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[peasy23]

Ask your friend what his opinion on cars made before 1st January 1982 is.

Or electric vehicles until 2025.

[Clown Job]

16 hours ago, G_&_T said:

who insisted that as they don't pay road tax

Nobody does 

[Clown Job]

Back the blue 

 

[HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows]

1 minute ago, Clown Job said:

Back the blue 

 

That's an udder disgrace. 

[sugna]

On 21/11/2022 at 17:54, Detournement said:

Millions of British people go to Thailand, Egypt, Dubai and on cruises every year.

I guarantee you every single journalist and presenter bitching about Qatar falls into that category. 

Yes, I've no doubt you'll make that guarantee.

But I can't spend all of my time explaining that your guarantees don't get past the most rudimentary of fact-checking.

[milton75]

This chat about hotels in Qatar, Dubai, etc.?

Nothing to do with the World Cup or the number of deaths in stadia makes any odds to that. If you think a hotel stay in that sort of soulless shithole is a good idea then you are trash. It's pretty simple and easy to understand. 

"Where should we go on holiday? Where should we see another culture, eat interesting food, see sights?"

"F*ck that. I want to go to a hotel filled with vapid try-hards and buy some discount gold".

['WellDel]

27 minutes ago, milton75 said:

This chat about hotels in Qatar, Dubai, etc.?

Nothing to do with the World Cup or the number of deaths in stadia makes any odds to that. If you think a hotel stay in that sort of soulless shithole is a good idea then you are trash. It's pretty simple and easy to understand. 

"Where should we go on holiday? Where should we see another culture, eat interesting food, see sights?"

"F*ck that. I want to go to a hotel filled with vapid try-hards and buy some discount gold".

Totally agree. All the people I know who have ever been to Dubai are exactly the type of superficial arsewipes that I'd hate to share a hotel with for 2 weeks. A heady mix of wee local, plastic hard men/low level drug dealers and boasty, social media heavy attention seekers. Never really fancied it as a destination, doubly so with the sort of nuggets who seem to frequent it.

[Satoshi]

On 22/11/2022 at 15:23, The Moonster said:

Would that be the same British people who protested against these blood soaked invasions?

You can hate Qatars human rights record and British foreign policy at the same time and not be a hypocrite. 

Only if you were equally calling for a boycott of the 2012 olympics (or the same contempt currently being shown to Qatar), which I recall nobody doing, certainly none of the rage filled 'pundits'.

22 hours ago, scottsdad said:

As @VincentGuerin said in another thread, you could in theory exclude pretty much any country in the world from hosting a World Cup if you look hard enough for a reason. Britain's colonial past, US international aggression, Russia invading Ukraine, and on and on.

But this one is different for a number of reasons. Firstly, homosexuality is not just frowned upon but illegal. A gay person in Qatar can be arrested and imprisoned. Human rights are not just neglected but actively pursued by the authorities. Add to that, the country had no infrastructure in place to host the World Cup when they won the bid - they won purely because they paid off enough corrupt FIFA officials. For this, FIFA needs IMO a complete overhaul/abolished.

Then we get to migrant workers. forced to surrender passports to their employers and forced to pay agents to get there for work - very much mirroring the people trafficking we are seeing in small boats crossing the channel right now. Lack of rights, facilities, healthcare, safety and so on leading to a huge number of migrant deaths, and a significant number working on construction for these stadiums. Officially 5 people died per stadium, unofficially this could be far higher.

Indeed, virtually every country has a reason to despise Britain, the supervillains of the last 200 years.

I have lived in several countries with even more repressive policies towards homosexuality than Qatar, and yet there is always quite an obvious, barely veiled gay culture. The law is more for show than action (and this applies to many similar laws), I am not doubting that people are persecuted under these crimes, but equally there will be gay people of influence (in government, police etc) in Qatar who don't do much to hide their sexuality.

Migrant workers are treated as bad, if not worse, in many other parts of the world and will typically recieve better treatment than they would in their home country (hence why they leave). There is absolutely no justification for hoarding their passports, or many of the other indignities they have to suffer. That should, and likely will, improve.

