Friday 17th October 2025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[refitman]

Thanks for the QT review Sky.

[gilsey]

Good morning.

Seconded.

guess what his great insight was? Ask it a stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer, ask it a smart question and you'll get a smarter answer.

I saw that bit, and a few seconds of Whateley. Hard not to conclude that the pair hardly have a brain cell between them.

[gilsey]

Front page news:

Some Aston Villa fans are thugs.
Some of those thugs may be motivated by antisemitism, or they may just be thugs.
Some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are thugs.

This morning Ian Murray, the culture secretary, said ministers will be trying to see if there is a way of ensuring that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans can attend the match. He told Sky News:

[The decision is] just completely and utterly unacceptable, and the prime minister has said we will do everything we possibly can to resolve this issue.

It’s an operational issue for the police, and government doesn’t get involved in operational issues for the police.

Contradictory much? IMO they'd have been better off sticking to the second line.

[gilsey]

[Frog222]

Front page news:
Some Aston Villa fans are thugs.
Some of those thugs may be motivated by antisemitism, or they may just be thugs.
Some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are thugs.

This morning Ian Murray, the culture secretary, said ministers will be trying to see if there is a way of ensuring that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans can attend the match. He told Sky News:

[The decision is] just completely and utterly unacceptable, and the prime minister has said we will do everything we possibly can to resolve this issue.

It’s an operational issue for the police, and government doesn’t get involved in operational issues for the police.

Contradictory much? IMO they'd have been better off sticking to the second line.

I wonder if there are any of the Maccabi Tel Aviv thuggish fans who are not anti-islamic ? Possibly applies to many of the calmer fans too ?

[refitman]

Good to see Labour in Scotland going full Reform

[Frog222]

Starmer's activities as DPP alerted me early to the nature of the beast , when it was obvious he was heading for Number Ten --

Starmer also, according to Oliver Eagleton’s The Starmer Project, “worked doggedly to extradite the autistic IT expert Gary McKinnon to the United States”, after McKinnon gained access to US military databases in search of information about UFOs.

Unlike Assange, McKinnon released nothing, but a furious and embarrassed Washington sought - with Starmer’s help - to punish him.

McKinnon, whose autism made him especially reliant on his family, became increasingly depressed and suicidal as successive legal appeals against his extradition to the US - where he was being threatened with a lifetime in prison - failed.

His mother ambushed Starmer in Westminster, where the lawyer said that speaking to her was “making me feel very uncomfortable”. Eventually, then-Home Secretary Theresa May came to McKinnon’s rescue, ruling out his extradition in parliament in October 2012.

In 2010, Starmer decided not to prosecute an MI5 officer known as Witness B, who was accused of participating in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident arrested and detained by US authorities in Pakistan before being rendered to Morocco in 2002.

Mohamed was held without charge in Guantanamo Bay between 2004 and 2009. While MI5 “knew Mohamed was being tortured”, Starmer said there was “insufficient evidence” to prosecute Witness B.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story ... e-minister

[Frog222]

Back to the football, Naples and Marseilles recently banned visiting fans, and ...

Uefa said: “In all cases, the competent local authorities remain responsible for decisions related to the safety and security of matches taking place on their territory, such decisions being determined on the basis of thorough risk assessments, which vary from match to match and take into consideration previous circumstances.”

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... opa-league

Adding to that the recent flood of news** on Israeli treatment of prisoners and the continuing impunity of the thuggish so-called 'settlers' in the West Bank there may well be demonstrations against the match taking place at all ...

** old news of course, but it's been in the UK news for a change .

[Frog222]

Judge strikes back at an Oh So Dishonest use of a large language model by a really dumb barrister --

" Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but “failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy”.

The upper tribunal judge Mark Blundell said Rahman had even tried to hide the fact he had used AI and “wasted” the tribunal’s time. Blundell said he was considering reporting Rahman to the Bar Standards Board. The Guardian has contacted Rahman’s firm for comment. "

That's the second example I've seen of creative footnoting !

[refitman]