Mrs Roops

This doesn't look good Panz. History has shown that the registrant country of leave.eu always, always results it in leaving the EU. Perhaps if the Irish folk are nice and ask politely we might let them join the Commonwealth and if they are suitably subservient we might even let Ireland become part of the Union.

OTOH, for someone who "knows a bit" and "has a keen interest" in American politics your own predictions of late haven't exactly been on the money, have they? No worries Billy, a career of political punditry at OANN beckons!

Mmm...you could almost smell the burning rubber after Trump hears the words, "twenty-fifth amendment". Clearly the men in grey suits had just paid the president a courtesy call and suggested he do a reverse-ferret pronto.

So you did.

You've had enough schooling from me, in any case events have moved on - or haven't you heard anything on the MAGA-media yet? How will they announce that despite his bluster, your man is walking on the 20th.

Hmm...let's see now...a calcium deficient, cerebrally-challenged, paunchy, MAGA-schmuck pensioner with matchstick arms. On reflection, I think your imaginary-sized cock is best left well alone, more so in that said organ sees action only when attended to by paid sex operatives. On the plus side, apparently you own a fridge, so well done you.

I would have thought that having one's small-boy pants pulled down followed by a sound thrashing would be enough... Priceless...

Well, yes it does. Whilst I'm no slouch when it comes to maintaining a database of useful contacts, your little black book must be larger than the entire set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Just sayin'.

I've listened to the call in its jaw-dropping entirety. FWIW, I think any prosecuting attorney would have his work cut out in securing a conviction unless there is some obscure law that covers political coercion. It seems that Trump is basing his assertion that he won Georgia on two premises, firstly his rallies were bigger than Biden's and that the pollsters told him he would win the vote in that state. After that, Trump rambled on listing every tin-foil conspiracy and rumour gleaned from the MAGA-loonies' forums. Naturally, he didn't have any hard evidence that could be presented in court. He didn't seem that interested in a full blown audit either, (the State had already conducted several by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation) he just wanted the Georgia State officials to "find" him an extra 11,780 Trump votes. He was appealing to fellow Republicans and clearly wasn't interested in doing right for the constitution but to do right for him. Best statement of the conference call (said by a Georgia State official to Trump), "your problem is that your data is wrong"

Even if the anecdote is true, it begs the question as to why someone "who works at a very high level in telecoms" would be party to the political shenanigans of No 10 and the Cabinet Office, more to the point why would he tell you? In fact the government's stonewalling on taking preventative measures and subsequent reverse-ferreting from the outset of the pandemic had little to with commercial reasoning and everything to do with the prime minister. Boris, for all his faults, is a libertarian and would naturally shy away from micro-managing people's social behaviour and codifying the circumstances under which individuals can meet and converse. Telling people to stay at home and avoid contact is contrary to his natural instincts. Witness how wretched and uncomfortable he was when he took to the podium to effectively cancel Christmas. That said, it was always on the cards that there would be a relaxation of the rules over the Christmas celebration days and inevitably this would result in a pay-back immediately after.

This is lazy reporting and is a symptom of the BBC rearranging the chairs by paring down the number of specialist journo's in favour of generalists with an eye on the flavour-of-the-moment headlines. The EU retailers are having supply issues of their own and are using Brexit red tape as an excuse. Quite simply the supply issues are caused by a world-wide shortage of containers (more noticeable with 40ft units) that is far exceeding supply. Regular motorway drivers may have noticed less container lorries lately. Container rentals have increased fourfold which has had a knock-on effect on air freight costs. Exporters are having to hire 2 x 20ft containers for trans-oceanic routes which means double port handling fees. The demand for the 20 ft units which are primarily for local sea routes are impacting on S.E. Asian component suppliers to final assembly points in China. Exacerbating the situation are suppliers who were hedging bets by booking several freight forwarding agents resulting in double, triple and even quadrupling bookings of containers. The overbooking issue should abate as forwarding agents have now inserted punitive cancellation charges. So what caused this mess when there is ample shipping capacity but not enough containers? In short Covid did. Traditionally, demand for containers always increases from June in order to cope with the Christmas demand . Then Covid entered the mix. Firstly with the lockdowns came an expediential demand for home working products and consumables as well as home exercise equipment, bicycles & accessories, most of which is sourced from China. Secondly manpower issues due to Covid affected ports world-wide causing logjams most noticeably at Los Angeles Port and Colombo.

Dear hunting is allowed, you need a licence to do so but there are closed seasons which vary on the breed of dear. You can hunt with guns and a sight hound. Hunting with bows and cross-bows are illegal in the UK.

