135 thoughts on “Thursday’s Papers

  1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

    One year of Bozo. He has shown himself to be far more dangerous than expected.

    1. Charger Salmons

      Not sure the millions of punters able to enjoy a pint in Blighty’s pubs would agree with you there cobber.
      Here in Ireland nurse has told drinkers it’s too dangerous to have a pint until next month unless you protect yourself with the scientifically proven €9 meal.
      A laughing stock once again.

      1. ReproBertie

        Maybe they can raise a glass to the over 45,000 Covid deaths in the UK. 85 deaths yesterday alone.

        1. Charger Salmons

          Not sure if you’ve noticed.
          It’s a big country.
          85 deaths in a population of 67 million is the equivalent of a statistical margin of error.
          Try to expand your horizons beyond the parish pump.

          1. scottser

            and on any other day charger you call our covid death rate in nursing homes a national disgrace and here you are defending the UK’s a ‘statistical margin of error’. you’re not even trying these days – the bang of hypocrite off you is rank.

          2. Charger Salmons

            No really, it’s to do with pecentages.
            85 deaths in a country of 66 million is not as serious as 85 deaths in a country of 5 million.
            Do the math as our unwelcome American visitors say.

          3. ReproBertie

            More Brits dead from Covid 19 than died during the Blitz. How’s that for a margin of error?

      2. Joe F

        Well hello old boy. At least we’re quite safe here, not like in good old England whose leader, according to you Clown Man, isn’t responsible for law and order in London, population c 9m. And as you said he really has that “human touch” Yeah ask that of employees of carer homes after his lovely remarks of same last week. And finally, after your racist assertion that most of the crime in London was by blacks and immigrants, I’d love to hear what you have to say about all the killings recently in Doncaster. Don’t think too many of them were black or immigrants. Come on old boy.

      3. italia'90

        Not a good time to be in the bar business David.
        Maybe you and Hana might be better off back in dear old Blighty,
        seeing as everything is going so well for everyone?

          1. Janet, dreams of big guns

            Could anyone really fake David’s use of the English language ? They would want to have a good long hard look in the mirror for the effort alone.

          2. ReproBertie

            It would take massive effort to maintain such a unique, as clearly identifiable, use of language, punctuation and spelling and yet to isolate it from other posts. If it is someone’s alter ego they are wasting their talent.

          3. scottser

            nah. but charger was replying to his own posts under another name at one stage wasn’t he? just when you thought he couldn’t get more sad..

    1. GiggidyGoo

      Twitter is for twits. Always has been. Same as facebook. Exhibitionist Central.
      The twatteratti may buy some bitcoins.

  2. Charger Salmons

    The fact that Ireland is unwilling to open up its pubs until the middle of next month when most of Europe opened theirs up by the middle of last month and some much earlier than that represents a dismal failure.
    Being the only country in Europe to still insist all visitors self-isolate for 2 weeks even if they’re from many countries that have a far better C-19 record than Ireland represents incompetence.
    There are just 14 new cases of infection out of a population of 5 million and most of them will make a full recovery.
    Yet this already calamitous government has the country paralyzed with fear and deluded into wearing cheap face masks when all the scientific evidence points to wearing a Bird’s Eye Potato Waffle as being just as effective.
    It is wreaking havoc on Ireland’s vital tourist and hospitality industry while being all consumed by a four-year-old drink-driving case so minor it never even got to court.
    It’s not the stupidity of implying that purchasing a €9 meal will somehow buy immunity from a virus which makes this country look foolish.
    But the utterly vacuous and supine Irish media not demanding to know why, if they think this country has been so successful in tackling C-19 it lags so far behind its neighbours in the recovery process.
    They’re giving the idiots in Leinster House a free pass.

