Jamie123

You've heard more or less correct. Career criminals getting picked up in limousines at prison gates, so their places can go to people unlucky enough to have been nabbed by police on the fringes of riots. Since Starmer and his gang took over there's been little else in the media. A lot of people are not happy about it one bit.

Nor the US - and Trump (for all his faults) is unlikely to let things slide in that department. As for Starmer though.... *shudder*

I agree with you totally. In the UK we do have better free speech than Germany or Austria, but we won't have it forever if we're not vigilant against this sort of thing. I do think though that if we have free speech it should be for everyone, not just top newspaper columnists.

I'm glad I didn't comment on this earlier because it's amazing how a bit of extra information can change your perspective on things. The lesson is not to jump too quickly on the bandwagon. Allison Pearson is a columnist in The Daily Telegraph - a particularly right wing newspaper in the uk. A few days ago she described how police had come to her house on the morning of Remembrance Sunday (of all days!) to tell her she was under investigation for an "offensive tweet" she had posted a year before. When she asked what the tweet was they refused to say. When she asked who had been offended by it they again refused to say. This quickly led to a media firestorm with much use of the words Kafkaesque and Orwellian and "a chilling effect on free speech". Well, we did eventually learn what it was all about. During the Israeli/Palestinian protests in London, the Met Police had refused to be photographed with pro-Israeli protesters. Allison Pearson had posted a photo of some smiling police officers standing beside some dark skinned individuals, holding up an Islamic-looking flag, with a message that Police had no problem being photographed beside a bunch of "Jew haters". It was quickly pointed out to her that (i) the officers were Manchester police, not Met police, and (ii) the dark skinned people were Pakistanis, and the flag they were holding was the flag of Pakistan. Realising her mistake she quickly deleted the tweet. Even so, I do think prosecuting her for "stirring up racial hatred" would have been an obscene overreaction. It was a stupid mistake, but not done in malice, and she did her best to correct matters. I'm glad that the police have now dropped the investigation - though whether they would have done without the public furore that has accompanied all this is another matter. But this is only half the story. Back during the Covid epidemic, a man called Dave Bradshaw - a scientist working for GSK - went on a bit of a Twitter-rant accusing Allison Pearson of organising a hate campaign against the NHS. Allison Pearson was furious and found out all about Bradshaw and said she would sue him and report him to his employers and get him sacked. Realising that he had probably gone off a bit half-cocked, Bradshaw removed the tweet and apologised to Pearson. Pearson said she didn't care one whit for his apology, and he would be hearing from her lawyers and she would be talking to his CEO. He begged her not to do this, telling her that he was his family's only breadwinner and he had a special needs child to support, and he was feeling suicidal. Did she care? Not a bit of it. Her reply was "You're finished!" I'm pleased to say that she did eventually agree to let the matter drop, but only after making poor Dave Bradshaw grovel in the dirt. Now the same thing (almost) has happened to her, are we really supposed to feel sorry for her?

For years I thought the expression "mad as a hatter" came from Alice in Wonderland. It actually predates that book by a long time. I comes from when a lot of mercury went into the making of hats, and hatters who'd been exposed to if for a long time suffered mercury poisoning. Mercury (as you know) attacks the nervous system and it made hatters act strangely - perhaps a bit like the Mad Hatter.

Hmmm.... I'm beginning to think this movie has as much accurate information on LDS missionaries as Scooby Doo Where Are You? has on parapsychology. Not that I don't like Scooby Doo. I like Velma best, with her rational explanations. I think she grew up to be Scully.

Another thought (which I don't think anyone has yet mentioned). The male missionary who came to look for the sisters after they failed to return: would he have been allowed to be on his own like that without his companion?

The Goblet of Fire never made any sense at all to me. Why for example did they need to cancel the entire Quiddich season for the sake of a contest that involved only 4 students. And in the second two rounds, what would the spectators have been able to see? It would have been boring as heck for them.

I have the same issue with Batman. Did he, Robin and Alfred excavate the Bat Cave, create the Batmobile and all the other gizmos all by themselves? Sinister thought: maybe Mr. Reed had the contractors "taken care of" once the building was complete. And Batman...? *Shudder*

You could say the same thing about Hamlet or King Lear. Does that mean there's no value to be gained from considering the characters and their motivations?

It's interesting that it was the worldlier of the two sisters who was most resistant to Mr. Reed's philosophy. While her colleague was ready to deny Christ (choosing the "disbelief" door) hoping that this would get her to safety, she was the one who remained resolute.

I'm not suggesting it isn't a good rule - only that it must be a fairly recent innovation. Either that or its a rule which was until recently widely flouted.

This must be a relatively new rule because back in the 1990s when I was investigating LDS, sister missionaries visited me many times without there being anyone other than me and them present. This was before I was married, when I lived on my own (aside from my cats). This happened over several years, with at least three different pairs of sisters, and in two different stakes, so you cannot argue this was a one-off lapse. The last time sister missionaries visited my home was in 1998, and they sat together on my couch without anyone else other than me present. And no I didn't invite them into my cellar. (For one thing I didn't have a cellar.) Having said that, this movie serves as a cautionary tale about why this rule is probably a good one.

Well well well ... that's the creepiest movie I've seen for a long time...

