Messages

"Riled up"? What are you on about? I'm actually a little bit bored w/ this thread, but it sort of baffles me as to why people care SO much about it. Far more people died in the war Syria, for example. Was that too complicated to understand? Yeah, I know there's lots of factors involved that stir people up a bit, but - Christ! - ye do bang on a bit!

You can avoid getting "bored with a thread" with this one weird trick...

David McWilliams podcast had an interesting take. Russia and China have no dog in the Israel/Palestine fight, but it's a great wedge issue that divides the west. Some EU countries are in the Israel camp, some are in the Palestine camp. The Irish see the Brits in the Israelis, the yanks see Al Queda in Hamas, etc.. America's backing of the Israeli cause keeps the US well stocked with enemies. Russia's happy to be friends with Iran who in turn are happy to back their proxies in Hizbollah, Hams and IJ.

[Hamas wilfully started this latest round of slaughter]

Yeah this is a precarious enough situation as Irans, Russias etc etc could very well get involved here and if that happens it has the potential to get very very messy. It would appear the "west" will side with Israel no matter what 

Do you think they should side with Iran ?

They should side with innocent men, women and children and bring pressure on Israel and Hamas to f**king stop attacking each other. Hamas are a bundle of Muslim psychopaths as well.
The West created this mess so they should sort it out. If that means committing troops then so be it. 

Hamas are not a bundle of Muslim psychopaths, they are part of the resistance to the occupation of Palestine. They have the right to resist and right to self determination
under international law. ( to be clear they don't have the right to breach int law) They won elections in 2006, updated charter and recognoised israel in 2017 and they have offered numerous ceasefires which I shared a timesofisrael link to recently. Hamas wouldn't exist but for the occupation and oppression of Israel and its enablers.

This is terrible shit, altogether. Hamas wilfully started this latest round of slaughter. They knew what would happen to their own people, and they still went ahead and 'prodded the tiger', as they say. It was no way an act of 'resistance', it was deliberately goading Israel. "Hamas wouldn't exist but for the occupation..."? Puh. Israel wouldn't have killed 8,000 if Hamas hadn't moved. NOTHING in geopolitics happens for no reason. And, yes, Hamas are a bag of Muslim psychos.

Only if you accept the US media line that always starts the coverage with Hamas's retaliation against some Israeli actions that conveniently never get any airtime.

If the Brits were to "offer" the Americans a country that meant ceding half of their territory to immigrants, I'm quite sure they would reject it.

I use cash to pay for petrol because there's a dodgy station near us that gives you a big discount for it

That was one thing I noticed when I was driving in that area - the gas stations had different prices if you paid in cash or paid by card. It was only 10 to 15 cents a gallon saving

It adds up quickly if you drive a lot, which people in America do

I take cash, cheques and card, mostly card due to the sums, farmers like the aul cash or cheque book. Get a lot of payments through BACS,

Prefer taking it via machine, then I'm not running around with a lot of cash to bank.

But it will be cashless soon enough, as soon as the banks stop charging for the use of cards and transactions, I'm not sure why they do if the system is up and running, it shouldn't cost the punters at this stage!

Benny, I always use the self scanny thingy in Tesco, no hanging about at the counter waiting on some twat counting out his pennies, while having a conversation about pure shite!

The only reason I don't use the self checkout is it's not much faster than the service checkout. You have to put each item in the bagging area before you can scan the next one, but the cashier at their checkout can just go rapid fire through all the items.

I like the idea of the scan-as-you-go that the Dutch have and I saw in Tesco last time I was home. It hasn't arrived stateside yet, which doesn't surprise me, because this place is always ten years behind with this sort of thing.

I saw a video going around the other day about tills in Japan. All the products have some sort of RFID tags in them. Set your basket on the till and it instantly knows everything that's in there, you press a few buttons on the screen to confirm and pay and away you go. I'd be okay with that.

Does anybody here remember a store in America called Fresh & Easy? It was Tesco's attempt to crack the US market. They had tills that could be self service or full service. A lot of innovations, and a good place to shop, but it didn't catch on.

Do u get charged for cash withdrawals ftom atms in the states? Probably the way they'll try to wean us off cash here eventually. They did try to introduce it here (UK as opposed to NI) years ago but there was a huge back lash & it died a death.

Only if you use a machine outside of your bank's network. We use a credit union, and all the different credit union ATMs are on the same network, so no fees as long as we use them.

There are small commercial ATMs in bars and shops, but they charge quite a bit for withdrawals. I never use them unless it's some sort of emergency, which is never nowadays.

I use cash to pay for petrol because there's a dodgy station near us that gives you a big discount for it. We also have a cleaner that comes to our house a couple of times a month and we pay her cash, although we're switching that to electronic soon. And if we're buying second hand stuff on FB Marketplace that's another place where cash is the only option, but even then most people take Paypal or Venmo now. Everything else is tap or autopay.

I find paper money a big pain in the neck. You have to go and get it from a machine while checking over your shoulder, you have to get the right denominations for the stuff you're buying if the other person doesn't have change. And as RH says a lot of it leaks out in small change that never gets used. I don't see the attraction of it. And I certainly don't get the tinfoil hat stuff about "government control." I'm sure Uncle Sam has bigger fish to fry than how much I'm spending on groceries.

I see Paddy Cosgrave is torching his Web Summit business with unwise tweeting.
He annoyed the Israeli tech community and it has spiralled.
He has always tweeted edgy stuff about the Irish scene and gotten away with it, like making up some yarn that 4 nurses had died at the start of Covid.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/meta-google-and-stripe-to-boycott-web-summit-on-back-of-paddy-cosgraves-israel-comments/a1235054615.html

Not sure he did a whole lot (if anything) wrong in this case, but as you say he's been lucky to get away with previous stuff. Of the hundreds of random people I have met as part of my business dealings over the last couple of decades, he stands out as the most obnoxious. A complete a-hole, who is prepared to tell outright lies to make a point.

He's the right man getting his comeuppance for the wrong reason.

And by the way, the americans got involved in the Arab Spring risings to over throw the peoples choice and to replace it with a puppet they would control or is that me just being anti American again. Those dumb Arabs have no idea how to use democracy so we will do it for them. Ah the land of free that started with their own genocide.

This is either a misfired attempt at sarcasm or is spectacularly stupid. The Arab Spring uprisings were sparked by rising food prices. They were against corrupt, unelected regimes and they were a demand for democracy.

Could they be copying the Israeli tactic of making stuff up, like the "40 beheaded babies" and "mass rape" nonsense?

Well today they're just going full on denial that the hospital attack happened at all. Because the building wasn't totally demolished, it's still standing, therefore there's no rubble, no bodies, just a bit of flying glass and minor injuries. Those burned out vehicles in the car park? There's no bodies in them. Didn't happen. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The point is that the devastation is relatively modest and there weren't actually anything like 500 fatalities, that seems to have been fake news to try and imply a level of devastation that a rocket could not produce.

So perhaps dozens of people were killed and probably the airstrikes since last night have killed at least as many.

Is this sarcasm?

No. This hospital thing does not seem to have been the Israelis, but they are bombing away today so all of this discussion about the rocket hitting the hospital car park is actually a distraction at this stage.

Sweet. Jesus.

I give up.

The point is that the devastation is relatively modest and there weren't actually anything like 500 fatalities, that seems to have been fake news to try and imply a level of devastation that a rocket could not produce.

So perhaps dozens of people were killed and probably the airstrikes since last night have killed at least as many.

Is this sarcasm?

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has had to apologise for saying that Israel is a racist state.