pap

"The Azov Battalion has now been incorporated into and is armed by Ukraine’s interior ministry. A ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, [was asked] if the battalion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social National Assembly. ‘The Social National Assembly is not a neo-Nazi organisation,’ he said. ‘It is a party of Ukrainian patriots…’" I don't mind you thinking I might be a neo-Nazi. If your thinking is anywhere near your Ostfront, or indeed reading expertise, I don't think it'll be a concern. Besides, the Pakistani relatives might get upset.

We're doing it to help a friend in need, apparently. Here are some of their friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

It got 1.4 million viewers, according to the Echo. Benefits Street got 4.64m. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/11816850.Immigration_Street___controversial_show_s_viewing_figures_released/?ref=mr

The Brits, French and Russians had talks about containing Hitler long before the non-aggression pact. Britain and France never really put any serious effort or commitment behind it, hence the non-aggression pact. At best, that's simplified nonsense. The Russian winter did not win the war. You could certainly argue that Hitler's refusal to issue winter wear was a factor, or play what-ifs with many of the decisions made earlier in the war, such as pulling back Army Group Central from going after Moscow the first time. Some of the Russian decision making was píss poor in the early days of Barbarossa. Stalin refused to believe that the Germans were about to attack, despite receiving notification from almost every arm of his intelligence apparatus. He also disappeared for a week when hostilities kicked off too. That said, I'd argue that it was command decisions on both sides that led to the Russian victory. First, the German mission in Russia was to conduct a war of annihiliation. Casualties of thirty million were mandated to make the lebensraum that Hitler wrote about in Mein Kampf. Mistake number one. Many of the people in the Soviet Union didn't like living there, and would have helped the Germans a lot more had the mission been different. However, the Germans resumed their usual tricks of wartime atrocities and collective punishment, apparently justified because the Soviets hadn't signed up to the Hague Convention. On the Soviet side, several command decisions provided the foundation for victory. First, they dismantled their factories and moved them to the base of the Urals, taking military production and training well outside of any would be German attackers. Given the huge tank battles later in the war at places like Kursk, this may have been the most important decision in the war. Other orders were more totalitarian, such as shooting those that won't fight and going after their families back home. Russian Winter? Meh. This was a titanic clash of two totalitarian regimes. Hitler probably had the Soviet's recent disaster against the Finns in mind when planning Barbarossa, and may have also considered their capitulation when they signed Brest-Litovsk. Let's not forget that Hitler thought Soviet Bolshevism was a Jewish-led movement, and believed that his people were racially superior. He conflated their performance as an invading force of Finland with their ability to resist against an existential threat, and his prejudices told him they'd be weak anyway. Hitler underestimated them. I reckon if you want to prevent war in Europe, Europeans should make their own decisions, not blindly go along with whatever the US wants, which let's face it, doesn't have to deal with the consequences.

I know loads of women that complain about men talking to them but maintaining bap contact instead of eye contact.

Well, if we hadn't picked a side before, we definitely have now. David Cameron has announced that the UK will be sending military personnel to Ukraine, there to provide advice and training, apparently. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31610026 I think it's a píss-poor idea myself. Not only will it provoke the Russians a little more, but I'm also tickled by the notion that the UK thinks its in a position to provide advice on a land war with Russia, who let's not forget, emerged victorious in the largest land war that humanity has ever fought. Other thoughts are welcomed, as always.

Love Productions should stick to sewing and f**king baking. Propaganda looks beyond them.

I'm not a particular fan of Gervais, and certainly wouldn't pick him as an arbiter for good taste, but your comment was a bit ridiculous given his huge success. As is the Bernard Manning comparison.

So this hits our screens tonight. Don't really think we're going to able to file this under responsible broadcasting. Spoke to one person who was interviewed for the show. Got the impression that he may have said too much, and is expecting a bit of fallout. Could be a lot of that.

Monged, yes. Never heard anyone use mong on its own to describe that state.

Damn that Turkish. Making out like he's an ink jet paper salesman when he has been an international comedy writer with access to top Hollywood talent, all along. Gervais has done alright for himself given his character, personality and the fact that he's from Reading.

I'm working on the assumption that he has been raised by moose. Weaning him onto polysyllables.

Thorny one. On the one hand, you can't really take anything you hear chanted at a football match seriously. It's tribal one-up-manship mostly. On the other, you'd be turfed out of the ground for racist or homophobic abuse, possibly with an arrest to look forward to. Going on the context, if the West Ham fans are singing that he talks like a mong, they probably are likening him to someone with a form of impairment, imo. If WHU can be arsed, they could probably track the ringleaders down and sanction them. Should they? On reflection, probably yeah. If we're not prepared to tolerate language that denigrates people on the basis of race at football grounds, then we definitely can't tolerate the abuse of people that are unable to defend themselves. I'm not getting offended on anyone's behalf here; just seems the logical position. One person you can't have a go at is Kevin Kilbane. He's bound to be sensitive on the issue and he's defending the dignity of his kid.