    1. goldenbrown

      many of your criticisms are valid
      but Westminster works on a different level of incompetence…so much so it makes our lot look good
      think about that
      anyway I know where I’d rather live (which funnily enough is where you live too old mucker)

      1. Charger Salmons

        Why mention just Westminster ? Don’t you care that Ireland is doing so poorly in coming out of the pandemic compared to the rest of Europe ?
        No wonder Irish politicians have so little to fear from the electorate now they strolled through 140 days deciding how to divvy up the goodies without a bleat from the scared witless public.
        Get off your knees and stop using your inferiority complex to excuse away their ineptitude.

        1. Brother Barnabas

          “get off your knees and stop using your inferiority complex…”

          says the fawning royal subject – a preposterous system based on inherent acknowledgement of a random family’s superiority over you

          heh heh heh

          1. Charger Salmons

            ” No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? ” said Squealer Barnabas.

          2. Tom Wong

            the same royal family who have been known to prefer the infinitely more satisfying company of corgis and other common domestic farm animals to that of their subjects

          1. Charger Salmons

            If you don’t think the damage caused to the UK pub industry by Covid-19 won’t be repeated here where most pubs are wet-led then you’re even more stupid than you at first appear.

    2. GiggidyGoo

      So Boris hasn’t made face asks mandatory then?
      Could do with them, if only to try reduce the smell of farts of the bean savages coming out of the little chefs.

    3. ReproBertie

      “It’s not the stupidity of implying that purchasing a €9 meal will somehow buy immunity from a virus.”
      You know this is not the case and yet you continue to post it. Clearly you are more interested in bashing Ireland than in the truth. Your inferiority complex is showing again.

      1. Charger Salmons

        If you insist on a minimum €9 meal before you consider it safe to drink a pint of beer in a pub then presumably you think not having that meal with a drink poses a risk.
        Personally I’d feel happier drinking a pint outside a pub than one inside with a meal.
        But then that would require the authorities to take action such as temporary suspension of planning permission to allow pubs to set up tables outside if space allows.
        Or pubs with beer gardens to open.
        I mean, they’ve had 4 months to plan this.
        Instead it’s just easier to keep everything shut till August 10th because they know the public won’t kick up a fuss.
        Look across Europe, even in C-19 epicentres such as Lombardy and things are back to normal with extra precautions in place.
        Why isn’t this government being held to account for failing lamentably in the recovery process ?
        It’s not just for the sake of having a pint but the long term damage it is causing the hospitality industry.
        Imagine taking your staff back on for the Monday opening and then being told late last night it’s postponed until August 20th.
        For what ? A minuscule infection rate ?

        1. scottser

          ah well, no pub for you spunker – back to swallowing tinnies with your mates in ballybrit.

      2. ReproBertie

        “If you insist on a minimum €9 meal before you consider it safe to drink a pint of beer in a pub”
        As well you know, the €9 meal is not about safety. It is only by ignoring what you know to be true about the €9 meal that you are able to use it as a tool in your bashing of Ireland. Imagine if you dealt with facts rather than misrepresentation. People might even bother to consider what you write rather than dismissing it as just another anti-Ireland diatribe.

        1. Charger Salmons

          So what is the €9 meal about if it’s not safety ?
          How is it any more or less safe than a feller sat outside with just a pint.
          You keep on questioning my use of the €9 meal without saying why.
          Or addressing any other points I make.
          It’s almost as bad as your continued refusal to admit saying Brexit would never happen.
          Do the business or get off the pot as they say.

          1. Cian

            This was covered in great detail on BS before. To summarise.
            – Restaurants are allowed to reopen. Pubs are not.
            – If you have an establishment that is both restaurant and pub, it is allowed to open as a restaurant.

            How do you manage this? You insist that people are buying food. (the €9 limit was picked from previous legislation).

