Off Topic Thread 5.0

errlloyd

swiwi_ wrote: »

Anyone else shedding crocodile tears for Aung San Suu Kyi? Doubt she will get Bono on her side this time. Although you never know.

Just for the record.

She also had;

A Nobel Peace Prize
Congressional Gold Medal
Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience prize
The Elie Wiesel Award
The Olof Palme Prize
Sakharov Prize
Freedom of the City of Oxford
25 Honourary Degrees (including Trinity,
10+ Freedom of the City prizes (including Galway, Oxford, and Paris)


Bono cops a lot of flack, but misreading Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't fall completely at his door!!!

Bazzo

errlloyd wrote: »

Just for the record.

She also had;

A Nobel Peace Prize
Congressional Gold Medal
Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience prize
The Elie Wiesel Award
The Olof Palme Prize
Sakharov Prize
Freedom of the City of Oxford
25 Honourary Degrees (including Trinity,
10+ Freedom of the City prizes (including Galway, Oxford, and Paris)


Bono cops a lot of flack, but misreading Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't fall completely at his door!!!

Do you really think she'd have managed any of that without Bono though?

Buer

Bazzo wrote: »

Do you really think she'd have managed any of that without Bono though?

You mean with or without, Hew?

Paul Smeenus

MaybeMaybe wrote: »

Do you think there is real potential for violence again?

Truthfully, I'm starting to wonder.

It will never be as bad as it was, but I do wonder if there may be trouble ahead.

MaybeMaybe

MaybeMaybe wrote: »

Do you think there is real potential for violence again?

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Truthfully, I'm starting to wonder.

It will never be as bad as it was, but I do wonder if there may be trouble ahead.

The deep inequalities that drove the troubles in the 70s are not a factor so I don't see troubles 2.0 happening.

However, I do think a couple of things are coalescing at once in a potentially dangerous fashion.

1. Sinn Fein are increasingly talking about preparing for a united Ireland.
2. Unionist communities have been badly scorned by the UK Government
3. Austerity and potentially severe austerity is likely coming which will disproportionately impact Northern Ireland within the UK.
4. Frustration levels with the pandemic are high
5. UK - EU relationship is completely toxic now with the UK even denying the EU full ambassadorial status.

If the Tories need to rally their voting base anytime soon they'll create a new conflict with the EU. The only place this can really happen is Northern Ireland and I honestly question whether it would bother them in the slightest if things turned violent.

No one item above is enough to spark trouble - but all at once? If it kicks off it will fuel itself too - so it just can't be allowed to kick off again.

Paul Smeenus

Deleted User wrote: »

The deep inequalities that drove the troubles in the 70s are not a factor so I don't see troubles 2.0 happening.

However, I do think a couple of things are coalescing at once in a potentially dangerous fashion.

1. Sinn Fein are increasingly talking about preparing for a united Ireland.
2. Unionist communities have been badly scorned by the UK Government
3. Austerity and potentially severe austerity is likely coming which will disproportionately impact Northern Ireland within the UK.
4. Frustration levels with the pandemic are high
5. UK - EU relationship is completely toxic now with the UK even denying the EU full ambassadorial status.

If the Tories need to rally their voting base anytime soon they'll create a new conflict with the EU. The only place this can really happen is Northern Ireland and I honestly question whether it would bother them in the slightest if things turned violent.

No one item above is enough to spark trouble - but all at once? If it kicks off it will fuel itself too - so it just can't be allowed to kick off again.

It's worth bearing in mind that a significant amount of PSNI manhours still go into collecting intelligence, prosecuting bigots for planning "operations", defusing viable explosive devices, responding to paramilitary "justice" and punishment beatings and collecting intelligence.

Even now, there's a weird, unspoken acceptance and presumption of an "acceptable" level of threat. Lyra McKee was killed a year or two ago, and there was a fair amount of outrage as she was so young, and a generation who had never faced their peers' deaths responded. I know a number of young folk who knew/worked with Lyra McKee who thought this would be a watershed moment - those of us that have lived through more of the Troubles knew it wouldn't be. There would be anger and a feeling of intense loss, and then it would blow over. As had happened with the appalling deaths of hundreds of other innocents during the Troubles. Fish suppers are wrapped in yesterdays' news, as they say.

But before that, the previous death had been a man, Adrian Ismay, who had a bomb put under his car in East Belfast - it detonated and he died in hospital. That was in 2016. (He had been on his way to an Ulster match.) In 2019, a peeler had a bomb put under his car intended to go off at a golf club. A bomb exploded in a car outside a Derry courthouse the same year.

These things happen and then are quietly resigned to the dustbin of history - we have a working pretence that these things aren't that egregious, because it allows us to get on with practically functioning as a society. The reason that more people haven't been killed is the sheer incompetence of the small numbers of those still left who are prepared to employ violence. If those numbers rise, their chance of success will as well.

The biggest issues are the two borders, and what form they persist in. Each is a definable thing affecting the "footsoldiers" lives in real ways, and is a much more potent tinderbox than more abstract, political issues. The threat of renewed Republican violence was a very real, explicit, acknowledged part of the discussion about the border on the island. What happens with Loyalists as the Irish Sea border wreaks havoc with trade and after April, who knows, but it needs to be managed.

