EH75

There must be rules about this sort of stuff? I presume I couldn't register a "Scottish Nationalist Party"? Like, how close to the name/slogan etc of a current party are you allowed to get? Or is it just up to someone to decide if it is OK when you register your party/candidate?

Tbf I thought Forster was going to be the next big thing when he first broke through. Very unlucky with injuries from what I recall.

Less confident about our chances of winning this than I was about the 2016 final tbh.

Yeah I don't know how realistic a lockdown is over there. I'm not sure they can afford the levels of government support that western economies have been dishing out, and that's before you even get to the issue of the conditions some people live in. High levels of poverty with lots of poor people living in close proximity who already have poor access to health care. I presume there is also a much higher instance of multi generational households which has obvious problems. So aye, I think essentially this is going to just have to rip through the population naturally over there to a much greater extent than we have seen so far in most other countries. A shite state of affairs to say the very least.

Hoping this is just the usual click bait based off the fact that the most pessimistic stories generate the most traffic. Or (as they have done for the past year) the government planting stories to gauge public reaction prior to actually making policy decisions. However if this happens in conjunction with removal of government financial support then it will destroy the entire hospitality industry.

It was merely a retort to the assertion that things have changed forever. I don't think they have. It will take a few years but eventually we will get back to the way things were pre-2020, as always happens.

Has it though? Forever? I mean in 10, 15, 20 years time do you think we are still going to be wandering about in masks and having to scan your phone to get into the fitba? The only thing I could see changing permanently would be regarding vaccines for international travel but there are already many countries that you need certain vaccines to visit so I wouldn't class that as much of a change. There has been pandemics before and things get back to the way they were sooner or later. Despite the hyperbole over the last year, this will be the same.

Cant go to football, cant travel out the country, no gigs or theatres and your going Tonto over having to wear a wee bit of cloth over your gub for the 1hr a week you might be in a shop. All about priorities I suppose !!! Tbf I feel similar. I don't want to go to the football, travel, go to gigs, theatres or do a multitude of other things whilst wearing a mask so for me until the mask requirement is lifted I won't be doing these things anyway. I realise that's maybe a minority view but there we are. And that's without even going into wearing one for 12 hours a day at work (despite spending that whole time in close proximity to the same people and therefore it probably being useless anyway).

https://youtu.be/RvMxqcgBhWQ

I work in the shipping industry and we can be randomly drug tested while at work. I never have been in 10 years, but they do pick people at random every month. One of my colleagues likes the occasional joint whilst on leave and therefore was apprehensive about the possibility of failing a drugs test on his return to work. He decided to combat this by purchasing a fake penis and urine off the internet to use for any drugs test he might encounter. A few weeks into his contract we received a customs inspection where they searched everyone's cabins for drugs etc. During this he was called to his cabin to be confronted by both his boss and a woman from Border Force holding said fake penis and bottle of urine. He explained that his girlfriend was going to be coming on for a visit soon and she was into "golden showers" but that he found the practice embarrassing and therefore got "stage fright" and so he bought them for use in their weird sex games. Amazingly, they bought it and obviously given the nature of the story, it was never brought up again. The boss couldn't really look him in the eye after that though.

Whilst there will undoubtedly be absolute moon howlers calling for the entire country to be shut down again in the winter if there is any sort of jump in cases or rise in deaths generally from either covid, the flu or whatever else, I think the chances of another lockdown or restrictions like we have seen are unlikely once these restrictions have been removed. People who are calling for these sorts of measures seem to forget that the only reason so many businesses have survived this so far is because of the enormous amount of financial support that has been dished out. As restrictions begin to come to an end, so will the financial support and they really won't want to have to turn that tap on again. People talk about things like masks and social distancing as if these can be implemented in perpetuity with no costs. The fact is, that many many businesses and large parts of entire industries are not viable when these measures are in place. This never gets mentioned. For example you can't run a pub at half capacity indefinitely and the inconvenience of having to wear a mask will surely result in a reduction of trade for all manner of businesses. Maybe it's just me but having to cover half my face up really reduces my enjoyment of things. It's much more difficult to communicate with people and I just can't get used to it. I know there is a few things I put off doing last summer because I didn't want to do it wearing a mask in the thought that "ach, I'll wait until next summer when things will be back to normal". I guess we'll see about that.

People said that 12 months ago. Whilst I sincerely hope you are right and agree with everyone in here saying we need to accelerate the opening up of everything immediately, if the last couple of years have shown us anything it's that the vast majority of this country are quite happy to submit to our betters and do exactly what we are told with the minimum of fuss. Whilst many people are clearly now ignoring many of the restrictions around meeting up with friends and family etc, short of large scale protests (which won't happen) there is nothing we can do about the opening up of the economy, crowds at fitba, being able to pop into the shops without a mask etc etc.

This sort of thing could kill off a lot of companies in the travel industry who have basically only survived the last year because of government support. When that support is removed, but there is still vastly reduced revenue due to the continued restrictions or requirements to test, then we are going to see a lot of problems. This is of course unless they extend support to that particular sector for a more extended period of time. I guess we will have to wait and see on that front.

Aye. The endings of both were far from perfect and probably move them down the list of 'best ever shows' IMO but they are still great series. I never finished Lost when it was on originally and only finally got round to watching it again last year thanks to covid giving me a lot more time for these things. The outcry over the ending was one of the reasons I never bothered going back to it for 10 years but I didn't think it was that bad tbh.

If he'd allowed a referendum a year or 18 months ago I'm pretty sure no would've won it and that would've killed it for a long time. I think he's waited too long now.

Surely just need to make sure the latch goes fully into the wee slot on the door frame that it sits in when the door is closed? I've got a door that was doing this, just needed to adjust the metal plate on the door frame where the latch sits so it went in fully and it was fine after that. Depends on what type of door and latch etc you've got though I guess.

You only have to look at the portrayal in most of the media of Jeremy Corbyn as some sort of reincarnation of Joseph Stalin for evidence of this.

Nothing. Probably. There have always been mad b*****ds, and there will always be mad b*****ds. I think the good thing now is that these people are a lot easier to catch. 40 years ago this guy might have gone on to kill a good few more women before he was caught (presuming they have the right guy here) but with the technology we have now with forensics, CCTV everywhere, mobile phone tracking etc there are so many more resources Police can use to track people down. The very high likelihood of being swiftly apprehended in itself is probably as much of a deterrent as you can give but like I say you will still get people who are compelled to do these sort of things.

There was a small window of opportunity after the Rangers liquidation when maybe it could've been possible. Just needed Celtic to have a really bad year and someone else to have an absolute stormer. Obviously it never really got close to happening but that was the one and only chance I'll see in my lifetime I reckon, unless there is some massive shake up of the game or some mad rich investor but I think that's also unlikely.

"Dykes" is currently trending on twitter, and not in a good way.

If presiding over the deaths of over 100k people and all the associated shambles didn't finish the Tories then I'm not sure if anything will. They will get in again at the next election regardless of what happens over the next few months.

There is a "new variant" being banded about in the media every 5 minutes, yet cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue to fall as vaccines are rolled out. People are no longer frightened by the constant mewing over these variants.

Bit harsh.

Why even have a limit on it? If its only for head injuries and you've used all your concussion subs and someone else gets a head knock then why shouldn't you be able to sub them too? Seems a fairly unlikely scenario but you never know. I guess you would then have to take them off and go down to 10 men but this then comes back to the same argument of pressure to keep them on etc.

Is that not basically how politics works?