          2. Brother Barnabas

            because it utilises existing legislation – Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1962 – which defines a substantial meal and places a monetary value on it (which, in today’s terms, is €9)

            but you know that already

          3. Charger Salmons

            Let’s try one more time.
            I’m perfectly aware of the current rules and where the €9 comes from.
            But why does purchasing this meal in a pub make it any more safe to drink a pint than not.
            Same pint, same pub, same social distancing rules in place.
            Bars and restaurants in most of the rest of Europe don’t have this ludicrous distinction.
            And they’ve been operating perfectly normally for many weeks.
            I’ve had several WhatsApp messages today from pals on the continent who can’t get their heads around it.
            One said it’s almost like the government think Irish people can’t be trusted with drink …

          4. Charlie

            “I’ve had several WhatsApp messages today from pals” Haa..Yea, right Tommy. Since when did you have pals? and on the “continent” of Europe…”can’t get their head around” They’ll be fine. Most miserable Brexiteers can’t get their heads round anything beyond Dover. They’ll be grand, they’ve got their ‘tinnies’ and Corrie is on the satellite TV.

          5. Lilly

            ‘than a feller sat outside‘ – This nails-on-a-blackboard strangulation of his native tongue reveals Charger is indeed English, but not public school despite all his old chapping.

        2. ReproBertie

          You know what it means. I’ve gone through it plenty of times before but since you insist on feigning ignorance I’ll do it once again. Restaurants were being allowed open. Pubs argued that if they serve food then they should be able to open. Rather than standing up to them and telling them to wait they were told they could open if they opened as restaurants. Knowing the vintners would care as little about that clause as you do about the truth, the government chose to enforce them opening as restaurants with a stupid rule about a minimum €9 meal being part of the deal.

          The €9 meal is a stupid policy but there was never a suggestion it would protect from anything.

          1. Charger Salmons

            Now we’re getting somewhere at last.
            You agree with me that the $9 meal is a stupid policy.It makes Ireland look like a laughing stock.
            But you still haven’t answered the point as to why serving food in a pub or drink in a restaurant lessens the chance of someone catching Covid-19.
            It’s not a distinction made in Europe where sensible policies about outside service and social distancing have been in place for many weeks.
            Hence my point that if Ireland doesn’t consider itself ready to adopt these policies then it is woefully behind the rest of Europe in the planning and execution of the recovery process which is profoundly affecting the tourism and hospitlaity sectors.
            And if there are still major concerns about the first wave not subsiding when it has in Europe then plainly Ireland is failing.
            Which is why the media shouldn’t be clapping politicians on the back for doing well in the pandemic.
            The simple fact is they haven’t.
            And before you ask, Boris and Co have been hectored,hounded and harangued every step of the way in which they’ve handled C-19.
            And rightly so.
            Here they haven’t even had the guts to face a press conference on live TV just in case Vinnie Browne turns up and asks them the questions the patsies at RTE should be asking.

          2. ReproBertie

            Agree with you? I’ve been saying it was a farce of a policy from day 1. The government should have stood up to the pubs in the first place.

            “But you still haven’t answered the point as to why serving food in a pub or drink in a restaurant lessens the chance of someone catching Covid-19.“

            There is no point to answer. Restaurants were allowed reopen under very strict conditions as part of easing the lockdown and restarting the economy, the very thing you are screaming for more of.

            The lessening of the chances of catching Covid 19 comes from social distancing in the restaurant and the precautions taken by the staff. As an aside, the only place I’ve seen contact tracing details taken and time limits enforced was in restaurants. Not one pub I’ve been in has bothered.

          3. Charger Salmons

            Again I know why social distancing was required in restaurants.
            But why not in pubs that can’t serve food ? It doesn’t increase the risk of infection in any way if social distancing is observed.
            Particularly at this time of year when you can drink outside.
            You know, summertime – when the living is easy.
            I’m surprised such a bould revolutionary as you is so timid.

          4. ReproBertie

            “It doesn’t increase the risk of infection in any way if social distancing is observed.”
            And there’s your answer. It’s a phased approach to reopening. Social distancing and alcohol don’t mix so opening the pubs could have thrown us back a phase or two. That was the advice from NPHET. There’s no point pretending that opening the pubs overnight wouldn’t result in people drinking to excess and ignoring the social distancing guidelines. We’ve seen it happening already with the pubs that are open.

