Name names please....I must have missed that. Was it in Parliament? The formal comments now from Sunak and Co appear to be following the Johnson era 'we've appointed an independent Investigator so we must let that process complete' mantra!
Sorry mate...if you mean the guy in the video clip, that's not a Gov rep. he's SNP and Chair of the Select Committee. Top bloke and former BBC journo.
No mate, the government bloke who replied to Nicolson. I was expecting him to give the usual, clone Bojo flippant response. Instead he actually addressed the point with some seriousness (although he kept saying there had been a robust process, but you'd expect him to say that tbf).
It did become a little comedic towards the end, though. Pretty clear what the message he was sent to give was and which exact words were supposed to be emphasised.
Yeh defo. And if he'd said the rest of what he did without saying that, it would've pretty much sounded contrite, like they accepted Zahawi was guilty as sin.
She's gone full 'Carole Cadwallader' the last couple of weeks! Who'd have thought that a Government might be brought down by a former Countdown presenter!
Yes, Carol. The "theme" is that if tax avoidance is the purview of those with sufficient wealth such that even after paying the costs of tax law experts, they will still have a decent reduction in their tax bill. If you are mates with Gary Barlow and Jimmy Carr, ask them to explain the fine details to you in idiot terms.
There's certainly a fair number of ex-military who are responsible for mass shootings, such as Charles Whitman, Nidal Hasan, Devin Patrick Kelley, George Pierre Hennard, Ian David Long, Jakrapanth Thomma and Aaron Alexis to name a few What does stick out about the USofAmerica is their attitude towards guns is much like a 15 year old towards a six pack of Special Brew, for example a day or so ago I saw a clip of one of the alt-right douchetards doing...well, let me show you Seriously, just how ****ing dense is that? Operating an assault weapon one-handed when it's got the kickback of a particularly PO'd bronco so he can post an Insta video to ohN dEr LybZ (who wouldn't see it, given they have better things to do than follow this dickhead on Instagram) to the point somebody who works at the range is rushing in just in case he unintentionally blows his or somebody else's head into another postal district Which leads to the obvious question: which other country has such a ****ed up mindset about guns that they're pretty obvious penis substitutes? Because watch that video and there's no other way to look at it other than serious amounts of overcompensating for lacking in the dong department, and with incel terrorism on the rise that;s where that question stops being a pretty lame joke and actually becomes a valid concern
I hear Trump buried his first wife on his golf course at Mar a Largo to save burial expenses. Hope he doesn't spit before he tees off!!!!? He has to pay $900,000+ at judges order for ball ****ting Hillary Clinton and others during and after the 2016 Pres. election. Hillary gets about $172,000 for the lies about her.
Thank you for the links, interesting and sad reading. But IMHO they don't change my mind in the sense that of all those links only one of the Americans was actually deployed on operations, Long for six months in Afghanistan. The others were never deployed and only Whitman served (for two years) as a Marine in the 60s, the others were what I'd call "base roles" who would have had (in the US services), minimal exposure to firearms. Think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, but I would suggest that of all the tens of thousands of Americans that have operationally deployed, comparatively very very few have engaged in mass shootings. As an aside, I would not however be surprised to find that a higher proportion of them compared to the population used a weapon to commit suicide.
And while I'm on the subject (though admittedly I'm going away from the subject of this thread a bit), it's always been my opinion that when you look at history you find that humans have been far less "civilised" then we would like to think. The odd thing is that many people seem to think that in their cozy existence we have somehow moved forward from such horror. Sadly these are people who have learned nothing from history, and some quite recent history. No, humans have a tendency towards barbaric behaviour and only need the opportunity to indulge it. Not everyone obviously, but it only needs a large enough minority. It only needs the "I was only obeying orders" mindset to take hold, or that someone else takes responsibility. There is plenty of evidence for this, not just historic but experimental like Milgram. It relates to this subject because what you do with increased access and reduced respect for weapons, is give people greater opportunity to indulge their inner barbarian. And my point about the "front line" ex-military tending not to carry out mass shootings is that they represent the small part of the population that have had proper training and actually have had lessons on *what orders they do not have to obey*. Clearly they are not perfect as the news sometimes sadly demonstrates, but I still stand by the difference between people who understand what weapons are capable of and those who see them as some kind of penis extension.
IMHO the psychology of the "in/out group" preference is as strongly embedded in the evolutionary genetics of humans as it is in other group society mammal species. Similarly it doesn't take much to trigger/rally for the worst the in/out group instinct of ERC groups, "It relates to this subject because what you do with increased access and reduced respect for weapons, is give people greater opportunity to indulge their inner barbarian." The USA could make N hrs annual of gun training a mandatory part of ownership of any type of gun (you have to show to an accredited professional each year you know how to maintain/secure/behave as the owner) .
