ThatBoyRonaldo

Good shout to move on to. The film is on my to watch list but found the ending in particular of the book quite affecting. Don't know how similar they are, hope you enjoy it.

Yeah - it was invented to let weirdo libertarians subvert legal/economic regulatory systems and prevent democratic national governments from intervening in the economy!

I learned Gaelic with Duolingo and it significantly improved the last holiday I took to Wester Ross - was great to understand what the placenames etc meant and do a wee bit of chatting to one or two people who spoke it up there. I speak French and Russian as well but Gaelic has easily been the language I've gotten most use out of in recent years, if we're talking about which languages are "useful". Even just linguistically it's an enjoyable language to learn because the sentence constructions etc are so different to English. Bores always say "learn Chinese instead" - f**k that for a laugh, there's already a billion people in the world who speak Chinese and realistically I'm never going to China. Meanwhile there's an endangered language with a rich culture literally in the country where we are from, and there are people in that country who would happily see it die because they've been given brain damage by politics and social media. Baffling.

I can understand where it comes from but I've always found people who espouse comments like some of the above a bit deluded tbh. People who claim all politicians are the same, or that they've no time for any of them, or that they don't support a party that doesn't cater to every one of their exact opinions all the time. I'm not saying they're wrong per se but I don't really get how anyone's supposed to change anything if we're all just atomised individuals as opposed to accepting being part of a coalition. Staying above the fray is all well and good but if the outcome is just spending your life moaning about it on P&B then is that really preferable to getting your hands dirty in the business of politics? Just my tuppence worth - I suppose everyone has their own 'red lines' etc.

What do you make of Conversations with Friends so far? I had mixed thoughts tbh - on the one hand there were some memorable moments and good turns of phrase etc but on the other, and maybe it's shallow of me, I found it very difficult to enjoy a book when all of the characters were so unlikeable - poseurs and ponces as you say. Haven't read Normal People yet but other folk have told me it is better, will no doubt get to it at some point. I finished Rabbit is Rich by John Updike the other night. Was recommended the Rabbit novels by someone on here after finishing the Frank Bascombe series (@YaBezzer maybe?) and they have steadily improved. Big fan of how Rabbit is just objectively a really unpleasant guy but it's possible to wind up sympathising with him. Finally thinking he's getting his opportunity to shag his pal's younger wife before his exasperating adult son fucks it up for him and he has to go home to sort the situation out was quite a good moment. Best thing I've read for quite a long time tbh, looking forward to the next in the series.

Carlitos Way and The Untouchables. Both very enjoyable. Rare for a film to jump so high on my all-time list as Carlitos Way did after just one viewing, really superb. I'm not sure anyone has ever had more fun with a role than Sean Penn had with the crooked lawyer. Untouchables was also good but can't help but feel Costner was miscast, maybe just slightly too young at the time of filming. And I'd liked to have seen them use Andy Garcia more rather than the comic relief accountant guy. Carlitos Way 9.5/10, Untouchables 8.5/10

This is a good point - need to remember that these comments are coming out after their comms teams have persuaded them to drop the *really* stupid stuff. See even aside from anything else, I assume nobody asked the bus drivers if they were ok with being some kind of auxiliary mobile police supervision squad?

The one and only time I've interacted with the police in the last few years I had a community support officer at the door asking if I'd seen or heard anything about milk thefts in my local area because "you might have seen, it's all over the local Facebook groups". Seemed absolutely bizarre to me that time was being devoted to door-to-door inquiries on this issue given the endemic stories you hear of them just not investigating at all various crimes. Seems an obvious point but if your average person had better experiences of the police doing what they're theoretically supposed to beyond just "Here's a reference number for your insurance" they'd probably be more supportive generally. Obviously there's a multitude of reasons for that. I'm sure most polis who sign up don't do so in order to spend their days harvesting road fines like your man up the thread said, or dealing with mental health crises and the like. On this specific case, as someone else said a few posts back, Cressida Dick is clearly untouchable for whatever reason. The fact she is the commissioner at all after the Jean Charles de Menezes case is ridiculous really, what an insult. Nothing will change.

The Kelpies are quite local for me - I probably wouldn't go miles out my way to visit but I quite like it. The big bit which is just an open space with a big lawn is my favourite, feels like the kind of place that should be hosting open air events in the summertime or suchlike. Haven't been but based on everything I've seen and heard from people who have Las Vegas is the best shout so far. Spend thousands to go halfway round the world and sit indoors with a bunch of other sweaty tourists cosplaying some tacky vision Hollywood has sold you. Tragic.

Hard to believe that the [checks notes]... Chinese Communist Party would be so anti-speculator! Hard lines fellas!

Say what you like about the Americans but they really do hate people who kill innocent civilians - I imagine they will hunt down whoever perpetrated/ordered this terrorist atrocity and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. We're talking about a party with an unhinged but real and committed membership base, which will quite happily fund a few salaries for at least the medium term. The small number of "names" at the top of the party will definitely milk that money/media exposure for as long as they can. In a way Alba are interesting because they must be the first political party in Scotland set up on the implicit belief that they can post their way to victory. It's a party set up by and for twitter weirdos. The current evidence is that having a small hardcore of social media addicts posting all day long about trans people and UDI has led them to 0% in the polls and general irrelevance, but maybe over the longer term that's a viable strategy if you subscribe to the (depressing) notion that the internet has to a large extent replaced "real life" for a proportion of society.

I worked in NHS financial management for quite a few years and whenever bores tried to tell me the NHS was failing or whatever my line was always; show me another organisation with a budget of ~£15 billion, rapidly increasing demand year on year, savings targets of >5% every year with a no redundancy policy, in a heavily politicised environment where if you get it wrong people die, and you are legally unable to overspend. Everyone knows the clinical/operational staff do a heroic job but given the circumstances I was always pretty impressed with the management as well tbh. Also if you criticise the NHS model you are a Tory - I don't make the rules.

There are more than enough people who have been given brain damage by twitter in this country to give Salmond and McEleny et al comfortable incomes for as long as they want them in membership fees, and they will have basically unlimited press coverage for as long as Salmond is in charge. They'll no doubt hang around like a bad smell grifting their smooth brained followers for a few years. But the hubris of these morons who are currently polling 0% *four months* after getting a whopping 1.66% in a national election is truly wild. A few other things about these freaks that I find funny: Will be a laugh watching Salmond try and fail to get elected to Aberdeenshire council next year. Will be even funnier if he shites out of even trying and leaves it to McEleny etc to lose. All these hangers on are so subservient to Salmond its unreal. The idea that none of them have twigged that near enough every normal person in the country hates him and isn't going to vote for a party led by a guy who has behaved as he has is just nuts to me. The fact he still has his wee entourage of outriders etc who have hitched themselves to him is absolutely tragic/hilarious.