            Personally I’d have no issue with allowing counties where there hasn’t been a case for a week or more to open up everything but there’s a lot of traveling around Ireland going on and a large number of visitors from the UK traveling around too so I can understand the reluctance to implement such a policy.

    1. Charger Salmons

      You mean like the rest of Europe has been doing for weeks without any noticeable rise in infections ?
      Er,no.

        1. Charger Salmons

          It’s not a loophole.
          It’s a commonsense approach taken weeks ago by most of the rest of Europe.
          Without any noticeable effect on infection rates.

          1. Charger Salmons

            Not having a pop,guv.
            I have a mate who went to a bar/restaurant with a couple of others,they each ordered a €9 starter ( they marvelled at the number of dishes all at that price …) then sat outside in the smoking area and flopped a gallon of Heino each.
            All perfectly legal, the only difference being having food meant there were more people involved in the prepping and serving process than if they’d just got pints thus increasing the risk of transmission.
            It would be funny if it wasn’t having such a dire effect on Irish pubs.

          2. Tom Wong

            I have a mate

            the telltale sign that every single other word following in the paragraph is going to be a steaming pile of Her Majesty’s Filly’s Finest.

          3. scottser

            ‘why can’t we be more like europe’?
            well, that ship has sailed for you, flower.

          4. Steph Pinker

            Charger, it’s not the only bizarre and illogical aspect of these imposed government regulations; Mr Pinker and I have stayed in 2 hotels over the past couple of weekends, in both instances we were refused room service for hot breakfast (cereal and orange juice was allowed though – go figure!), which meant that instead of being allowed stay in our room, separate from others, we were supposed to go to the restaurant to eat with all other guests. We didn’t bother.

  3. f_lawless

    Regarding masks, it seems logical to keep an eye on how the Nordic countries fair in the coming weeks – Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden — where mask wearing is not mandatory and voluntary wearing has always been low. Similar to Ireland. daily death tolls in those countries are currently at zero or near zero.

    If it transpires that no significant uptick in hospitalisations or fatalities is seen either in Ireland or the Nordics, then surely the already questionable case for enforcing mask wearing at this late stage, would get all the more weaker?

    1. Charger Salmons

      On mask wearing there was this letter in a UK newspaper this week.

      https://mobile.twitter.com/EconRealist/status/1283037739500343304/photo/1

      Surely the same argument could be made for the tourist and hospitality industry here.
      Greece is gradually returning to normality – incoming tourists are subjected to random testing and have to fill out an online form and have a QR code sent to their ‘phone hours before they depart from their home airport.
      Without it they’re not allowed into the country.
      Here we just point fingers and humiliate tourists for having the gall to visit Ireland because we haven’t explained to them our draconian quarantine rules.

  4. Clampers Outside

    https://twitter.com/JohnHMcWhorter/status/1283546847982878722?s=19

    How many Profs feel threatened by cancel culture it was asked?

    In this one example…. after writing an article about ‘White Fragility’ and tweeting about the issue, John McWorther has received 25 contacts from Profs / grad students worried about their future in academia in one day! He’s been keeping a tally these best couple of weeks, usually getting just 1 or 2 per day.

    But hey, this isn’t happening, no, not at all… s/

      1. SOQ

        The first mention of Cancel Culture and in wades Nigel eh? Well that is a surprise. You should know this by now Clamps, dissent will NOT be tolerated – the beatings will continue until ‘liberalism’ is restored. Oh- and your employer has been contacted.

        1. Nigel

          ‘Dissent will not be tolerated,’ he cries, while complaining about someone disagreeing with him and comparing being disagreed with to beatings, and such a nice smear about contacting employers. This is everything about cancel culture whiners in a nutshell. Bruised egos that can’t handle disagreement.

          1. Nigel

            No. I hate watching youtube videos, and if you can’t be bothered to make your own arguments that’s your problem, not mine.

