Mungler

This is where we started. For someone who says they don’t accept the Kremlin’s narrative you have some interesting views (which happen to be uniquely shared by the Kremlin) including on topics such as the Salisbury murders and the recent cruise missile strikes. We then wandered in to people who seize upon contrary views and conspiracy theories, of which you appear to support a great number. We can pick this up again with the next round of nonsense from the Kremlin.

1. There are no free elections in Russia, there is no free press and the judiciary are controlled by the Kremlin. If you choose to accept / prefer Kremlin issued information / propaganda in preference to other sources then you are fighting the odds - bottom line, statistically the Kremlin releases more BS. 2. The constant search for conspiracy and distrust of all things western is a badge, I get it. But where does mild paranoia cross over into either stupidity or mental disorder? 12 million yanks believe in lizard people - doesn’t make it true, it makes them stupid, mental or both. 3. I don’t have any evidence that there are no lizard people, but of course there is no evidence to support that there are any lizard people. If I trusted the source that told me there were Lizard people and considered that to be credible, it doesn’t make it any more true or factual. 4. You “If you keep saying it long enough, will it make it true?” My response : “Are we now at a point where (and in the absence of any evidence) if enough people say there are lizard people and they say it for long enough it makes it true? Now apply that to the Salisbury murders, 9/11 and so on.”

And yet 12,000,000 Americans believe they exist. That’s a big number. We’re all doomed.

It’s all about belief vs evidence. Are we now at a point where (and in the absence of any evidence) if enough people say there are lizard people and they say it for long enough it makes it true? Now apply that to the Salisbury murders, 9/11 and so on.

Let me start by explaining why 12 million Americans believe in lizard people despite there not being a single shred of evidence to support the notion - it’s because there are 12 million idiots in the US. As for that ‘poll’ on 9/11 I am entirely distrustful of internet stated surveys or ‘poll’ as is the case here (indeed what’s the difference between a survey and a poll?). We don’t know about sample demographic, age ranges, demographics, specific questions etc. We are also wandering off piste - we all saw 2 planes hit two buildings. The question of ‘do you think the US was behind the attacks’ is not the same as ‘do you think the US knew of the threat in advance’, or ‘do you think the US was complicit in letting it happen’ and….. ‘do you think the twin towers was built with explosives packed into their super structure and later dropped by the CIA controlled by a global super order of lizard type people’. Stonepark has jumped in with ‘building 7’. I am asking what information / evidence he has for supporting that conspiracy and if he has any particular information or evidence which he should share with the press or authorities 😆. On the other hand, I’m with Hitchins (that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence) and I don’t need to prove that it wasn’t the CIA or lizard people or the state of Israel 😆

Hahaha. This is brilliant: ‘The summary of the poll noted that "Though people with greater education generally have greater exposure to news, those with greater education are only slightly more likely to attribute 9/11 to al Qaeda." ‘

An excellent point! 😆

Oh give over, you’d get that result if you asked 100 lunatics. Prey tell, where did that survey come from and what was the sample group? And you tell me the reference to Lizard people is silly? Im sure there’s a survey for that too 😆 Edit. Oh this is just too good : https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/07/conspiracy-theory-paranoia-aliens-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk 329 million people in the US, 12 million loonies who despite not a shred of evidence of the existence of a lizard master race, choose to believe in one. I stabbed in the dark that there would be 1% lunacy, turns out it’s more like 3%. Tell you what, I bet every single one of those 12 million people also believe that the twin towers had nothing to do with a terrorist attack at all.

Hey, if the Russians want to cut off supply to all their best customers then that’s up to them, right? And as for building 7, so tell me what have you learnt from watching David Icke videos at 3 am? Do you have information that no one else has or have you been able to hack the pentagon and find something? 😆

But it’s not. Probability is our friend. You ask 100 people if they think the twin towers was built with explosives packed into their super structure and later dropped by the CIA controlled by a global super order of lizard type people, you will within that group of 100 people find at least 1 person who believes that. Is it more probable that that one person has uncovered a secret conspiracy or has access to secret information the other 99 don’t have access to, or is it more likely that that person is a little bit potty?

And back in the real world…. what insight and wisdom does that 1 have that the 99 don’t know, don’t have access to and which is hidden from them but not the 1? Statistically it’s more likely that the 1 has some form of mental disorder 😉 Edit And I see that Russia has just cut all gas supply to Latvia. Blimey, that’s some maintenance program they have 😆

I’ve never been brave enough to risk a whole leg and would welcome a tried and tested recipe 👍

The very same duo of assassins have popped up elsewhere and are still active. I note that the standard dismissal of a lot of Russian unpleasantness is ‘it couldn’t have happened like that because that would make them really daft’. That however doesn’t take account of the actual evidence and is not a valid form of defence. I’ve worked out that there are some people who no amount of evidence or the bleedin obvious will ever convince, they wear conspiracy and suspicion like a badge and see it absolutely everywhere and where it does not actually exist. Chem trails, the Twin Towers packed with explosive’s, lizard people, global control etc etc The gas supply is a good one - whilst the mainstay of the counter argument is ‘Putin wouldn’t apparently want to turn off the gas supply to his best customer and he’s not that stupid’ (which is not an argument based on any actual real ‘evidence’) we can all watch and see what’s going on. Let’s see if supply levels return to normal once we are out of this period of maintenance 😆 .

