Rayvin

Wow. That might be me sold, actually.

I'll be living in a VR universe with hookers and blackjack in my retirement. Sounds ace.

That does sound challenging.

Yeah but I'm not Catholic now. I retained the guilt but lost the means of working through it I'm just fucked these days.

See, this is what I meant about learning from you guys I know you're right like, it's not my fault. But it's Christmas and I was raised Catholic - I have guilt.

That's a nice idea actually, despite the snark I'll consider it. He's a friend as well tbf.

I was tempted to switch with him but I've got a few things planned already and really, strikes aren't my fault. Still though, if he doesn't get back I'll feel bad about it. I consider my resilience on this issue (that I haven't put my concerns to one side and switched with him) to be something I learned on here. How to be a cold hearted bastard. Learned on TT.

He's just got citizenship. And I did actually apologise because I'm taking the two days before that off work - he's not able to be off at the same time as me which means he can't move his flights. So yeah, felt I should apologise

He's as bad as they are tbf. One of those 'call my parents every day' kind of Greeks.

I have a colleague who is trying to fly back to Greece on Saturday to get home for Christmas but is likely to be at least delayed because of the Swissport strikes. His view is that he understands why it is happening, why they've chosen those days, but feels it is unfortunate that it affects him. That's a pretty solid response given that he might not see his ridiculously family-centric family for Christmas as a result. If he can look at it maturely and judge that people need to do this sometimes to protect their rights, then frankly the PM can fuck off. That said - Swissport look like they've offered the financials that were asked for, so I'm not even certain what the issue is anymore...

Isn't the claim more that all of the information they get is filtered through government bodies/backed institutions? I blame the media for narratives like those espoused by the Ctrl-Left, but not so much on this kind of thing. I do struggle to see where their information is coming from though, given that such a large amount of counter information seems to be out there. As I say, the suggestion appears to be that all of a sudden the Russian propaganda team have become absolute world beaters. You'd think that if they had done that, we'd have upped the ante against Russia to extreme proportions.

In which case, while I don't think we should be selling anything to Saudi at all, it's hard to blame anyone. Although given Saudi's previous, it seems nigh on guaranteed that they'd end up hitting civilians with them.

So we signed up to a provision to prohibit and prevent the use of cluster bombs and then sold them to Saudi anyway. Great. That doesn't look hypocritical at all.

To go back to my original post, my point wasn't 'Assad is misunderstood'. My point was that clearly mistrust of the media is now rampant and is touching far more people than just me and Parky. At what point does this become a failure of the media? Or do we just accept that Russia has played the propaganda blinder of all time? Have to admit to being curious to learn how the UK based SN4HR knows exactly who is killing who, although obviously the government forces will be doing the majority of it since they're the ones making inroads.

I think you're making the right call, personally. Don't cave to peer pressure from Gemmill, he's not the one who'll have to deal with the emotional fall out (if any) and the possibility that watching this film could turn your child over to the dark side in the future

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/dec/18/assad-no-peace-for-the-wicked-cartoon Nice cartoon from the Guardian on the Syrian issue but what is interesting is the comments. They are nearly universal in condemnation of the media (including the Guardian) for assuming Assad and Russia to be the bad guys, and all such posts receive a large number of recommends. A number of the people posting these are commenters that I've seen on the Guardian for years, so I know they aren't Putinbots (who are always obvious anyway). This for me is interesting and demonstrates in a single comment section that 1) a large number of intelligent people who read the Guardian think the MSM is misleading people over Syria and 2) irrespective of who is right, this means that, as I've stated before, mistrust of the MSM is at an all time high. That video I posted last week seems to demonstrate that the MSM don't even have reliable sources on the ground in Syria...

The Ctrl-Left strikes again.

If the received wisdom is that no cockney manager is capable of a league win percentage of higher than 15% then maybe they're right.

Fish is very literally getting blamed for everything now.

Wait what? Was there a point in recent past where it's not been ok to say Happy Christmas?

Aye that's good news, nice that the money will go on to help others. Sad story this but it's genuinely nice to see people making an effort within the footballing community. Also nice to hear that Rio Ferdinand is donating that much money to so many children. He's gone up in my estimation of him.

I hope our problem with him is now fucking clear to people. It was around that in the last 18 months-ish of his time with us ffs.

That Claude guy is brilliant.

None, IMO. They've been thrown under the bus of geopolitical bluster and shows of strength.