    1. Junkface

      Very revealing article, its actually very sad that low level workers can have their jobs taken away over nothing like that truck driver, or the designer lady attacked by the Washington Post for a bad fancy dress costume. Social media has really heaped misery and fear on society, it seems that once the cancel culture Pandora’s box was opened, its very hard to shut it. A generation of college students have also unfairly been affected by it, and then you look to Science students, their training could be invalid compared to countries that do not let cancel culture idealogy near the fundamentals of Science, like China, Russia and India etc. The effects could be so huge in the coming years!

      1. Janet, dreams of big guns

        hi, do you mean in your comments that say anti-vax are part of cancel culture or indeed the god botherers ?

        1. Junkface

          Where was this comment? I’m confused. Anti-vaxxers are not typically part of cancel culture, more likely aligned to conspiracy theory nonsense, or daytime TV rubbish that thinks alternative medicine is better than medical science. I think in the USA and the UK they found that anti-vaxxers tended to live in upper middle class areas, which coincides with the selection of alternative medicine stores in their area, selling the usual snake oil, homeopathy, and other pseudo science unproven rubbish.

          1. Nigel

            You are somewhat out of date. Anti-vaxxers were once polite but irritating middle-class alternative airheads who viewed vaccines as a form of pollution and turned to alternatives therapies. Bad, but not awful. Awful came when savage right wing conspiracy nut Trump supporters decided vaccines were part of the New World Order trying to poison and control their bodies via chips and stuff. Because these people represent Trump’s base, and because right wing billionaires pump millions and millions into their causes it’s all becoming mainstream. Just another front on the Republican War on Science.

          2. Clampers Outside

            LOL! More nonsense from Nigel’s echo chamber :)

            Two studies suggest either there is no partisan difference, to there being a Liberal tendency towards being anti-vax…

            Pew Research…
            https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/ shows no partisan difference in Feb 2015

            And a further study…
            “Liberal: 60% of anti-vaxxers describe their political leaning as liberal.”
            https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-not-who-you-think-she-is/

            Again, both studies say there is no partisan difference in attitudes the US.

          3. Nigel

            Uh, yeah. In 2015. In 2020? I’m sure lots of liberal anti-vaxxers still exist. But right wing anti-vaxxers are as feral about it as they are about everything else.

          4. Clampers Outside

            Eh, what? 2015 – 2020 is just five years. I’m sure they’re just as vocal as ever. As for your “feral” right-wing anti-vaxers comment… what does that even mean? lol

          5. Nigel

            Lot can change in five years. Mind you, it would be typical if the right represented a small minority making the most noise and getting the most attention. Lot of that about.

      2. Nigel

        Science training will not be invalidated because of cancel culture, that’s idiotic. Science training will be invalidated by the insistence of the right on the inclusion of right-wing shibboleths like intelligent design, racial science and climate change denial in the curriculum at primary, secondary and third levels (well, their US equivalents,) as well, of course as the right defunding public education and colleges because they’re not right wing enough for them.

        1. Junkface

          The right are not trying to rewrite the laws of Biology, therefore ruining the basis of building effective medicine or any other progress for humankind involving Biology.

          Actually, rather alarmingly, Authoritarians tend to respect Biology because they can see its potential in developing weapons, which they can turn on their enemies or their own people. Which I really hate.

          As mentioned before Trump tries to shut many things down, but fails, or else it gets repealed later as he could never make a strong case, as he is an narcissistic idiot. Putin, Erdogan, Xi manage to do whatever they like, they are much smarter and sinister in their objectives. As I said before, right wing leaders are awful and a danger to the world if we have too many in power together. We can’t let the actions of the extreme Left push more voters into the arms of Populist right wing leaders.

          1. Nigel

            Nobody’s rewriting the laws of biology, except, er, the right.

            It is utterly astonishing how complacent you are in the face of the massive damage being wrought across the world by the right, while losing your rag over social media car crash stuff. The very fact that Trump’s in power has lost the global effort to tackle climate change a minimum of four years, another eight if he’s re-elected, to say nothing of lost momentum and emboldened opposition by the right and vested interests. Lives have been ruined and lost and families destroyed thanks to his truly evil immigration policies and his incompetence in responding to covid, but oh no, some poor sap lost their job because they insulted trans people on twitter. Wel it isn’t as if the right are interested in improving employee protections, are they?