When my father was a young man he and my mother spent a few years in Aden, which was not then part of Yemen but a British protectorate. He was a volunteer part time policeman. This was potentially quite a dangerous job - more dangerous than he let on to my mother, 'coz otherwise there's no way she'd have let him do it. He had a pistol, but (if I remember the story correctly) he was always told to practice shooting it from the hip. The thinking was that by the time you'd lifted your gun to eye level to get a better aim, the other guy would have shot you. I don't believe he ever actually fired it in anger, but he came close a few times.

I'm in the movie theatre now waiting for it to start. Hope it's not too scary! *shudder* They are playing the theme music to The Lord of the Rings. The dadada da da da daaa theme.

I've also had this same question at the back of my mind. Many of the reports mention "sexual abuse", while concentrating on the "caning till they bled" aspect. A sadist might get sexual gratification from thrashing people till they bled - but you're right it doesn't necessarily follow. In his autobiography, Roald Dahl said that when he was at Repton School the principal - Geoffrey Fisher - used to beat kids with a cane until they bled. (In fact he had to give them a towel afterwards to mop up the blood.) Fisher later went into the clergy and eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury, and was the same Archbishop who crowned the late Queen. Dahl cited this as one reason why he was not a Christian. But I've never heard anyone suggest that Fisher was a sexual abuser. Perhaps he was, but severe caning was in those days par for the course. Some senior students (called prefects) were allowed to cane younger kids for pretty much any reason they wanted. Though it's clear there was sexual abuse too - as we read in C.S.Lewis' accounts of school (though he was a bit earlier than Dahl and at a different school). Returning to Smyth though, I don't know whether the caning itself was the "sexual abuse" (and some people do get sexual gratification from such things) or whether it was in addition to it. It seems a rather morbid question to research. I would rather concentrate on the lessons the minister in the video pointed out, for example we shouldn't hide such things for the sake of protecting God's reputation. God is quite capable of looking after himself. P.S. My morbid curiosity did get the better of me in the end. Brett Murphy in his YouTube video of this is saying there was "no sexual element" to what Smyth did. I don't know if this is true or not, but if it is there has clearly been some misreporting. (Which is hardly surprising - the media always does want to find sex at the bottom of everything.)

Just to give you the background: 1. John Smyth was a lay preacher in the Church of England who did a lot of work with young people in the 1980s and 90s. 2. John Smyth was sexually abusing many of those young people including thrashing them with sticks until they bled in a specially soundproofed garden shed. 3. Many people knew (or at least suspected) that this was going on but kept quiet about it for fear of damaging the Church's reputation. 4. One such person was Justin Welby who eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury. (He claims he didn't hear about Smyth's activities until 2013, but even then did very little about it.) 5. An investigation was eventually held on the matter, but Smyth died before its findings were released. 6. Now the report is public, Justin Welby has resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury. It's worth noting that there are other reasons why Welby is unpopular in certain sections of the Church - particularly his support of homosexual marriage. This has been conflated with the Smyth affair and several other issues too. This guy says some interesting things about it. There are some ideas for us all to reflect on, regardless of our denomination.

Ok "always" was hyperbole. I'm sure the history books will reveal other criminals who escaped punishment by election. As for felons elected to high office, Hitler was one. That went really well for Germany, didn't it? Yes, I'm sure there are enough skeletons in my closet that anyone who cared enough to be bothered could probably get me convicted of something. Does that make me feel better? No. Would I fight it? Probably. Would I expect "different rules" for my acquittal? No.

We could argue about this all day. You are still essentially saying that in your opinion the case against Trump was flawed and the verdict can therefore be ignored. (You can couch that in phrases like "no law exists" but it is still your opinion.) I still say that you are not qualified to make that determination. There are a lot of people here in the UK who think that Lucy Letby is innocent. There is in my opinion some merit to some of their arguments. However, I could have no possible objection to her being described as a "convicted mass murderer" (which is what she is - she was tried for mass murder and convicted) nor would I countenance "different rules" being applied to exonerate her. If "different rules" are to be applied to nullify Trump's conviction, why stop there? Why not have "different rules" to nullify the convictions of everyone who some people think were unfairly treated in the courts?

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But either way, his guilt is a "fact in law" until the verdict is overturned. That's how it would be for anyone else, and that's how it ought to be for Trump.

I am not saying that he did break any laws. But whether he did or not, a qualified court of law has determined that he did. You and I are quite within our rights to to say that that decision was wrong. But that does not alter the outcome of the case. If the ruling against Trump is to be overturned it should be by a court - not by us.

You're still essentially saying that the conviction doesn't count because YOU disagree with it. And you may be right. Perhaps the case against Trump really is a load of bunkum. (I'm not saying that it isn't.) But it is not for you or me or Trump (or even "People") to make that determination. It is for a court to decide. Maybe Trump was targeted unfairly for political reasons. But that again is a defence that should be presented to a court. "People" has no business to be doing any such thing. If they didn't think he was guilty they should not have charged him in the first place. But they did charge him and the court agreed he was guilty. What is "People" saying now? "Sorry, we had a stupid attack, and the judge and jury were too stupid to see how stupid we were being. Please excuse us now while we go and take our anti-stupid pills." There is only two good reasons for "People" to drop the charges: new evidence or new argument that Trump is innocent. "He was elected" don't make no matter.

P.S. the whole situation reminds me a bit of this... They missed out my favourite bit though. When Marge won't support Mr. Burns: Homer: I bet you didn't even know how many eyes a fish had before the press blew this out if all proportion! Marge: (Trademark growl.)