Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Picked this up across the road. Even if you could comply, who would want to?


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-29/state-department-demand-us-visitors-turn-over-social-media-history

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the biter bit, and he doesn't like it :-)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/31/mcdonnell-calls-for-lord-sugar-to-delete-corbyn-hitler-tweet?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=269613&subid=8674302&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Many a true word spoken in jest Corbyn pic.twitter.com/tzI3P6LyIx

from today's Times headers ......

Labour has been lost to fools and crackpots
My party is led by a man who prefers to entrench division on every occasion instead of searching for common ground



France paralysed as unions revive the spirit of 1968
Fear of nationwide protests before the anniversary of the May 1968 uprising is gripping the Élysée Palace with strikes spreading across the public and private sectors as President Macron seeks to reform the French economy

====================

good reasons to bring back the spirit of derek hatton, red robbo, arthur scargill and the other marxist wreckers

.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/31/mcdonnell-calls-for-lord-sugar-to-delete-corbyn-hitler-tweet

thanks max ..... of course, lord sugar used to be a labour supportere but resigned from that in 2015

i think the mock-up is actually very sharp satire and amused me much, though clearly not the labour hierarchy
it'll certainly have red fred hopping about :-)

Russia says Britain must cut over 50 diplomats as spy crisis deepens

Sputnik
Mikhail KLIMENTYEV

Russia says it did not unleash the diplomatic war with the West

Russia said on Saturday that Britain had to reduce its diplomatic staff by more than 50 more people as a crisis in ties between Moscow and the West escalated over the nerve agent attack on a former spy.

The new measures came after 23 British diplomats left Russia earlier this month and are seen as Moscow's punishment after Britain's allies expelled Russian diplomats over the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an English city.

"Russia suggested parity. The British side has more than 50 more people," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told AFP.

On Friday, Moscow summoned British ambassador Laurie Bristow, giving London a month to cut the number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain.

He was summoned along with the heads of diplomatic missions from 23 other countries who were told that some of their diplomats had to leave, in the biggest wave of tit-for-tat expulsions in recent memory.

Bristow had been handed a protest note over the "provocative and unfounded actions of the British side which instigated the unwarranted expulsion of Russian diplomats from a variety of states," the Russian foreign ministry said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said on Saturday: "We are considering the implication of the measures announced yesterday by the Russian foreign ministry."

The Foreign Office had said it regretted the most recent developments but insisted Russia was the culprit.

"This doesn't change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable," it said.

More than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations.

On Friday, Russia expelled diplomats from 23 countries -- most of them EU member states -- in retaliation against the West.

France, Germany, Canada and Poland each said that Russia was expelling four of their diplomats.

Other countries including Australia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania and Norway were also told to pull their envoys.

- Russians set to leave US -

In the United States, 60 Russian diplomats expelled by Washington prepared Saturday to leave the country.

In total, 171 people -- diplomats which Washington alleges are "spies" and their families -- were set to leave the United States, Moscow's envoy Anatoly Antonov told Russian reporters in Washington.

The Russian government provided two planes for the evacuation and one of them will make a brief stopover in New York to collect 14 families, he added, according to TASS state news agency.

US media showed footage of a Russian government plane on the tarmac at Washington's Dulles airport, apparently getting ready to take the expelled Russians home.

Britain has said it is "highly likely" that Russia was responsible for the Skripal attack using the Novichok nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, but Russia has angrily denied any involvement.

Britain has suspended high-level diplomatic contact with Moscow and said it would not be sending any members of its royal family to the 2018 football World Cup hosted by Russia.

Russia responded by expelling 23 British diplomats, closing a British consulate in Saint Petersburg and halting the activities of the British Council educational and cultural organisation.

- Access to Yulia Skripal -

Britain said Saturday it was considering Moscow's request for consular access to Yulia Skripal, while taking into account her wishes.

The 33-year-old came out of critical care on Thursday and was "improving rapidly", said Salisbury District Hospital.

She is now in a "stable" condition -- with the BBC reporting that she was conscious and talking.

"We are considering requests for consular access in line with our obligations under international and domestic law, including the rights and wishes of Yulia Skripal," a Foreign Office spokeswoman told AFP.

Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in a critical but stable condition.

Skripal sold secrets to Britain and moved there in a 2010 spy swap. His daughter was visiting from Russia.

The Tories are s. scared of Corbyn and showing it with every smear.

When the effect of the fascist-led tory Brexit hits before the next election it will be interesting to watch public opinion.

Manuel and Max will need to emigrate to protect their ill-gotten gains.

I reckon it won't be very long now before the government issue advice to tourists, telling them to be extremely careful visiting Russia and if possible, to put off the visit. This is because tourists would have great difficulty getting reasonably good diplomatic representation in the event of them getting into any kind of trouble.

Our soccer team need fans for support and encouragement, particularly so in the forthcoming World Cup matches in Russia.

With such massive weakening of diplomatic support for UK citizens in Russia, I also think the government is not too far from advising football fans not to attend Russia for the World Cup. Once this happens they won't be able to get good and proper travel insurance.

So no travel insurance and no diplomatic support translates into a high potential for negligible England World Cup soccer support. And the same advice also translates into players and the whole support squad, media staff and the like also suffering from the same sorts of problem.

The World cup is doomed, I tell you. Doomed!

(cough, cough)

predictably, it didn't take red fred long to defend his idol .... shame he isn't equally keen to condemn him when deserved

Manuel,

How many black skirts do you have?

Are you a sign-up member of the BNP or UKIP?

I sometimes wonder.

i don't wear a skirt; do you?

you neither question nor truly wonder about anything, let alone anything that might target corbyn and his acolytes
and why would i be a member of ukip, let alone bnp?

more to the point - why do you choose to align yourself with your marixt hero corbyn?
while there might be much to applaud in centre-left politics, the hard left, militant and marxist element of the labour party, to which corbyn patently belongs, has little to commend it, other than economic and social disaster further down the line - as history has shown, and not just in uk

Perhaps you should try a skirt.

I don't think I have aligned myself with Corbyn.

But as per usual you jump to too many false conclusions.

But do try the BNP or UKIP as they will probably accept you with open arms.

Much of you mailings seem to align yourself with their "ideals".

you align yourself with corbyn no more than corbyn aligns himself with christine shawcroft and len mccluskey

and according to you in other posts, i seemingly have no ideals

The last is a fair assumption!

Actually, I think the tory press and others suffering from phobias are trying to make mountains out of molehills.

The last is a fair assumption!

Actually, I think the tory press and others suffering from phobias are trying to make mountains out of molehills.

i confess i cannot make up my mind about this anti-semitic furore

certainly i think corbyn's support of hamas and hezbollah is disgraceful in the extreme

however, in very simplistic terms, i think the palestinians have a right to at least a degree of self-determination ..... but similarly, israel also has a right to exist, which goes completely against the creed of hezbollah and probably hamas too

interestingly, egypt is a major trading partner pf israel's

In the past, I have had friendships with individuals I disagreed fundamentally with.

We didn't seem to contaminate or denigrate one another.

Talking to the enemy has often avoided or reduced the amount of bloodshed at a later date.

Perhaps I am deaf to some Jewish "abuses", but it seems to me that I am more aware of more Islamophobia, anti-Christian rhetoric, "Europhobia" and other nationalistic jingoism than anti-Semitism.

Again, the arguments are often against the action of the Israeli government, which is elected by and is "representative" of the people of that state, and not against broad Jewish people and "culture".

But the M.E. as a whole seems a b. mess and not simply due to the "b.arabs".
(edited)

=-=-=-=

JC, I think believes in a representative form of leadership, rather than a belief that because he was elected leader of a party that he has become omniscient and should "direct" his party in the ways he thinks it should act.

He prefers conversion rather than coercion.

Democracy has its problems.

so did neville chamberlain ..... not intended quite as unpleasantly as i am sure it comes across

A tory leader wasn't he?

But my guess is that during the period of appeasement the legs were working below the water trying to prepare for what was to come.

Mind if they had had a sensible organisation like the EU, that disaster may have been averted.

Look up at the stars and not down to your feet all the time.

(Preparation for running away all the time.)