Wanderer Vagabond

After the way in which we've treated the Windrush generation, are they going to want to? Yes, they can come and work here whilst they are young and fit but in the unfortunate event of getting older they can then naff off back where they came from, not a good deal really is it? If I didn't come from here I wouldn't come under those terms, which may explain why the NHS is now so short of staff , we cannot be ar*ed to train them ourselves and medical workers from other countries no longer want to come in enough numbers.

By having a law preventing the carriage of a knife it means that, if the Police come across someone carrying a knife, they can do something about it rather than waiting until someone has the knife stuck into them. Seems reasonable to me otherwise why bother with any preventive offences at all

I think that you will find that they do have a murder rate on pretty much the same scale as the UK (2016 UK murders 791, French murders 875) and the French have a population about a million less than the UK so the rate is even higher. I don't really get this, people seem concerned about knife crime and then argue that we should have the freedom to walk around with a 6inch knife on our belts, doesn't really go together from where I'm standing.

That'll be because they are males, I didn't expect to have to give a biology lesson here. Sadly, the quickest and cheapest way of disposing of male chicks is how they do it at the moment. feed them live into a mincer to make animal feed out of them, do you really think it is commercially viable to have someone sitting there breaking thousands of chicks necks? A more humane method is on the way however since they have developed a means of sexing the eggs so that in future they will just dispose of the male eggs. You seem to have studiously ignored the valid comparison I made between the two methods of dog fighting, either one on one, or set a whole pack of them onto one, so why is the unequal method (pack) apparently acceptable to you? but one on one (dog fighting) only carried out by 'sick people'? My view would be that anyone who sets dogs onto one another are sick people, or neither of them are.

The percentage of all car sales are going down.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46774053

Not according to these statistics:- https://www.statista.com/statistics/763140/jaguar-sales-volume-cars/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/300409/mercedes-benz-car-sales-in-the-united-kingdom/ If you can be bothered to look at actual statistics rather than what you want to think, Jaguar have sold 91,312 cars in the UK in the last three financial years (2015 -2018) whereas Mercedes sold 180,970 cars in the UK just in 2017. Where on earth are you getting your 'facts' from?

Thanks for the history but you didn't explain why someone, who you rather paradoxically called 'sick people' should not be allowed to use their dogs to fight, after all it was at one time a 'traditional sport', and this seems to be an argument over traditions and culture. However you wish to spin it, foxes and hounds are both canidae and you are setting one onto another, how is that different? Because the plebs with their pit bulls have a bet on the side? if so it would suggest that it is a bit more balanced (more uncertain outcome) than setting an entire pack of dogs onto another dog (not worth betting on perhaps). The original idea of cockfighting was to get rid of the cock birds (these days we shove the live chicks into a mincer and use the outcome as animal feed, but that is an entirely different argument). They were trained to fight, but that doesn't alter the main purpose since male chicks are otherwise seen as a waste of feed. It was later found that some breeds fought better than others, but even then they were trained and armed to fight. I should add that I am not arguing for the legalisation of dog fighting (or cock fighting) but see little difference between any of these blood sports, the end result is the killing of animals for pleasure which doesn't really show the best side of us.

Both cock-fighting and dog fighting were 'traditional' UK blood sports, enforcement to prevent either seems a lot more pro-active that any enforcement to prevent fox hunting (which is now allegedly also illegal). Can you explain why this should be? after all cock-fighting was merely a way to get rid of male birds that were/are considered useless by poulterers and if you can set two breed of dog on one another (hound and fox) why shouldn't any chav with a pit bull be allowed to do so? This is clearly where the class matter comes in, enforcement is only directed towards the plebs, never towards the nobs.

I have no intention of portraying an,"...all knowing and righteous position...." I just find it irritating in an information age when reams of factual information is available for those willing to seek it, there are people who cannot be ar*ed to do so and repeat stuff that has no basis in fact merely because they want to believe it. They then have the brass neck to call anything that disagrees with their particular dogma as 'fake news' (a certain US 'leader' makes this his life's work). In terms of 'chip on the shoulder' it is only on this particular thread because I feel I am being dragged to do something I fundamentally disagree with and am expected to 'get with the message' and show some enthusiasm, well sorry it's not going to happen. To me it feels like, to make a boating analogy, it had been the 'will of the people' that we were all going to have to sell our property and buy a boat. I wouldn't want to sell the property to buy a boat, but then be repeatedly told, 'but it is the will of the people that everyone has to do this' even though it would be a crap idea.

That gets a whole lot more complicated since Section 1 (4) of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 states;- "...offensive weapon means any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him....." . So if you threaten someone with a windlass it becomes a weapon of offence. There are a whole raft of prohibited offensive weapons (knuckledusters, etc) but if your intention with a windlass is to cause injury it becomes a weapon. Your defence would be that you were the one attacked and grabbed the nearest thing to hand to defend yourself (this generally only works if you don't beat the guy to death with it).

I wouldn't like to say the law is as clear as that. Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 states;- ".... it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had the article (blade or point) with him— (a)for use at work; (b)for religious reasons; or (c)as part of any national costume........." I don't see any obvious mention of camping there. It seems to me that if you are in a public place (yes, a towpath would be regarded as a public place) with a knife of more than 3 inches or any sort of locking knife whatever the blade length, you are likely to be committing an offence, it then becomes incumbent upon you to prove your innocence rather than the law to prove your guilt. I appreciate this is the opposite of 'innocent until proven guilty' but that is the way the law on having a blade or point in a public place is written. Given the current prevalence of knife crime, I'm quite happy with these restrictions since if it were easy to prove 'innocent possession' then any gang member carrying a weapon would also easily be able to do so as well. If I were caught with a 6 inch blade on the towpath I'd expect to be subject to a rigorous enquiry.

I should have thought it would have been more polite to be regarded a facetious remark (another word for flippant) rather than sarcastic ( using irony in order to mock or convey contempt) but if you'd rather be showing contempt, then so be it.

The danger that I see is that if we crash out of the EU without a deal it will lead to an eventual split in the Conservative Party which has been threatening to split over it since back in John Major's day. With a weakened Tory Party, who else is going to oppose Labour? I should stress I am not a fan of either party but if UKIP were ever to come to any position of power I would genuinely leave the country. A Government espousing the crap that comes from UKIP would, to me, be like trying to live in 1930's England had Oswald Moseley ever become more than a windbag.

And of course the whole country is now so united isn't it? That is what was meant by screwing up the country and then buggering off to his criminal mate in the US.

And Farage's experience of negotiating trade deals is? There are no doubt some people in the Labour Party, Greens and possibly the LibDems who would have negotiated a different result, what they all have in common with Farage is that they were in no position to do so because they are not in Government. Farage has only ever managed to get himself elected the the European Parliament, never to Westminster and has never had a remote likelihood of being in Government. You also have to remember that after Farage had screwed the country up he then bogged off to his mate in the US, so in the hypothetical situation of him 'negotiating' a no deal he would walk away again, when he would have no personal responsibility for whatever happened why would he give a toss if the UK economy crashed?