Rewulf, interested to know what you make of the Salisbury murders? 😆

So, in this week’s news we have video footage of a Ukrainian POW being castrated by his Russian captors and overwhelming evidence of at least 50 Ukrainian POWs being tortured and murdered. So, where are we on the ‘none of this happened, MSN is lying to us and it’s a NATO conspiracy?’ Oh and just to clear up the point, the reduction in supply of gas to Germany isn’t because of ‘routine maintenance’ is it? It takes time but all the Russian lies and nonsense are unravelling in front of our eyes and those that chose to believe Kremlin propaganda unmasked for the gullible loonies we know them to be.

And that’s also where the likes a China have the advantage - ‘we’re building an airport where your village and ancestral home has been for 500 years, be gone by this time next week or take it up with the bulldozers’.

You know what, with Brexit I agree with and understand the direction of travel but despair at the lack of thought and proper implementation. Yes to a common market, no to everything else. Thatcher’s sell off of the nationalised industries funded our escape from the 70’s and stopped us being the sick man of Europe. The sell off would have been of no consequence now had we built any new nuclear power stations or properly pursued energy self sufficiency. Try and get a fracking licence or planning permission to whack up a nuclear power station or add a runway to an airport - that’s where the problem lies.

1 & 2 : No contradiction. The point being the EU is heading for a disaster of its own and Germany (the power house and mainstay of any amorphous EU stat or metric) is going to take the biggest hit. We can come back to this in say March and have a weigh up. 3. One of the criteria for us staying in was the adoption of the Euro. Indeed, if you are going to sell your soul and shackle yourself to a demanding economic union which requires total subservience, then it's not an unreasonable request but one which we have mercifully avoided in the quest for independence. We shall see the value of that independence rise in due course. 4. It's early doors and covid has certainly thrown a spanner in the plans. There will be other spanners landing and coming over the horizon no doubt. 5. Yes yours was ONS and mine OECD. 6. This is where I stop arguing with remainers. It's like arguing about police brutality with long serving police officers - they just won't have it. You can have the video of the disabled pensioner getting CS gas in the face and shot with a taser, but to a man, long served police officers will feel obliged to back the tribe. Trump was 100% right on the issue of Germany's energy independence. You can argue that he's got so much else wrong, but if you can't accept the plain truth that he was 100% right on the subject of German energy independence from Russia, then you lose all credibility. Indeed, let's try the other way - where was Trump wrong on the topic of Germany's energy independence from Russia? .

1. The EU is not a country, it is a collection of countries wherein some are fairing better than others. For example Poland is going great guns, less so Italy and Greece etc. GDP is an interesting measure / metric but not the be all and end all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_GDP_growth 2. All of the economic predictions for the EU went out the window yesterday with the lovely Mr. Putin cutting the gas supply and the longer term position into Winter and next year not looking too clever for Germany. Germany is of course the EU and the underwriter of "the Euro" and it's all going to get very interesting and very quickly. 3. At this juncture, not being shackled to a European Union or a centralised European currency effectively controlled by the French and Germans is going to be a bit of luck for us. 4. You keep talking about "growth" but again, "compared to what?" - last year? There is massive growth in an emerging economy like Poland (for example) and Polish economic growth and GDP year on year will show growth beyond our economy's year on year growth (and probably Germany's too) but it's still Poland. 5. The OECD data for productivity on hours worked is here: https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm I am not sure what chart you are looking at? 6. I am looking forward to seeing how many EU rules and regs the Germans and French now break and bend to solve national issues at home. I also think that the Germans owe Mr. Trump a written apology for the heads up about energy dependency on Russia? Indeed, recent events show neither the Germans nor Putin to be as clever as everyone once thought.

All received and paid for - thank you. A bit of a treat for the bbq this weekend 👍

1. The IMF prediction is correct but you are missing the point about looking at the figures since the pandemic - our recession hit faster and deeper but our recovery was greater and quicker. In short we’ve had more of a bounce back recovery already and the EU will have a bigger one next year because they are catching up. 2. We had 200,000 workers leave following Brexit and then the pandemic hit. In any event ask the man on the street if he would like to be living Spanish or UK levels of unemployment? Indeed I don’t know what point you are attempting to make. 3. What do you mean by relative earnings? Relative to what? The average / mean UK salary is double that of the EU. Great, but so what? 4. worker productivity is measured against GDP (see my commentary about measuring GDP and measuring against GDP). According to this wonderful and accepted means of measurement, the Irish are the most productive workers and yet work some of the smallest hours. Brilliant. Let’s all live in Ireland eh? 5. you then raise and wander into illegal immigration - no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going now 😆

I was taught by my economics teacher to always say ‘compared to what?’. Here, let’s have a look at what the Euro has done against the dollar by way of comparative example. And Euro to Juan

Yes please

Remainer spin. Growth is based and measured ‘year to year’ and on GDP which is something most economists can’t even agree on. For the sake of this example if your economy is at 10 (let’s say that’s GDP, but as above I don’t think GDP is the be all and end all measurement) and in 2020 with covid your economy sustains a massive crash down to 2.5, but next year in 2021 it returns and bounces back to 10 - that return is of course represented on year to year growth as a 400% increase in annual GDP from the previous year. What is being punted now is more of this - have a look at the average annual growth rate of gross domestic product in the European Union vs UK over the past 5 years. Back to GDP, that’s one measure of economic prosperity. So are employment figures for example (3.8% in UK) and far worse across Europe. There are other measures and indicators but my experience of Brexit vs remain is that people carry with them entrenched views and I would be wasting my time - and I voted remain 🙂 Also staunch remainers should refrain from throwing stones - the glass panels in the Italian, Greek, Spanish and now French / German sections of that greenhouse are looking rather wobbly.

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