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Off Topic The Politics Thread

Discussion in 'Queens Park Rangers' started by Stroller, Jun 25, 2015.

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

Poll closed Jun 24, 2016.
  1. Stay in

    56 vote(s)
    47.9%
  2. Get out

    61 vote(s)
    52.1%
  1. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Seems this peace deal is pretty much the same as the one that was put forward under Biden. The difference this time is that Trump, riled by the Israeli attack on Qatar, has strong armed Netanyahu into accepting it.
     
    #94701
  2. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Without the bonus of Qatar knowing they aren't untouchable and it gave Hyacinth and Rupert an extra few months of shouting at Israeli avocados in Waitrose so all good.
     
    #94702
  3. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    please log in to view this image
     
    #94703
  4. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    so biden was weak
     
    #94704
  5. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    The last prime minister of new Zealand ended up in the pub I was in tonight
    How far they must fall to end up in a pub I frequent
     
    #94705
  6. bobmid

    bobmid Well-Known Member

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    Or is it how far you've risen kiwi
     
    #94706
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  7. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    It’s a sign there’s about four pubs
     
    #94707
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  8. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    So not only did Trump not get his much desired peace prize (he couldn't really have won this year anyway because the nominations closed in January), but the committee decided to award the prize to someone who stands against everything that Trump represents. Brilliant.
     
    #94708
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  9. Kilburn

    Kilburn Well-Known Member

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    Had to look that one up....

    List of prime ministers of New Zealand - Wikipedia https://share.google/1EKkm17Jlmktx4Arr
    Screenshot_20251011-062605.Chrome.png

    I was thinking you got lucky....

    Screenshot_20251011-063554.Gallery.png
     
    #94709
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2025 at 10:36 AM
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  10. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    #94710
  11. Kilburn

    Kilburn Well-Known Member

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    Yes, quite a set of choppers....

    Screenshot_20251011-064942.Instagram.png
     
    #94711
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  12. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Probably a sign of middle age approaching if I think she’s attractive but my first thought walking through Brighton late on a Friday night is that surely the girls are cold wearing basically nothing fuelled on cheap Prosecco.
     
    #94712
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  13. Kilburn

    Kilburn Well-Known Member

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    Farewell speech.....guy beside her looks non-plussed, I guess you could have ended up with him in the bar Kiwi.

    Screenshot_20251011-065841.Gallery.png r
     
    #94713
  14. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Gay finance Minister
    Guess she wasn't his type
     
    #94714
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  15. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Most finance is quite gay.
     
    #94715
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  16. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Most of my finances aren't overly happy
     
    #94716
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  17. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    It’s a going concern
     
    #94717
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  18. Kilburn

    Kilburn Well-Known Member

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    With all this Finance banter, this former Chancellor of the Exchequer (some might say, a rather "gay" way to describe Finance), Tony Barber, came to mind. He has an unusual full name due to parentage and an interesting bio on Wikipedia.

    Anthony Barber - Wikipedia https://share.google/4q0Fz4jPqtd2Mb4qw

    Screenshot_20251011-092912.Chrome.png
     
    #94718
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  19. Star of David Bardsley

    Star of David Bardsley 2023 Funniest Poster

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    He favoured a lot of cuts
     
    #94719
  20. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Srewart Lee.....

    I had planned to incinerate all the flags I tore down from bridges over the M6 last August bank holiday. But because they were made of a cheap Chinese plastic polymer they just melted into a congealed mess and stained the patio. I was disappointed not to see the flags engulfed in purifying flame. But at least the multicoloured residue they left behind was a good metaphor for the vibrant mix of cultures that is modern British national identity.

    I don’t know why I tore all the flags down. Somewhere south of the Scottish border I just snapped. So whenever I pulled in for petrol I weaved my way through the service station back entrances to the nearest bridges and ripped dozens off the railings. Cars passing beneath tooted, whether in support or anger I didn’t know. Or care. Like the noble comedians that played the Saudi Arabian comedy festival last week, I didn’t do what I did for public approval or financial gain. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.