            And God help the UK under Brexit. You think they’ll come back from that without difficulty? The right is winning, and one of the ways they win is by amplifying the culture war concept of ‘cancel culture,’ keeping outrage focused on minor bad incidents, and you keep falling for it. It’s your inability to focus on the real problems that let them keep doing what they’re doing.

          2. Nigel

            I still can’t get over this view of Trump as some sort of harmless passing aberration. In the US the right is entrenching themselves into the courts and rolling back voting rights and protections and engaging in massive voter supression – that’s why they keep winning, not because of minorities or the extreme left! The have massive amounts of funding from billionaires and incredibly dodgy but well connected companies devoted to harevesting data and targeting voters and spreading lies and disinformation and undermining democracy. That’s why they keep winning, not because of trans people!

            Their corruption and grift benefits the rich and the rich like it so they work to keep it that way, and that’s why they keep winning, not because someone spray painted a statue. The right are aiming for long-term minority rule, and they’re not hiding it, it’s not a conspiracy, they’re doing it right out in the open. But God, yeah, antifa is scary.

          3. Lilly

            People are not just losing their jobs because of trans comments on Twitter. You heard John Banville say that someone he knows almost lost her job because she suggested to a Chinese student that they improve their English to help with their studies. That level of interference in the student-teacher relationship is just ludicrous.

          4. Nigel

            I heard a vague, non-specific, unsopported anecdote, with no context, which is what most of these cancel-culture horror stories consist of. I have no doubt bad stuff like that happens, but you know what? If college authorities were doing their jobs properly incidents like that could be resolved fairly. If the far right have their way, there won’t be any jobs in academia at all, or if the neoliberal centre right keep chipping away at them they’ll all be reduced to worthless private diploma mills.

          5. Junkface

            I agree with you on the danger of right wing leaders. I hate them too. Trump has proven that the US legal system was quite arrogant and superior about their strength and security. He broke it on his first go by hiring a corrupt Attorney General in Bill Barr.
            The facts on Science are that the woke Left ARE trying to change the laws of Biology based on misguided ideology related to Trans people. The right wing have not tried to do this, if they have there are zero reports on it so far. Show me the reports on the right attacking the laws of biology with some new ideology that is false. Where is it?

            I also agree that Boris is a train wreck in the UK as he has bluffed his entire career up until this point. Like a lesser Trump he is a career liar and bluffer. I’m convinced that both of these clowns will be voted out, because they are failing in front of everyone’s eyes.

          6. Nigel

            The right is now at the forefront of anti-vaxx – biology.
            Forefront of 5G conspiracy theories – biology.
            Every stupid thing the right has tried to claim about Covid – biology.
            Intelligent design – biology.
            Smoking not causing cancer – biology.
            Conversion therapy – I’m including this because it’s related to the right’s views on sexualty as well as their homophobia and transphobia, to say nothing of the damage to mental health.
            Anti-choice – a biological issue as well as medical. They claim abortions cause cancer.

            I am unaware of any ideological changes to ‘biology’ becaouse of ‘trans.’ Transexuality is the focus of several disciplines of study, though, and an entirely valid one, and it may change the way we look at and think about sexuality, sex and gender from both a biological and a psychological view. You are declaring this area of study as some sort of danger to all of science and all of biology. This is ridiculous, and, frankly, repressive, but I’m sure the Christian right agrees with you wholeheartedly.

            Trump and Johnson may get voted out but I doubt anything will change about the right and their drive for power and wealth.

