444 Responses to WEEKEND OPEN THREAD

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  1. ObiWan says:
    November 2, 2015 at 11:04 am

    Dunno about you guys, but I’m finding the refusal of various Governments to spell out t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m as the most likely cause of the recent air crash over the Sinai beyond parody and infuriating)…

    Sinai plane crash: ‘External activity’ caused crash

    The Russian airline Kogalymavia has blamed “external activity” for Saturday’s Sinai plane crash which killed 224 people.
    One airline official said: “The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external activity.”
    An investigation by aviation experts using data from the aircraft’s “black boxes” has yet to give its conclusions.
    A Kremlin spokesman has told the BBC terrorism could not be ruled out as a possible cause of the crash.
    At a news conference in Moscow, the deputy director of the airline, which was renamed as Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error.
    “The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft,” Alexander Smirnov said.
    “There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air,” he added.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34697416

    This is a concerted attempt by cowards and fools to avoid stating what everyone knows: this plane was the subject of a terrorist attack. All the evidence points to it. What an insult to those who were murdered.

       16 likes

    • chrisH says:
      November 2, 2015 at 11:22 am

      Ye Gods!
      “External Activity”?
      Is THAT the original Russian for what they actually say?…or the BBCs preferred translations in effect.
      If the Russians are as full of doublespeak as we are for PC reasons…we are stuffed.
      I know that Russians used to have these bland euphemisms for what they did in the gulags…and we in the West rather liked them in our liberal causes and courses at university and the BMa…but if Putins goons choose the same Orwellian crap as we do (collateral damage, workplace incidents, weather events etc)…then that chills me.
      I`d have thought if it WAS terrorism-then Putin would be back in Grozny/Dagestan etc within days…whereas if he`s craven in the face of Islam etc…then we`ve lost a bulwark we might have been hoping for out there.

         9 likes

      • Geoff says:
        November 2, 2015 at 11:43 am

        I’m absolutely no expert, but that damage (holes) on the wing looks a lot like the damage we saw on MH17.

        0_9b7bb_77a4a532_XL.jpg

           5 likes

        • Up2snuff says:
          November 2, 2015 at 3:18 pm

          Better to wait until the investigators report – remember the Glasgow Bin Lorry accident?

          That said, ‘external activity’ doesn’t rule out terrorism or a military attack. I find it equally puzzling why it is assumed that groups fighting in Iraq & Syria are never ever going to capture weapons from forces they defeat in local and area skirmishes. Who knows what ISIL (or any other group) have been able to get their hands on that way? Then there are the arms dealers . . . . .

             3 likes

    • chrisH says:
      November 2, 2015 at 11:23 am

      ObiWan
      Do like the “BBC terrorism” phrase above-could catch on!

         5 likes

    • AsISeeIt says:
      November 2, 2015 at 11:42 am

      This was always going to be an interesting test case

      Initial BBC reaction – a female correspondent, didn’t catch her name – was to consider the possible involvement of ‘militants’.

      Well if your definition of militant is the sort of group who bring down 200 innocent civilians in a civil airliner I guess it’s going to be pretty hard to find a terrorist anywhere anytime soon?

      The ‘T’ word has been just about expunged from the BBC dictionary

      Good old BBC

         20 likes

    • Number 88 says:
      November 2, 2015 at 3:32 pm

      Now then! Which version would Putin prefer, I wonder?…to point the finger at ‘terrorists’ and increase his stature as the father and guardian of Mother Russia…or to admit that poor maintenance brought the aircraft down.

      As is widely reported, the aircraft had a very serious accident some years back and there is much expert commentary (from people within aviation, with no political axe to grind) that the repair possibly failed and bought the plane down – as has happened previously.

      Even if it was a bomb, who says it was an Islamic one? Don’t forget, Russia ran a false flag terrorist operation, during Putin’s accession years.

      Whatever. I only hope that someone other than Russia and their buddies in Egypt are carrying out this investigation.

         1 likes

      • Up2snuff says:
        November 2, 2015 at 6:04 pm

        To be fair to the Beeb (the bit I listen to – R4) after hours and hours of speculation with scarcely the ‘T’-word they did at least run through the Investigation Rights under international law. Apparently the UK along with the French get a look-see as makers of the aircraft. Lex situs of the airline & passengers also requires representation and Egyptians, obviously, as it involved a departure from and ‘incident’ over their territory. I may have missed someone, if so please correct me.

           2 likes

        • Number 88 says:
          November 2, 2015 at 6:12 pm

          I’ve been taking a look at this. The US gets a look in too. A US company, GE, were part of the consortium which manufactured the aircraft’s engines.

          More and more people are speculating on a possible failure of the ‘plane’s rear pressure bulkhead causing an explosive decompression.

          Putin won’t like that if it’s true.

             2 likes

          • Up2snuff says:
            November 2, 2015 at 8:36 pm

            You’re right, I forgot the US. Think the Beeb may have mentioned them.

            The Beeb are mostly showing the nose or tail in pics on the w/s but I think I saw another where there was a clean cross section of fuselage, with bulkhead, everything looking strangely intact. Possibly the bit immediately before the tail section. It looked as though all the bolts had failed to my inexpert eye, if the photo was of the actual crashed plane. A clean and instant shear.

