Rayvin

I meant more that I'd never particularly considered it. If someone had asked me what the bastion for liberal thinking was, I probably would have said Sweden. For secularism, maybe even China. I do see it for France though, just had never given it much thought. Agree on the rest, but I think the UK method might be more successful in the long and short run. Our values will seep in over time, and it will be harder and harder to radicalise people. In the UK, I suspect we're largely winning that particular battle. In France, there is presumably less tolerance, and therefore no subtle seeping of cultural values. It is, I expect, rather more sledgehammer.

Yes she was actually not very informed from a discussion point of view I have to confess, and I cringed a few times at her arguments. As you say, not aimed at us though. I read that Burke article as well - The idea of France as this bastion of secular, liberal thinking doesn't quite fit my apparently quite Anglo-centric world view, but I can see what they're saying so it was quite eye opening. Good piece.

I've watched the whole thing (was genuinely curious and I'm grateful that you posted it) and it does have a series of much more open and approachable Muslims, prepared to talk about their beliefs, prepared to condemn those that carry out these attacks, and also prepared to accept and respect the laws of the land they live in. One of the Muslim women mentions that 'if you kill another, you kill all of humanity' and states that she doesn't understand where the extremists get their ideas from. In fairness, from what I gather, the extremists get their ideas from the Qu'ran - but even so. It's not all bad is what I'm saying, and they make mention of the fact that those at that march represent only 100ish out of 30,000 Muslims in Luton. Looking at the different viewpoints, I did actually feel that it was harsh to expect moderate Muslims, who sound a lot like typical Christians, to somehow police the extremists. They looked uncomfortable discussing them, and some of the moderates even looked scared to do so. While I still think better integration would be an good idea generally, I'm not sure it would combat extremism after all. Anyway, that was interesting so thanks.

Happy Birthday mate! Have a good one.

Ant my friend, you're a legend.

An elaborate fucking turn to keep the ball in play? The guy can barely fucking move without injuring himself.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-terror-attacks-visiting-molenbeek-the-police-no-go-zone-that-was-home-to-two-of-the-gunmen-a6735551.html Molonbeek doesn't sound like a police no go zone from this report (given that it mentions that Police patrol it), but that said, seems to be the source of Belgium's Islamist problems. I honestly think the existence of these little communities and the failure to create true integration is a significant problem.

I'm actually a bit surprised we're not there yet already... It actually speaks very well of Western civilisation that there isn't.

Sorry yes, I know I'm wrong automatically by virtue of the fact that these things keep happening - badly worded. I meant that I wonder if there are some potential terrorists who look at the devastation from the fall out of this sort of chaos and just think 'fuck it, not going to be responsible for that'. Ultimately though, if they weren't getting the attention, it probably wouldn't be happening. Fair enough.

That bit is definitely true, although maybe it also puts people off. You never know. Hard to look at this from any angle and consider it as something to be glorified, I would think.

Having kids seems to play a big part in it, actually. I moved down a whole decile for my hypothetical children. I think it should take your region into account as well mind, since an income set at a certain level in the NE goes a lot farther than an income set at the same level in the SE. Although I guess they'd argue that the after tax income is the same, and that you choose to pay a premium to live down south, thus making it a lifestyle choice.

Fair enough but it's about as mainstream as they come at the minute. Twitter certainly should be nowhere near them, quite surprised to hear that they are, actually. Bound to be something they can do with respect of the internet, although you'd likely need full international agreement on it. At this point I'd support an internet dead zone around all ISIS controlled or influenced territories.

Probably not the time to be pointing the finger, anyway. This is no one's fault aside from that psycho. I note that ISIS haven't even claimed it yet, which I find a tad weird actually. Too extreme even for them?

Well said, although I feel that abandoning Europe to this shit isn't what any of the Brexiters had in mind, even though that's exactly how it feels. As for the points about what governments can do, I can't think of much, personally - the more they crack down, the more this sort of thing will happen, I would guess. I ended up scouring the news a bit this morning and was casting my eye through the comments on Fox News (one of the few sites that allows comments on atrocities like this) and between the comments made by lunatics, there were some people making quite legitimate points about how, if French citizens were more fully armed, stuff like this couldn't happen (at least not on this scale). Obviously that opens a whole other can of worms which would doubtless lead to more deaths overall, but I did think that this is probably the first time that statement rang true about a specific scenario. Not at all advocating arming people, it's just that I can sort of see now why the Americans look at this stuff and think that they have the right of it.

80 people dead, including children. The maniac drove into the crowd at 50kph for 2km, zig zagging to hit as many people as possible. The utter fucking psychopath.

Oh for fucks sake. Eventually, Western governments are going to respond to stuff like this very seriously.

So are we.

Dortmund would be interesting like - he'd fit the Dortmund of a couple of years ago, all speed and counters. Not sure how they play now in truth. Can they afford £35m though?

Absolutely. I like his possible solution in that article though, of just kicking it into the long grass and sorting it out at the next GE. At least public mood may have shifted by then. Also, she must know that running with Brexit will cost her political career - even if it is possible to make a success of it, it's not a short term outlook.

gpirlo soldiering on here

So, I don't watch TV series episode to episode like the rest of you - I tend to wait for a season to finish so that I can watch the episodes without having to wait a week each time. I find it's easier to follow the storyline that way for one thing, and I also get impatient waiting for each new episode. I tend to avoid Facebook during these periods, and only really read politics or sports pages in the news. Everyone at work is under strict instruction not to talk to me about it. I'm also safe on here because people are so good at preventing spoilers from seeping into non-specific topic chat. In fact, the level of respect shown about such issues is one of the major reasons I value this community, and come back to it day to day. There's admittedly the odd slip up from time to time, and even I've been guilty of it, although I've always made sure to re-edit my posts once I've been called out on it. I feel that this simple action, even if one has made a mistake, implicitly suggests to people that I'm not a massive fucking bell end. I'm up to episode 5.

More to the point, according to that article, we can't even negotiate with anyone until we're actually out.

Interesting, thanks for posting that HF

I don't think we've covered a lot of that CT... We're not sufficiently up to speed on trade deals to have known a lot of that...

I wonder how far off the truth a lot of that is...