littleyellowbirdie

The alleged offences date back to between 2010 and 2015. It's not just the tax question apparently, but also the electoral declaration. FWIW, I don't like this weaponisation of fairly trivial offences for political purposes, but the door was opened to it when Tommy Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon was put in prison for a false mortgage declaration without much public objection, and even positive approval in many cases.

https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-angela-rayner-accused-of-why-deputy-labour-leader-is-being-investigated-and-what-shes-said-13115839

Very interesting piece on Wikipedia sourced from Hamas health ministry press releases. ****** As of February 29th, the Gaza Health Ministry stated that its daily tallies now rely upon "a combination of accurate death counts from hospitals that are still partially operating, and on estimates from media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza", but did not "cite or say which sources those are."[14] On March 31st, it stated that 15,070 fatalities (45.8% of the then total) had been compiled via "reliable media sources" instead of direct reporting.[15][16] The Ministry further clarified in reports made on April 1st and April 4th that it had “incomplete data” for 12,263 (later reduced 11,371) of its 33,091 reported fatalities.[17][18] ********* I think that raises a lot of questions over the accuracy, and that's before you subtract whatever number is actually Hamas.

I think you have to question these assertions of Wagner's deficiencies. He did a comprehensive job of promotion and survival at Huddersfield, which is by no means a big club and during that time there was no issues on flexibility. Then again, this last game we saw him make a game-changing substitute, probably due to having an uninjured game-changing player on the bench. I sometimes think people believe managers should be magicians, but they can only do their best with the players at their disposal.

You've got to feel for Vaulks, Hackney, and Rathbone in the bottom right of the graph. It's like having a grade card with A for effort and E for achievement.

Well, he wasn't beheaded; looks like Saudi's heading the right way!

Yes, agreed. I can only speak for why it agitates me, but it's actually less about the attacks and more about the unwillingness to allow open discussion of the underlying problems and the reluctance of politicians to really engage in the most important discussions for fear of stoking division, or maybe being accused of stoking division. There are some disturbingly permissive attitudes to some pretty extreme views that are all on the pathway to the sort of radicalisation that leads to the London Bridge attacks etc where there's still little evidence of much being addressed. What people want when something happens is to see steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. With regard to the stabbing yesterday, nobody is going to hesitate to have a robust discussion about the state of the Australian mental health services and what could have been done better to prevent the guy becoming so deranged that he'd do what he did. With regard to Islamic terrorism though, there has been some discussion about pathways to radicalisation, but the engagement from Islamic communities regarding seeking to tackle burgeoning extremism in their own midsts, it seems to me at least, has been pretty poor and less than pro-active. There was an incident in 2015 where Eric Pickles wrote a letter on the subject of fighting radicalisation addressed to the Muslim community that was was met with a lot of umbrage. This response in the Guardian was especially interesting and made an especially interesting point; it argued that pretty much everything he was arguing was right, but he personally didn't have the capital to say it. The article's below https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/25/eric-pickles-letter-to-mosques-right-and-wrong Personally, that article's view sums up what's wrong: In an open society, it should not matter a jot who's saying it if the arguments are fair, and actually arguing that people should be discouraged from talking because they're 'not the right person to be saying it' is inherently divisive. He was talking about exactly the problem that bothers me and many other people; the automatic reflex was to try and shut him down, presumably because he was a fat middle-aged white government minister. That's not right. There are so-called Muslim community leaders. I don't understand how that works, but if they're supposedly leaders then they should be stepping up, thinking and engaging constructiively rather than flouncing off in a huff because they take umbrage because someone wants to talk to them about why Islam in the UK keeps throwing up a relatively large number of radicals who are a danger to the public and, who more disturbingly were often born in the UK.

Yes, and why do we still know so little in comparison to what happened yesterday, where terrorism was ruled out comparatively quickly? It's notable that they're being a lot slower to comment.

While I think of it, this guy's an Iranian Professor of History in New York. I like his commentary.

Perfectly right and proper to let the investigation run its course. Who wants trial by media when something's under formal investigation?

Absolutely. The argument that people shouldn't be agitated about Islamic terrorism, which is the most frequent form of these events seems akin.to not bothering with road traffic safety because people don't just die on the roads.But having said that, it should be proportional. The fact that there are clearly issues in Islamic communities in Western countries that leads to ready radicalisation, and the fact that it's perfectly acceptable for everybody to demand that they get their houses in order, does not in any way amount to wishing anyone harm, or even not wanting them to be protected from harm, simply because they subscribe to Islam. Everyone does need to get along when push comes to shove.

Not whataboutery at all. You were waxing lyrical about the pitfalls of prejudgement, so I was highlighting an example of you prejudging something where you also dug in hard against the suggesion of reserving judgement given the Israelis were refuting it, which actually they haven't done very often over events in this war, and only a handful of times in the past have they actually been found to be lying. That doppler piece you're citing predates the HRW evaluation that concluded it most likely a faulty Hamas rocket I provided by a month, so will have been accounted for in the evaluation. You should bear in mind that just because it may not agree with what the IDF was suggesting doesn't mean the IDF was either lying or that it wasn't a Palestinian misfired rocket that hadn't been fired off from somewhere else nearby. I don't know what other evidence they used, but in summary they did conclude that it probably wasn't Israeli.