Here's the PSNI figures from Oct '19 to Sept 20, thus covering half a year of lockdowns. As I say, we have a shared pretence that it's not as bad as it is, so we can get on with things without creating even more political logjams and blame-throwing than we have. But if a substantial paramilitary operation is successful, we might have to open a very ugly can of worms and address it.

https://www.psni.police.uk/globalassets/inside-the-psni/our-statistics/security-situation-statistics/2020/september/security-situation-statistics-to-september-2020.pdf

Paul Smeenus

Buer wrote: »

You mean with or without, Hew?

Banworthy

Buer

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Banworthy

No greater compliment can be received.

swiwi_

I quite enjoy politics discussion on the off-topic thread. Bringing NI into the discussion is tempting fate though for a bit of mod intervention. Please no-one lose their rag. No-one wants a return to discussing American football.

awec

Irish Politics is off limits folks. That includes NI.

irishbucsfan

Can’t wait for the bucs to win the Super Bowl this weekend

swiwi_

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Can’t wait for the bucs to win the Super Bowl this weekend

Are they a soccer team?

jacothelad

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Banworthy

Didn't Connacht try to sign him?....:D

Neil3030

The Tampa Bay Bucs tried to sign Banworthy from Connacht?

The Inbetween is mine

Neil3030 wrote: »

The Tampa Bay Bucs tried to sign Banworthy from Connacht?

They're both only Leinster feeder teams

mfceiling

So I decided to sit down with herself last week and start Game of Thrones.

Series 1 - done

Series 2 - halfway through

Thoughts...it's good. Not blown away by it yet but the episodes absolutely fly past (normally a good sign).

Characters...

Joffrey (spelling?) - prick

Jamie Lanister - prick

Dwarf (pc?) Lanister - funny fecker

His sidekick - very very funny

Jon Snow - alright

Youngest girl Stark - feisty

Dragon Queen girl - yep


Lot of nudity (no complaints) and a nice amount of gore and violence. Will stick with it now to the end.

Stheno

mfceiling wrote: »

So I decided to sit down with herself last week and start Game of Thrones.

Series 1 - done

Series 2 - halfway through

Thoughts...it's good. Not blown away by it yet but the episodes absolutely fly past (normally a good sign).

Characters...

Joffrey (spelling?) - prick

Jamie Lanister - prick

Dwarf (pc?) Lanister - funny fecker

His sidekick - very very funny

Jon Snow - alright

Youngest girl Stark - feisty

Dragon Queen girl - yep


Lot of nudity (no complaints) and a nice amount of gore and violence. Will stick with it now to the end.

It gets boring after series four imo

Dave_The_Sheep

mfceiling wrote: »

Will stick with it now to the end.

For your own sake, stop at season 5/6.

MaybeMaybe

no, no, no. don't stop early

he needs to suffer through like the rest of us did.

Bazzo

They're only winding you up. Season 8 is a true triumph of television and is a must watch

mfceiling

Ah look I may as well finish it out even though from reading here you guys were very disappointed in how it progressed.

After this I'm going to give breaking bad another shot. Got through series 1 on it but found it incredibly slow.

Buer

mfceiling wrote: »

Ah look I may as well finish it out even though from reading here you guys were very disappointed in how it progressed.

After this I'm going to give breaking bad another shot. Got through series 1 on it but found it incredibly slow.

Both great shows in their entirety but could not be more different in terms of the quality of their final episodes.

I preferred Breaking Bad to The Sopranos. If you weren't ignoring my opinions on this forum already, now you can be sure of it.

The Inbetween is mine

I'm quite enjoying Lupin on Netflix, Omar Sy is very good as the lead, French subtitles, but well worth a look imo

Podge_irl

Stheno wrote: »

It gets boring after series four imo

Some of the best episodes are in Season 5 and 6 I think. Absolute stellar feats of TV.

But yeah...7 and 8 are not great to put it mildly.

hold my beer

Never watched an episode of GOT. Don't think I'll bother either with the slating the final season gets.

Breaking Bad is great. Defo go back to that

The Inbetween is mine

hold my beer wrote: »

Never watched an episode of GOT. Don't think I'll bother either with the slating the final season gets.

Breaking Bad is great. Defo go back to that

Think of it as Lord of the Rings with tits and you know what you're getting

hold my beer

Watched the LOTR movies once each, in the cinema. I'd never watch them again. Long drawn out ****e.

jacothelad

hold my beer wrote: »

Watched the LOTR movies once each, in the cinema. I'd never watch them again. Long drawn out ****e.

Yep. If Gandalf had been even half awake at the beginning he'd simply have got Gwaihir the Wind Lord to fly the ring to Mount Doom and drop it in. Job done.

irishbucsfan

jacothelad wrote: »

Yep. If Gandalf had been even half awake at the beginning he'd simply have got Gwaihir the Wind Lord to fly the ring to Mount Doom and drop it in. Job done.

I think it took those lads a few months to sort out the paperwork, off-camera