of 16 year old school girl who he orally raped. There is a victim of his behaviour right there. And while I am on my soap box, your constant referral to Ched Evans shows up your mind set. As the current law of the land stands, if you are incapacitated through drink or drugs you are not capable to consent to sex. Just as you cannot consent to sex if you are under the age of 16. Anyone having sex with someone who falls within these categories is committing rape. In the Evans case with his mate, the victim was proven to be incapacitated through drink/drugs and therefore not in a legally defined state to consent to sexual activity. Perhaps fair game in your mind, but not according to the law. I will leave you with this final thought (a point I have made before). If you walked into a kebab shop and found a single woman there clearly the worse for drink/drugs, would you - a) call a taxi and make sure that she gets home safely or b) call a taxi, take her to a pre booked hotel room, have sex with her, call a mate round who also has sex with her whilst being filmed by other mates at the window, disappear down the fire escape leaving her to her own devices having had your fun and not said a word to her through the whole process? Russell Brand has exactly the same disregard for women as Evans and his mate and it is very depressing to see so many other men (and some women) making excuses for this behaviour. But in Duckie’s view he is somehow a “victim”.

It appears that we have a new law to sit alongside Godwin’s Law. It is called Duckhunter’s Law and it states that any thread that contains a theme of rape or sexual assault must contain a reference to Ched Evans. As you have brought him up, yet again, Ched Evans wasn’t the one who woke up alone and confused in a hotel room with no idea how he got there or what happened to him after being sexually molested by two complete strangers whilst their buddies film them through the hotel room window. Kevin Spacey is clearly a sexual predator and the last thing anyone who listened to the evidence against him would describe him as a “victim”. Tell that to the men he has hit on with unsolicited advances. You don’t seem to have a problem with sexual predators but given that you rate women by the number of pints you would need to drink before you decided to have sex with them, perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise. I am no fan of either Owen Jones or Russell Brand so the chances of me having read that article are zero. Back to Brand. I watched the Dispatches programme this afternoon. Not a great watch. The bloke is clearly a sexual predator and uses multiple women for his own gratification (no Duckie, that doesn’t make him a victim). The clips from his stand up routine show how he used his grooming technique and his spit fetish for laughs. Classy. His sucking up to Jimmy Savile was also unpleasant. Clearly both cut from the same cloth. Still, all is well because everything was “consensual” and anyway, he is a sex addict so that makes it okay because he can’t help himself. Whether he is guilty of sexual offences or not, he comes across as a very unpleasant human being who has turned his worse personality traits into a career.

I guess so. It seems odd though because you would think that the defence would argue that it effects their client’s right to a “ fair trial”. I see that the likes of Andrew Tait, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox and Michael Barrymore have come out in support of Brand. That doesn’t bode well for him!

My point is that characters like him love publicity, good or bad. They thrive on it and he will love being back on a major stage again. Of course he has denied the allegations. What would you expect. Watch now as he tries to become the victim in this. Is being married to Katy Perry something that you put on your CV? How long ago was that? Hollywood? When was the last time he made a movie? Perhaps recently but I can’t remember the last time he had a major film out. He hasn’t been charged with any offence yet. It is time for the accusers to go to the police. I don’t understand why they have gone to the media first.

Back in 2008 he and Jonathan Ross were on his Radio 2 programme and left a number of unsavoury messages on Andrew Sach’s answerphone whilst broadcasting. Brand had briefly dated Sach’s grand daughter and references were made by both of them about the sexual nature of the relationship. Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks and Brand resigned after the outrage. It became known as Sachsgate. He vanished from the mainstream but has it seems still had a career, sadly. I don’t know if he is a conspiracy nutter. I have always found him deeply irritating and tend to switch off when he appears. The BBC led with the story again on the early evening news. I get that they need to report on it given some of these alleged incidents happened when he was employed by them, but I would say that the situation in Libya is currently a bigger story. If he is a sexual predator, maybe these news reports will encourage others to come forward. The downside is though that he will get the oxygen of publicity again, will be back all over mainstream media for a while and has already started to milk it.