An unnamed Pentagon official released that this was the 5th balloon with three during the Trump years and one earlier in Biden's term. Trump and Republicans are denying this. By specifying that Trump and the Republicans are denying it, I assume that means that Biden has confirmed the earlier one in...

It's not a reasonable premise. Victory for Ukraine is regaining all its internationally recognized territory. That's it. Invading Russia is nonsensical fantasy and is not a goal of the Ukrainian government. Complete nonsense, yes. I would lower the bar of Ukrainian victory a bit more, though. An ac...

Well, as I starter for 10 I'd say that signs of a degraded society which may be influenced by porn might include an increase in the breakdown of families, falling fertility rates, rising sexual crime, and an increase in mental health issues. But the extent to which porn has influence over such thing...

So China has floated the least subtle spying device in modern history over mainland USA and the Yanks have publicly grumbled very loudly but taken no real action to speak of.

Any thoughts on what's going on? And why the US haven't taken it down and have a sniff at Chinese surveillance tech?

The main issue with Russia splitting up and nuclear weapons is that we saw what happened in 1994. Ukraine was convinced that security guarenteed from Russia, the US and UK were all they needed to give up their nuclear weapons and sign the non-proliferation treaty. Ukraine were bloody idiots, the UK...

As much as Doom makes some interesting comments regarding this, I very much think we should avoid making the sex industry equivalent to other industries, because it simply isn't. Germany came close to falling into this trap a few years back, when prostitution was legalised and an effort was made to ...

Illegal doesn't work. What you can do is regulate the life out of it. Insist on obvious wearing of condoms for "health and safety", make the buying of it extremely awkward to "protect minors", insist that all US based porn studios employ an advisor on gender equality and dignity in the workplace to ...

I am amazed that terms such as "draft dodger" are still in use in the US, especially as a criticism over avoiding bloody stupid wars like Vietnam. If Trump and Bush did indeed find a cunning way to avoid that conflict it was likely the best decision they ever made and is more a sign of their suitabi...

So the other thought of this OP was do you think there is any agenda by the US or NATO to see Russias total collapse in this war? I doubt it. There may be a few elderly generals still around with dreams of crushing the old enemy, but the reality is that the total collapse of Russia isn't something ...

If the flag of Luxembourg flew over Moscow, would anyone notice it'd changed?

Fair enough. Cheers for the clarification

Most likely outcome, Ukraine sits by while Russia disentigrates, until a strong man rises to replace Putin. That is a rather optimistic outlook. If Russia does disintegrate it seems more likely that we'd end up with several rival unpredictable nuclear powers with chips on their shoulders and little...

They don't. There is no pathway to such an eventuality. Western support would cease at the first hint of it, and a Russian victory would likely follow. Besides which if Ukraine were to somehow move forces against any Russian cities Kiev would find itself wiped off the map.

Major, you're still with us! Top tip for strawberries... Raised platforms around 4ft high, and if you don't want to be fancy you can plant them straight into grow bags. Keeps most of slugs away (not sure what Australian slugs are like, but based on the rest of the country I imagine they can jump and...

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I think Jamie is fundamentally wrong on whatever the subject of this thread turns out to be. I'd also like to say the same thing again but using slightly different words in an effort to give the argument some weight.

It's probably worth defining what you mean by homeless (by common definitions used by UK charities in order to make the problem look larger than it really is, I was homeless for quite some time. And it was a pretty great time, for that matter, during which I needed no additional help and was very ha...

Surely there is a TV series about you already? It just airs on Nickelodeon, rather than Netflix ;-) (I'm joking Brain, hope you are doing well!). You say that, but brainbomb is infinitely more entertaining when things are going tits up. And everything going generally well doesn't lend itself to tel...

VillageIdiot wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 19, 2023 6:38 am

I'm back! What did I miss?

Balki's been having far too much fun

Don't ever change, Jamie

Now let us continue with this gloriously irrelevant waste of time!

With all due respect, Ireland has always been something of an anomaly as far as politics goes. No other nation, to my knowledge, has managed to create a system with two dominant parties where both parties are centre - right. I don't think that it makes for a particularly good yardstick to measure Eu...