I would not have awarded the world cup to Qatar, but I am absolutely not convinced they are far worse than previous hosts. There is more to dislike (even in 2018) about Russia's brutal regime where prisoners are routinely tortured, Brazil where extra judicial police killings are the norm in many large cities, or corruption ridden South Africa. They are all bad, Qatar (in my view) is not much worse than all previous hosts yet they are getting far more scrutiny than any of the others. Maybe it's the microscope world we live in, with a fair dose of anti Muslim sentiment thrown in.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Satoshi

[Suspect Device]

 

May be in the category of things that never happened but quite funny if it did. 

 

[hk blues]

11 hours ago, HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows said:

That's an udder disgrace. 

Beyond the pale right enough!

[hk blues]

6 hours ago, Satoshi said:

...will typically recieve better treatment than they would in their home country (hence why they leave).

They leave for better money so if money is your only criteria in defining "treatment" you're right.  

I think treatment covers more than that though.

[Sergeant Wilson]

8 hours ago, milton75 said:

This chat about hotels in Qatar, Dubai, etc.?

Nothing to do with the World Cup or the number of deaths in stadia makes any odds to that. If you think a hotel stay in that sort of soulless shithole is a good idea then you are trash. It's pretty simple and easy to understand. 

"Where should we go on holiday? Where should we see another culture, eat interesting food, see sights?"

"F*ck that. I want to go to a hotel filled with vapid try-hards and buy some discount gold".

You can't get a decent full English either.

[Derry Alli]

Are Qatar's polis cutting about in jogging bottoms?

Has @throbber got a job in the polis?

[Satoshi]

1 hour ago, hk blues said:

They leave for better money so if money is your only criteria in defining "treatment" you're right.  

I think treatment covers more than that though.

Well of course it isn't.

But do you think the building practices, hsse standards etc. are better in Bangladesh than they are in Qatar?

It's a shit fact about the world that most people have nothing, 80% of the world have never been on an airplane before. Those choosing to go to Qatar (and elsewhere, and it's usually a choice) are doing so because they think it's better than what they are at home.

Should they be exploited and have their passports taken? Absolutely not. Would their life be better if they had to stay in their home country? I haven't seen any make a convincing argument on this, it would almost certainly be worse for them and their families.

Also theres evidence that sweatshops help the economic development of a country and their manufacturing base (e.g. in Vietnam), does that mean that sweatshops should be death traps? No, of course not, but there's always more layers to the debate than the easy answers in western discourse. Sweatshops are (usually) better than subsistence farming.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Satoshi

[hk blues]

Just now, Satoshi said:

Well of course it isn't.

But do you think the building practices, hsse standards etc. are better in Bangladesh than they are in Qatar?

It's a shit fact about the world that most people have nothing, 80% of the world have never been on an airplane before. Those choosing to go to Qatar (and elsewhere, and it's usually a choice) are doing so because they think it's better than what they are at home.

Should they be exploited and have their passports taken? Absolutely not. Would their life be better if they had to stay in their home country? I haven't seen any make a convincing argument on this, it would almost certainly be worse for them and their families.

Let's stick to the point -

I don't believe migrant workers from Bangladesh (or anywhere else for that matter) go abroad to work for any reason other than money.  Sure, the conditions in Qatar (or wherever) are better than where most migrant workers are coming from but that's not why they choose to work there - it's for the money.  You said they were leaving their home countries for the better conditions where they go to work.  I disagree.

[Clown Job]

Ok Matt

[Sergeant Wilson]

7 hours ago, hk blues said:

Let's stick to the point -

I don't believe migrant workers from Bangladesh (or anywhere else for that matter) go abroad to work for any reason other than money.  Sure, the conditions in Qatar (or wherever) are better than where most migrant workers are coming from but that's not why they choose to work there - it's for the money.  You said they were leaving their home countries for the better conditions where they go to work.  I disagree.

They could stay at home and get regular work in the ship breakers. What could go wrong there?

[MazzyStar]

 

[welshbairn]

Had a chat with Elon today.

Edited November 25, 2022 by welshbairn

[welshbairn]

I see our little anti-woke warrior has made a comment, bless! 

I only recently signed up for twitter and don't really know my way around it, but it is fun to be able to comment directly to a famous person talking shite, even if they most likely never read it. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by welshbairn