I have no issue with hunting for sport as long as the hunter is prepared to eat what he kills.

The gun's 'n' ammo guys should take up photography, they can shoot stuff and no one gets hurt.

Well, I won't be taking any morality preaching from a N.Irishman with a misogynistic, bigoted and proddy mindset, especially from someone with a long list of failed marriages and whom seems coy as to how many children he may or may not have. Lets not forget the boasting about fulfilling "any" sexual fantasy via the administrations of prostitutes. Mud-slinging aside, do you not understand how absurd you look when using the tired old trope of google searching when all along you've clearly been searching the net to make inaccurate partisan points. The difference between you and I is that I verify and cross reference facts from reliable sources (factoring or discounting variable bias) whilst you obviously scour the 'net to search sites designed to keep Maga-hated sheeple types in Shitsville USA on-message. It was you who professed to have "knowledge" and a "very keen" interest in US political events and it was you who challenged me to discuss any item concerning the recent election. It seems that on calling out your bluff, rather than engage you've gone full-on Elizabeth Bott and have chosen to deflect and stomp your feet.

Absolutely, I love my old nifty-fifty. Canon have just bought out a replacement RF 50mm for the "R" cameras - at £200 a pop. For that money I'll keep my EF as it does just the same job with my adaptor.

The Leica does have the iconic red dot on the front, which sorta screams, "nick me, nick me" rather like a Rolex does. As I live in a rural aspect area, there is not much opportunity for street photography. Covid restrictions not withstanding, I do travel the country and abroad extensively and take the chance to mooch around city and town centres. That's another attraction of the Fuji - its considerably more portable and people do notice and freak out when faced with a DSLR camera with a chunky lens. A lot of people think I'm using an antique and aren't so bothered. I'm often asked, "how old is the camera?"

As Ken Rockwell says, Leicas are for fashionistas. Beguiling as Leicas are I didn't want to end up as a street robbery statistic. As for the Fuji, it looks like something made in 1960's but in fact is a 26mp beast built around a sharp 23mm f2 lens. With its milled aluminium top and bottom plates It looks and feels like a solid piece of precision quality engineering. Its worth adding the camera is made in Japan and not some other anonymous far eastern factory The other thing I like is instead of trawling through menus there are all metal dials for shutter speed, aperture, exp compensation and ISO, just like the old days.

@ChildeHarold, two days ago, I gave you a polite directive to rein in the random fight-picking. You must think I'm the invisible woman but no worries, I'm making you disappear for seven days. On your return, please moderate yourself otherwise you are gone for good.

Just bought a Fujifilm X100V (APS-C, mirrorless) as I've discovered a passion for street photography, what do you think about that?

Seems I struck a nerve... You're all mouth and no trousers, Billy - and as it transpires, spineless.

Well for a start, you could at least answer the question, where do you source your "facts"? Then perhaps you could name a state which has illegally amended the voting rules. Incidentally, before laboriously ranting about the moral cowardice and abdication of duty by the Federal Supreme Court I should warn you that Section 2, Clause 1 of the constitution specifically limits SCOTUS with regards to State v State lawsuits to matters of boundary disputes, water rights and the like. In other words, aggrieved State Attorneys General with a political partisan axe to grind will be sent packing as the suit would be "without standing". I did tell you this at the outset but you still erroneously vent on regardless. --o0o-- BTW, I'm not too sure how the process of exchanging one used car (with multiple previous owners I'd imagine) for another (with similar pre-owned history) for a nett outlay of £5k is relevant to our discussion on the conduct of the American presidential election but such is your mind-set I 'spose. I expect the Arthur Daley type car dealer is no doubt happy with his post-xmas windfall - he saw you coming and rinsed you for this year's dead-tree profits.

@ChildeHarold, you seem to be wandering aimlessly around the boards picking fights almost by random. Cut it out please.

Evidently not, you passed off someone else's work as your own and then passed the blame onto an innocent person doxing him in the process whilst compromising the security of your own nearest and dearest. Not only do you look foolish, you've revealed yourself as a bit of a shit but no worries because as you say, you don't care.

mmm...Paranoia by proxy, that's not something one sees everyday. "Treachery, fake news, abdication of duty, moral cowardice, widespread fraud, manipulation, cowardly and corrupt, frame-up, criminal cabal, Russian disinformation" Jeeze Billy, this is nickel-plated bunker mentality - everyone else is at fault, Trump of course is entirely blameless and totally rational. I'm pleased you do not follow QAnon, you're never going to admit following any other right-wing media and you've indicated that you don't peruse MSM so where do you source your "facts"?