            Awful, for those on board, whatever the cause.

               0 likes

  2. Thoughtful says:
    November 2, 2015 at 11:46 am

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tristram-hunt-tells-oxbridge-labour-students-that-the-top-1-per-cent-must-take-leadership-in-labour-a6717731.html

    Not been on the BBC yet but they’ll love this. Tristram Hunt calling for a London Oxbridge PPE elite to run Liebour – not that they aren’t already! It’s just a different group of London Oxbridge ex public school elite !

    Doesn’t this man realise that he’s already got what he’s calling for? & not just in the Labour party, it’s in the Tories too !

       9 likes

    • RJ says:
      November 2, 2015 at 7:08 pm

      I know it’s my fault entirely, but having grown up in the era when Harold Wilson was hiding his cigars and smoking a pipe in public while Jim Callaghan was “a man of the people”, I do have a problem with the idea of a Labour politician called Tristram.

      But we shouldn’t hold a chap’s origins against him. It’s not his fault that his father is Baron Hunt of Chesterton (one of Tony Blair’s life peers), Professor of Climate Modelling at University College London.

      I wonder what he calls his whippet?

         6 likes

  3. Sir_Arthur_Strebe-Grebling says:
    November 2, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    The bBBC finally wakes up to the market. Theatres have to raise their ticket prices as funding from taxpayers is cut.
    Newcastle Theatre Royal used to take more than half a million pounds a year from local council taxpayers. Now its chief executive said: “We have had to increase our ticket prices, largely through bringing in a booking fee, in order to make up the loss of funding. At the same time we have made the programme broadly more popular. But making the programme popular has increased attendances, so we have both put up prices and we have more people coming through the doors, and the two things together mean we have covered – and more – the loss of funding.”
    In other words, stop forcing taxpayers to fund things they don’t want, give them things they’re prepared to pay for. Will the bBBC learn the lesson?

       14 likes

  4. Sir_Arthur_Strebe-Grebling says:
    November 2, 2015 at 12:36 pm

    This is what happens when you demand that people pay for something they don’t want.

       13 likes

  5. seismicboy says:
    November 2, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-34695375
    While the BBC and all the luvvie-liberal press scratch their heads and will have to ultimately concede that those naughty muslim terrorists (jihadis, sorry for the typo) are up to their old tricks, the Daily Mirror serves up a large helping of no-nonsense journalism.

       7 likes

    • Lobster says:
      November 2, 2015 at 1:43 pm

      I find their choice of pictured headlines very interesting. All the top ones are what you might describe as “Left leaning” and all the “Right leaning” ones are tagged on the bottom, and the biggest selling one of the lot (The Sun) is missing altogether.

      Honestly, who the hell buys the “i” for God’s sake? I certainly don’t know anybody who does.

         10 likes

  6. Dave666 says:
    November 2, 2015 at 3:01 pm

    Breakfast this morning record temperature in Wales. Certainly average temp here. Pointless speculation on crashed airliner with no evidence. BBc breakfast not advertising, Guy Garvey from Elbow apparently has a solo album out.

       7 likes

    • chrisH says:
      November 2, 2015 at 3:17 pm

      Guy Garvey was on “Later” the other day.
      Manc , well-heeled these days with Gervais like scrubby beard and weight issues.
      Hits lucky with “One Day Like This”-where Hey Jude meets Angels as far as I can see.
      Likes birds, lives in Central Manchester, owns a student bar with his band-and very much the Guardians wish-list fantasy for a “grounded rock star”…now that Coldplay cost them too much to talk to.
      AND has a show on BBC6-so any droning wallpaper music of his will get the full suckups and BBC machinery to flog it all.
      THAT SAID-his “breakthrough LP” was “The Seldom Seen Kid”.
      If only Owen Jones and Laurie Penny would join, then take a plane trip with the Big Bopper…might sell a few more New Statesmen if they did this.

         7 likes

      • AsISeeIt says:
        November 2, 2015 at 5:13 pm

        ‘…owns a student bar with his band-and very much the Guardians wish’

        And, presumably, absolutely no relation at all to Jane Garvey of the BBC and of empty champaign bottles fame?

           3 likes

  7. seismicboy says:
    November 2, 2015 at 4:37 pm

    Looks like the BBC were right all along on climate change…

    BBC_News.jpg

    (just joking !)

       12 likes

  8. AsISeeIt says:
    November 2, 2015 at 5:21 pm

    Book ’em Danno, Bias One!

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34680564

    ‘Aloha to the US: Is Hawaii an occupied nation?’

    ‘For some, it’s formal recognition of their community and a changed relationship within the US. Others want to leave the US entirely – or more accurately, want the US to leave Hawaii.’

    Well, of course, every nation should be sovereign…. urm… except perhaps… the English?

       10 likes

  9. JimS says:
    November 2, 2015 at 5:51 pm

    Oh joy the PM programme gives us a trailer for ‘squeaky wheel’, racist Lenny Henry’s new series.

    It’s a pity he has no competition within the BBC.

       6 likes

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