    One driver pulled up on a bridge and sat watching me, doubled up with laughter. Was he chuckling supportively, or was he enjoying the ultimately futile efforts of a hot fat man trying in vain to stem the incoming tide of fascism? Either way, it was nice to have provoked unalloyed joy, something I rarely experience in my professional life as an “achingly politically correct, alleged comedian” (Sarah Vine, Daily Mail).

    But are the flags that now bedeck our suburbs and estates patriotic or racist? It’s a nuanced notion unlikely to be adequately interrogated in a world where the main forum for public debate is an algorithmically amplified digital dogfighting pit presided over by a ketamine-cranked egomaniac. (Yes, that Elon Musk, who recently appeared on a big screen in Trafalgar Square alongside a throb-veined and fraudulent sunlounger magnate, apparently trying to incite a race war.)

    For example, the phrase “Free Palestine” is not of itself antisemitic, but if that phrase is shouted aggressively after a goal is scored against a football team of young Jewish schoolboys, as a radio phone-in caller reported last week, it probably is. That said, I’ve never understood “the culture of football”, which just sounds to me like an unpleasant mould growing in an unwashed corner of Ron Atkinson.

    As I drove east through Portsmouth last month towards Southsea, the proliferating England flags became conspicuously clustered outside mosques – intended, of course, to intimidate. They called to mind the territorial markers of human heads on sticks in Italian cannibal exploitation cinema that explorers ignore before being disembowelled by racist caricatures of indigenous people, albeit in a way that simultaneously asks questions about human nature and showcases Ursula Andress at her most fetching.

    Later that same day I arrived further east along the coast in Emsworth, suddenly needing a haircut. But when I saw the massive England flags in the barber’s window I decided to stay shaggy. A cascade of prejudiced assumptions against probably blameless ordinary folk meant I didn’t want to have to listen to someone who, in the current climate, would choose to fly an England flag. And who, let’s not forget, would also have a collection of very sharp objects. I appreciate this is my problem. But symbols change their meaning. My flag is lost.

    For example, the swastika is actually an ancient good luck charm, but its appropriation by the Nazis last century means you would be unlikely to send a drawing of one unsolicited to someone the night before their driving test. Similarly, the England flag is, once again, no longer a uniformly positive symbol, particularly to generations of Asians who can remember being beaten up in the 1970s by bands of flag-festooned fascist skinheads, a tradition commemorated in Claudette’s forgotten 1970 ska hit Skinheads A Bash Them. Remember when songs used to be about something?

    Let’s not lie about what’s going on. We accept that a minority of the anti-genocide protesters may be antisemitic, yet politicians of all persuasions maintain the fiction that the flag-waving coke-thugs rabbit-punching the police and pissing everywhere on Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom marches are an expression of patriotism as innocent as morris dancing, cheese rolling and dwile flonking; and it’s just a coincidence, for example, that over two-thirds of the people arrested at Bristol’s anti-immigration Save Our Kids riots last summer had previous contact with the police over reports of domestic abuse. And, as the comedian Alasdair Beckett-King pointed out to me backstage at a benefit on Monday, their comical chant of “Allah? Allah? Who the **** is Allah?” is unlikely to represent a genuine inquiry. We have Google for that.

    My problem with what flags mean is that I am old enough to remember my grandparents, whom I lived with as a child and who were otherwise kind and generous, being part of a delegation sent round to stop their neighbour selling his house to an Asian family in the Midland suburb of Shirley in 1974; and being told, when the five-year-old me questioned this, that it wasn’t racist but was about protecting house values. Oddly, we also had to have the television turned over whenever black people came on. Perhaps that was about economics too. Maybe Ken Boothe’s “coloured” face, singing Everything I Own on Top of the Pops, used up more expensive electrical energy than Colin Crompton dinging a bell on The Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club?

    I’m also old enough to remember when mainstream British politicians, who should know better, stirred up racial hatred as a path to power. You’re old enough to remember this too because it was last Tuesday. And it was Robert Jenrick. And if you still vote Conservative after that speech then you, sir, are a veritable scoundrel. Now, is anyone in the market for a flag residue paperweight?
     
    #94720

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