So can funding multiple terrorist groups to attack you. And let's not forget that the Iranian record on the sanctity of embassies isn't great either let alone the fact that they don't recognise Israel diplomatically anyway. With that said, it's clear Iran wanted to make a grand gesture without actually wanting it to succeed. There's pressure from us and the US for Israel not to take it further, but actually I think it'll be the lobbying of the likes of Jordan that counts the most in this instance.

Absolutely was oil related, yup. Iran nationalised its oil industry, which was up until then operated by private investors, doing over the investors in the process.So in one sense the Shah dug his own grave by alienating his allies.

You and your buddies are in the habit of presenting your very one-sided opinions like they're cast iron facts rather than points open to discussion. If you do that, then inevitably the rebuttals are liable to adopt the same approach.

It's one element, but I'm not even sure it can be called a root any more; erase Israel tomorrow and you'd still have massive conflict driven by Sunni/Shia enmity. The foreign policy of Arab nations is no longer simply to clan up against israel; there's a lot of intelligent diplomacy going on, such as that which had Jordan shooting down Iranian drones, that has given them influence in discouraging an Israeli escalation against Iran and also resulted in Jordan being given the green light to air drop aid into Gaza, where by the way the food situation is already improving. The Muslim/Jew hatred thing is one for the uneducated Muslim plebs in the Middle East and the ones we've been unlucky enough to import who wander around our streets inciting Egypt to go to war with Israel and screaming death to Jews on the back of October 7th. And their Western leftie friends of course.

We're not involved directly though. We sell stuff to Israel for money, we protect shipping as a nation heavily dependent on global trade, and we've used missiles to prevent the escalation of a conflict that will send oil prices through the roof when the cost of energy is already a problem .

I've just watched Fallout on Amazon, which I found very amusing. A nice blend of cynism, humour, and sometimes absurdity.

It is a lot more an ally than Iran though, who foment most of the trouble in the Middle East, and that, in reality is more about their own imperial ambitions, as demonstrated by the fact that they conduct a shadow war against Saudi Arabia as well as Israel, which no doubt has been a factor in Saudi Arabia contemplating security cooperation with Israel.

Let's not jump to conclusions.

Wagner has promotion and subsequent survival on his CV from Huddersfield. That's a big tick in his favour if we do get promotion this season, especially given that Huddersfield had never been more than Championship strugglers before that. Add to that the squad's obvious support and willingness to work for him, it's hard to imagine why the club hierarchy would want to change. Equally, if we're not promoted, given we're probably going to be unable to keep hold of a lot of important players, there's no reason not to start afresh with a new manager and a clean slate, unless Wagner has shown enough the second half of the season that key players can be convinced to stay to give it another go, in which case he'd also have to stay.

Gillingham. I don't follow them as closely as Norwich, but I like to keep an eye on them, having been born in the Medway Towns.

Iran itself is a habitual human rights violator. It doesn't observe fair trial, habitually detains without charge, kidnaps foreign citizens, has held hostages in embassies, storms embassies,,oppresses women in the most brutal way possible, has destabilised the region in many ways not just down to relations with Israel, but also instigating Yemen's conflict with Saudi Arabia through funding of the Houthis in its prosecution of a Shia/Sunni political fight for religious political domination in the region. It's also a sworn enemy of the USA; there's just no universe where the US would give up a valuable ally like Israel in the region for the sake of the Palestinians, especially if we're admitting that Israel is a nuclear weapons state. Iran is just stupid. It's a big resource-rich country that could be very wealthy, that has instead sought to dominate its neighbours, much like Russia, for a vain nostalgic throwback to its historical imperial dominance and religious megalomania courtesy of Khomenei. At the end of the day, all of the people who make a big thing about the Palestinians single this out, while content to largely ignore swathes of massive human rights violations the world over: Nigeria, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, the list goes on. The Palestinians are a fetish. They made their bed; Iran is using them as a tool now and they're going along with it willingly. We can't stop that. But also, while the left have another fetish of hating the USA, behind European peace is the US' commitment to Western European stability driven by its interests in the Cold War that was also the chief driver for expanding the European community to eastern Europe. Sadly, the US is becoming more isolationist and could even finish up leaving NATO if Trump is elected, which will mean it's down to Europe to assure its own security. I've heard it suggested that Eastern Europe may have to pursue a nuclear weapons strategy in the face of the Russian threat. I wouldn't want to make an enemy of Israel because I happen to like them anyway, but only an idiot would want to actively estrange them as allies for the sake of a non-existent Palestine that would take it's place, most likely as a brutal shia Islamist theocracy.

Not launching their nuclear weapons, apparently. I still don't understand why they don't just declare they have them; nuclear non-proliferation is dead.

Well no. I remember it well because it followed not long after a lecture from Well B back about what could be believed. Over that event, there were two accounts: The Israeli and the Hamas one. You chose to believe the Hamas one before there was any evidence. That's fact and you doubled down against me suggesting reserving judgement that Israel might be telling the truth. And you were since shown to be most likely wrong. Which is exactly the behaviour you're getting so high and mighty about here.