I can't say I'm impressed with the tactic you've chosen on this thread, Sarnia. The OP is pretty open-ended, inviting a wide range of answers, so it's a little disappointing to see you answering a very different question from afar; "What is wrong with Britain?", redundantly and somewhat ineffectively. I don't know if you have noticed, but most of the threads in the Lounge are people asking that question in one form or another. There are key differences between the context of the OP (and further incidents mentioned later on in the thread) and the counter-examples you've provided. I don't really know how you make stabbings and urban gang violence, stuff which happens worldwide, a British concern. I also don't know how you equate that widespread blight with toddlers killing themselves with handguns or madmen going on rampages with automatic weapons. Yes, such things have happened elsewhere in developed countries, but with nothing like the frequency we see from the USA. Your approach, which basically amounts to "no, no! look over there!", is like trying to solve gun crime in Manchester by pointing out that someone has taken possession of a peashooter in Plymouth. Amusing, not entirely helpful and would get shot to pieces in the real world.

The obvious choice would be anyone stupid enough to reach out to Nigerian phishing criminals on a Southampton based forum. Still, the Premier League does have a very high profile these days. Who knows? Yeah, the background in IT helps, but some of the stuff that Virgin has blocked has just been seemingly innocuous. VPN will get you around most things. I pay about £25 per year for mine, and it allows me to pretend that I'm in most countries of note. It even has a Southampton endpoint, which is very good if you're abroad and want to watch (choppy) iPlayer. I've seen censorship implemented pretty fiercely in a professional environment. The corporate mothership is lethal for it; can't use Facebook, Gmail which is sort of understandable. However, they also block things like blogs, which is a total pain in the arse as that is often where you will find technical solutions. Completely valid use, but barred on the basis that it looks too much like Social Networking. I've raised it a couple of times, but they've never really fixed it. They have no easy way to determine whether a page on one of the big blog hosts is a valid professional resource or a collection of cake recipes. The best they can do is add any page I need to see to an exclusions list, but that's not much help when you're trying to get information in time-critical situations. Note the "no easy way"; it's not impossible, but it's just not cost-effective for them to do it. I suspect that any censorship scheme will have similar problems.

This thread has been an eye-opener for me, I can tell you. Y'see, I assumed that everyone posting on here was kinda doing the same thing as me, usually firing off a message or two when time permits. Crucially, I have been on my own when I've written the vast majority of content, or at the very least, ignoring everyone around me as I type. I'm sorry; I mistakenly thought that was the way things were done. Now, especially with all this friendless/loner malarkey doing the rounds, I'm not so sure. From the way some people have gone on, I can only surmise that every single one of their posts has been written in the company of buddies, b!tches and beer, with whoops, BJs, and high fives all around every time someone hits the "Post reply" button.

Different ISPs are applying different policies, it would seem. Virgin have blocked stuff I've looked at before, although you can get to the same sites through VPN. There are so many problems associated with Internet censorship. First, there's the obvious question of who determines what is appropriate. If the range of censored content grows to be too great, you'll end up pushing people onto "dark" networks, alongside paedos, drug dealers and terrorists. There's also the huge freedom of speech issue. Existing law should be fine. It the net is used to do something illegal, like buy drugs, or download horrid stuff, use the existing laws to prosecute. Fear of what someone might do with the information shouldn't be used to hide information. One thing that makes me laugh is that the Anarchist's Cookbook, now commonly seen as an indicator of someone with terrorist designs, was passed around freely on floppy disc at school in the early 1990s. We didn't start a Cantell-based jihad.

There's nowt wrong with your own company. Absolutely essential at times, and I say that as someone that is an essential extrovert. Also, people can be massively different in their own environments. Mate of mine is a huge party animal on a night out. Ended up living in a shared house with him and determined that contrary to all public appearances, bloke was a complete introvert in the house. Just liked his own company. I suspect what you've run into here is a difference in posting motive, which people all have. If I had to pin it down, SaintsWeb is the site I like best because I get to discuss issues with contemporaries, people that by and large, have a similar background to myself. Other people approach the site in different ways. For some, it's just a series of Internet randoms to troll or insult, or a chance to look good in front of the three or four people that'll validate them in the forum version of a mutual masturbation session. I said earlier that I think it weirder to NOT want to meet people you spend all day interacting with. That's still true for properly motivated people, but if your main activity on SaintsWeb is trolling, it makes perfect sense.

If Neil Mellor is a man of his word, he'll be disappointed tonight. http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/559552/Liverpool-Adam-Lallana-deserves-good-Southampton-reception-Neil-Mellor

I sit corrected

That's fair; I don't like him dealing with anything going to the corner of the goal, especially low strikes. The guy has great reactions, bu doesn't get down quick enough at times.

Yeah, I believe similar chants used to be directed at Gerrard back in the day.

I've got to say, never seen anything quite like it at one of our games. Lovren actually got less abuse, although get abused he did. The substitution and booing from all around the ground was intense. I know that he still has a few defenders on here, but from the reaction from the crowd, he's not popular. The bloke behind me has some very edgy chants that most of his neighbours will chuckle at, but no-one takes up. He did the same today, and it rang around Itchen North. Brutal.

I've decided to live in Sarnia's alternate universe where the British people are not trusted with bladed objects. We were invaded in the late 1500s by dagger wielding pygmies. We continue to live under their yolk.

I did think that a possibility. Not sure if it'll work with him, except in a Darth Vader kind of way.