mattyboy

And bread is full of carbhydrates. Meat is unfairly the trendy people's scrapegoat

I'm not saying he's perfect by any means. However, people often make him out to be war-mongering. I don;t think that is true. By confronting situations head-on rather than pussyfooting around, he has perhaps ironically achieved more in brokering peace agreements than trying to delicately manoeuvre an agreement.

What a dire decision in awarding the penalty. IN no way on a week of Sundays was that a deliberate handball? POint blank range and the ball hit him, rather than him making a movement towards the ball. An if the referee/VAR thought that was a penalty then it should also have been a red card. So in no way could it have been described as a good decision. PLease can we get rid of VAR?

She lied about keeping Matt Hancock's tweets confidential. However, she has said why she lied. Because she felt it was in the public's interest to know more about what was going on with the UK government's dealings over COVID. There is a public enquiry going on after all into COVID. A public enquiry that has shown every sign of being totally one-sided in the subjects it has covering and the groups invited to give evidence. It has shown every sign of being a whitewalling exercise. I'd say it is in every sense a COVID topic. That and the ethics of lying to expose potentially big injustices Certainly mmore so than electoral reform. In what sense whatsoever is electoral reform related to the original post??!! Oh and by the way, I am not a multi-accounter. I have no connection whatsoever to the people on this forjm that may regualrly disagree with what you say. That's a cheap shot. You need to put forward better arguments than that when someone diagrees with what you are saying

The word I used was "nourishing" and not "healthier" Several diets promote the use of lean meat, (particularly steak and chicken), over vegetables. Having said that, lean meat is often seen as healthier than carbohydrates, found in say potatoes and wheat. Green veetables on their own are not substantial, and do little to fill people up

Meat is more nourishing than vegetables though. People ness less meat to fill themselves up

Wasn;t Trump actually the first US president not to declare war against another country since the Seventies?

I totally agree with this statement; it was totally the wrong decision for the BBC to suspend Gary Lineker. I say that as someone who voted for Brexit,. I am totally for free speech, and against authoritarianism. However, I would also add it's a shame how many left-leaning commentators who would say they are all for liberty, behaved in the opposite way during COVID, and when it comes to discussing things such as trans rights, climate change, dissenting voices against positive discriminationm, etc, etc

And it was not misleading to state deaths were casued by COVID, just because people had been assessed as COVID positive not more than 28 days before dying? THe death rate was barely higher than the normal years in the UK throughout COVID, (and well lower than as recently as the early niughties).

How did this thread become a discussion about electoral systems? Wasn;t the orginal topic about whether a journalist leaked contents for financial reasons? She has said it was to expose what happened in the pandemic, which as someone wholeheartedly against lockdown and most COVID restrictions almost from the start, I would totally agree with her statements that it was totally in the public interest to expose what was happening. Some of the Government's behaviour was quite shocking, (along with most other countries worldwide). Matt Hancock was one of the worst offenders amongst the UK govenrment. They have caused untold misery and financial hardshop to many, and lockdowns were a form of abuse, almost identical in it's nature to domestic violence of the mental variety. Quite shocking, frankly. And in no way reminiscient of how givernments had dealt with previous virus outbreaks in the sixties and seventies. All for the aim of suppressing a virus where the average age of death has been virtually in line with the avearge UK life expectancy as a whole. Children were virually in no danger of dying from COVID, nor most adults under fifty. Yet schools were closed, businesses forced to shut for months on end,hospitals and GPs wouldn't see people that had symptoms of ill health, which could have been early signs of cancer, etc, etc. Anyone with dissenting views, (in particualr many medical experts), were censored and silenced, and threatened with losing their job if they spoke out against the government narrative. Whilst SAGE was set up, which was comprised mainly not of viral experts but of people such as behavioural psycholgists whose main aim was publicised to scare people into conforming with lockdowns and other crimes against humanity Absilutely shocking. Yet people here are intent on discussing PR and/or electoral reform, which pales into insignificance relatively, (although it is an important topic, in it's own right).

I adamantly believe that compulsory voting should not exist. EVeryone has the right to not vote at all, if they don't feel any of the parties standing in theuir area deserve theor support.

In the sixties and seventies, I believe the wealth gap decreased. Although I would say that removing absolute poverty is more important than creating less inequality of outcome, (as opposed to opportunities)

I'd say that councils should try and make them a more vibrant place and attractive for people to visit. Which means the opposite of anti-car policies, whilst at the same time investing in public-transport facilities, allowing people to either cannot or would rather not drive into city and large town centres.to do so as conveniently as possible. Instead, lots of councils seem to assume that people have driven the decline in town and city-centres by home shopping, working from home, etc. Rather than thinking this decline in use may quite substantially have been caused by their own policies making them less attractive places to visit or do business in. Of course, national government has hardly helped more recently by instiolling fear in vast swarthes of the population over a long time period, over a virus where the average age of deaths has been in line with the avearge death rate of the UK as a whole. But that is another story.

City centres are meant to be noisy. vibrant places full of life, (and this includes drivers being able to access the city centre - not all shopping involves buying light easy tio handle goods, after all). Plus it is far easier to provide a useful public transport system when most key attractions an area has to provide to its residents and others, are spaced within fairly close vicinity to each other

Haven;t we achieved cleaner air over the last fifty odd years? Electric cars are not the right way forward, in my opinion. Asa petrolhead, I would perhaps say that, but they are certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination when it comes to sustainablility or recycling. I am in favour of trying to create neighbourhoods where going to the shops, school, etc is within easy walking distance - it just seems more convenient and a nice thing to have. But in no way should councils be penalising people. If councils actually encouraged rather than dscouraged local producers and services, eg: by not charging sky-high business rates to local shopkeepers, then they wouldn't feel they had to introduce hare-brained schemes designed to get people out of their car when they have no other real option.