          7. Charger Salmons

            As I keep on reminding you Boris’ Tories have a double-digit lead in the opinion polls over Labour and an 80 seat majority,with the nearest main party,Labour,a massive 162 seats behind.
            To have any hope of winning an overall majority at the next election Labour have to claw back all the seats they’ve lost in Scotland and start picking up Tory strongholds such as Jacob Ress-Mogg’s seat in Somerset.
            It ain’t gonna happen.
            If they do manage to form a coalition government with the SNP whose price will be an independent Scotland this would be met with rejoicing in the streets of England where most of the wealth that keeps GB as a leading economic power is created.
            Likewise Northern Ireland.
            And Wales,although they haven’t got the bottle since Maggie closed down all their mines.
            Boris still remains popular, even among the Labour voters who turned out for him in December.
            You may not be able to see this through your green-tinted outsize spectacles you wear on Ireland match days but these are irrefutable facts.

          8. Junkface

            None of those Anti vax or 5G conspiracy theories count as proof of any serious movement in Academia or the Sciences Nigel. You just wrote some sentences. They apply to both groups of idiots of Left and Right. The fact that you thought this was valid reporting shows me that you have Cult like behaviour. There is no reasoning with you. Whats the point?

            I was asking for links to articles with details about actual events in Science departments in Universities or national Labs. I’m too busy today for nonsense.

          9. Nigel

            No amount of cause celebre victims of so-called cancel culture will change anything I have said about the relative dangers facing the world right now, Junkface. A professor ‘could’ get fired because of a petition due to a uniquely 2020 occurence, which suggests her students don’t think she’s a very good professor, feedback sucks, i hope it works out. There’s another video going around of armed militia-looking-goons from unidentified agencies in an unmarked van snatching someone off the street in a US city. I expect the sleepy professor will have more legal protections means of appeal than that poor sap.

          10. Nigel

            Of course none of those belong in academia, or would be allowed in by a credible college. Nonetheless they are prominent issues promulgated by the right in the US, and because a supposedly more liberal (for the US) academia has no place for them, the right hates academia and seeks to undermine, underfund, and destroy it. You can’t seriously need me to provide you with examples of the right’s disdain for science and expertise. I put it to you that so long as the right is politically powerful, they are more of a threat to academia and science your imagined trans ideology destroying biology.

          11. Clampers Outside

            “supposey more liberal academia”… that’s the issue, University is supposed to be a place for Liberal education and a free exchange of ideas, but it’s not.

          12. Lilly

            ‘If college authorities were doing their jobs properly incidents like that could be resolved fairly’

            What kind of climate has been created where a student thinks it’s okay to waste everyone’s time with such a frivolous complaint? If college authorities were doing their jobs properly, they’d give that student a massive kick in the pants instead of further infantilising them and hauling already overstretched staff members over the coals.

          13. Nigel

            Lily, you’re assuming you know the whole story, or that Banville reported it accurately. But yes, college authorities need to step up and handle such incidents openly and fairly and quickly. Most so-called cancel culture issues would resolve themselves with minimum fuss if the relevant authorites reacted promptly, fairly and transparently.

          14. Nigel

            Charger, the only thing you hump more vigorously than those poll numbers is Boris Johnson’s leg. But if he gets ousted in a leadership challenge, you’ll do the same to the next entitled mediocrity.

          15. Charger Salmons

            If your approval ratings on here were measured by paper ballot the box required would have formely been used to hold matches.
            Leadership challenge ? He’s just delivered them a stonking 80-seat majority.
            Stick to conspiracy theories pal because your knoweldge of UK politics would fit in the same box as the paper ballot.

          16. Nigel

            From someone like yourself who set out to get his dopamine hits from outraged responses to outrageous statements, that means a lot Charger.

            Focusing on the poll numbers is certainly better than focusing on the performance, eh? The worse they get, the harder you hump those numbers. And if you’re basing your confidence in Johnson’s continued leadersip on the Tories renowned sense of gratitude, loyalty and honour lol

          17. Charger Salmons

            Difficult choice in who to believe.
            Consistent polling across the board by well-established polling companies.
            Or some feller sat in his underpants and a tin-foil hat eating a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie straight from the tin and thinking he can hear radio waves in the furntiture.

    2. Nigel

      So these are the ones feeling, uh… fragile?

      Is it just pure middle class myopia that keeps otherwise intelligent people (Clampers excepted, obviously) focusing on minor academic dramaramas while wrack and ruin rage all around, titanic disasters on national and global scales, the dominance of the authoritarian right, the assertion of alternate shifting realities in the face of actual material reality? Even if you have a genuine concern about academia, the decades-long assault on universities from the right, purely because of their perceived liberality, culminating in the threat by the presdient of the US to defubd because of opposing political views, is far more threatening and sinister than the fallout from twitter spats.

      1. Clampers Outside

        “The decades long assault on universities from the Right, purely because of their perceived liberality”
        LOL pure poppycock :)

        You’re talking out your poopy place Nigel.

        1. Nigel

          Well they aren’t assaulting it because of how nice college canteen food is perceived to be.

          (These language substitutions tend to reinforce the impression that I’m talking to a child, which is unfair, because a child would do a better job of debating.)

          1. Nigel

            Huh. Is it possible your understanding of the politics of US universities is hopelessly, not to say ridiculously, one-sided?

          2. Clampers Outside

            Considering the faculty imbalance in favour of Left, often up to 100%, that is well documented, I simply asked a question, one you cannot it would appear to be able to answer… Oh well, more guff, I’m sure is the truth.

          3. Nigel

            It’s precisely because faculty tends to be liberal that the right loathe universities, attack them, undermine them and seek to defund them. Intellectually, because they’ve been sucking up to fundamentalist Christians so hard since Reagan, prominent conservative ideas consist of facemasks bad, climate change non-existent, trans people coming for your babies, evolution a fraud and IQ determined by race. They don’t measure up to actual intellectual standards and only survive through culture war tribalism. But since they’re not tolerated in universities, that means they’re being opressed and their freedom of speech is under attack.

            Are you actually ignorant of longstanding right wing hostility to universities or are you having a laugh? They’re godless snooty elites brainwashing children into Marxist antifas. I don’t even know where to start. How someone who can fixate on relatively trivial issues in universities like safe spaces and gender spectrums or whatever can also deliberately blind yourself to what the right has been saying and doing to and about education at every level is staggering. You are either very dull or very disingenuous, and it’s lucky for you I have some idea of how dull you actually are.

            https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/whos-behind-the-right-wing-assault-on-public-universities/

    1. Brother Barnabas

      no, still giddy with glee to be in NYC – it’s all spliffs, spoofs and tunes; in his element. he’ll be along later.

    2. Junkface

      I would also love to know if that sweet little Spaniel found her home again. Her photo is being circulated on twitter too so here’s hoping.

  5. Vanessanelle

    RIP Keiran bhoy

    Our backline was never be the same without you
    I’ll always remember your 2010 Semi (v Dublin) performance
    Only yards away from your thundering shoulders (1st half)
    They rattled the canal end
    I never doubted we’d win the day
    Even in those minutes long seconds of that injury time peno
    I was certain of our progress

    Because of players like you
    Defending us and keeping us safe

    Afraid of nothing, a team player, great instincts
    A play maker
    A game changer

    You will never be forgotten bhoy

    Corcaigh Abu

    xV

  6. Nigel

    Open letter and demands to EU and Global Leaders
    #FaceTheClimateEmergency​
    This letter has been sent to all EU leaders and heads of state on 16 July 2020.
    You must stop pretending that we can solve the climate- and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis

    https://climateemergencyeu.org/

  7. Charger Salmons

    And to think I used to call him Comrade Corbyn in jest.

    Hehski x ******

    The UK government says “it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 General Election” by amplifying online leaked documents about the US-UK trade deal.
    These were the documents Corbyn held up at a press conference during the General election in a desperate attempt to regain the media narrative after his disastrous Andrew Neil TV interview.

    http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-07-16/HCWS384/

    1. Nigel

      I’d say the odds are that this is Johnson’s equivalent of Barr announcing that the Mueller Report exonerated Trump a week before it was released. You’ll be riding this one so hard you’ll wear a hole in your golf sock.

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