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Great. All I have in my head now are those fembots from Austin Powers. Thanks for that.

Indian-spiced minced lamb with small diced potatoes and peas, home-made naan bread and a dip on the side (optional). It's quite easy but I've mastered it and the missus and I love it.

This is actually what @MUFC as he does his business.

I think we need to understand without the Opium Afghanistan is a poor country, so the Taliban will get support form Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Northern Alliance will also need support as well so suspect the US in some way (CIA) will get funds to them to continue the struggle. I guess when the Taliban surrounded the country it was the middle area that was last to fall, this is where the majority of the mountains are and also a lot of different ethnic groups. I think there will be a civil war and stalemate with the Northern Alliance holding some mountainous areas and valleys. Will be interesting to see how China handles these parties as it seeks to undertake mining in Afghanistan.

Not even sure I want to think about that possibility...

Some prefer the Taliban to the previous government, some really don't want the Taliban. There have been a lot of resistance protests in bigger cities (not Kabul though, but I think they're overrun with Taliban there) - the Taliban has of course responded with violence to those protests. Some areas are seeing people massing to join the Northern Alliance, who'll resume their war with the Taliban under the son of their previous leader (who was killed a few weeks before the US invaded Afghanistan). And there's reports that resistance fighters have recaptured parts of Afghanistan from the Taliban. Pre 2001, Afghans were in civil war - some were okay with Taliban rule, some were fighting against it, others were just in villages with their tribes trying to live their lives normally as a civil war waged in their country. I suspect we'll see a return to that.

That, and then also Westworld-like sexrobots in amusement parks.

Korrekt.

A challenge for top 4 becomes ever harder with Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd making costly and expensive improvements to their sides. West Ham seem a good challenger for Europe, as do perhaps Villa & Leeds. It's a shame to have lost out on top 4 in the last two seasons, and I of course want to shatter that glass ceiling which seems to be getting stronger or further away each season, but I'd be happy with a trophy again and top 6. I think for a club of our (growing) stature, to be able to compete against teams that have no limit on spending, is good enough. I'd love to win the Europa League. A proper pre-season this time around and strengthening the squad may help us do that. Another FA Cup would be great!

Hope they bought you some new jeans x

I'd say either rosemary-garlic-lime shrimp (I have a few ways to cook shrimp, but this one is by far my favourite) or a peppercorn-crust steak.

10/10. Absolutely brilliant. Because of the style and story, there isn't much top praise without providing spoilers, but this was top 5 best books I have ever read. It was actually the first book that I slowed down at the end as I just didn't want it to end, but the library's due date is today so I made me some tea, set up a nice spot, and finally finished the boo. Well done Andy on another gem. Also @nudge I see this is already in production for a movie with Ryan Gosling as Grace. Not sure why they will do this and keep the humor, but we shall see.

@Rab Thanks for all your work mate, appreciated. Legend.

I can't read either, just ideas. Hard on the Capitol Hill protestors, prison beatings etc, one lost an eye.. Noises about further gun controls, likley to fail. Foreign relations, surprisingly relented to allow Germany to buy cheaper oil from Russia. Supposedly was intending to meddle in the Ukraine though suspicion is 'deep state' said China was the concern. Belarus is wobbling and if it moves to a democrat state away from Russian influence would suit the older democrat ideals. China made aggressive noises about Taiwan as the US was pulling out of Afghanistan. In other words still not clear.

Lady and gentleman she said yes

Aw mate, I am real sorry to hear that, I know that feeling of helplessness. On recovery maybe pick up a less strenuous sport? Cricket or softball could be good and I imagine there are opportunities like that in the Perth area. I’m thinking lawn bowls actually. Me and you can tear up the Oldies circuit and tour Australia, we can feature Devil Dick as the supersub after we’ve had too many schooeys.

Made my very own Tatziki for the first time today. It's surprisingly easy. Letting it chill in the fridge overnight. Also letting some chicken marinate overnight Gyros-Style.

@MUFCis that generous?

The 'Only Fans' site has just announced it will be stopping all explicit sexual content to comply with their banking partners requests.. That's shit news for me.. I only make a couple of grand a month as it is on there, going to be well out of pocket now..

This post ended up being way longer than I intended. So I'm breaking it up into 2 parts... Afghanistan Focused Part I think the US was justified in it's original mission in Afghanistan - going after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden was certainly justifiable. But at the end of the day, Bin Laden left Tora Bora pretty quick to go to Pakistan and that compound he was found and killed in. The time to leave Afghanistan was when the Taliban were left reeling from the US military action against it and were ready to surrender to the US & Afghan government. A peace deal was brokered by Karzai and the Taliban - Donald Rumsfeld and Bush rejected it though and decided to pursue the idea of "nation building" in Afghanistan. But it wasn't like Iraq, which was a completely unjustified war. The US had a good reason to go after Bin Laden... but political and military leaders sort of twisted the initial reason of why they were there into a futile attempt at nation building. And a lot of what the US and allies did in that "nation building" was not great. Supporting warlords, some of whom are just as bad as the taliban tbh, and doing nothing really about the systemic corruption in the new Afghan government made the government increasingly not trustworthy in the eyes of many Afghans. Considering how the Afghan army had far more losses in the conflict each year, I'm not so surprised to see so many soldiers decide they weren't prepared to put their lives on the line for a puppet government that was viewed as corrupt and in some cases, criminal, rather than surrender and go back to life under the Taliban. The sad truth is that many Afghans just want stability & despite how repressive and brutal the Taliban were, for many of them Taliban rule was the most stable period of their lives. The next best time to withdraw would have been after Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. But I think that could have been similarly chaotic. I think any withdrawal from Afghanistan at this point would likely have been chaotic and giving a set date to the Taliban of when we would withdraw sort of gave them the encouragement to lay low until May... then begin their offensive in May saying the US was in violation of the withdrawal agreement. Perhaps negotiations with the terms of withdrawal should have been done with the government that was propped up by the US? Honestly, I don't have much hope for Afghanistan to get better... at least anytime soon. We have to hope that the Taliban are "moderate" in their repression (lol weird thing to type out) and that some of these recent PR statements they've made aren't just bold faced lies. But you can't trust terroristic zealots to tell the truth. It's likely the Northern Alliance will keep up the fight against the Taliban and perhaps in cities like Herat and Jalalabad, we'll keep seeing opposition to Taliban rule (although today we've seen the Taliban open fire on protestors...). So I think parts of the country will find themselves embroiled in civil war. US Foreign Policy Discussion Part But as for the US and it's foreign policy, I would hope Afghanistan would mean more open discussion about US's foreign policy and their "role in the world." I agree with you that the US isn't the world police and should stop acting like they are... or at least, if they're going to act like cops... they should try to act less like shitty & malicious cops. If the US & West are to be expected to "promote human rights" then there need to be more discussion about the governments the West hops into bed with that are serial human rights violators. Foreign policy goals and objectives need to be considered more carefully. For too long the US does something abroad without any consideration of the blowback of those actions... and then has to react to the disasters that follow and these calamities drive the US's foreign policy... without any consideration of what the hell the US is actually trying to accomplish. That is especially true of the Middle East. But we're not going to have candid and frank discussions about the long term goals and objectives of US foreign policy while the US political system is so divided and fragmented. When the political parties view each other as different teams, rather than people who play for the same team just playing in different positions, and when extremism and radicalisation is out of control domestically... it becomes really impossible for anyone to make any sort of long term planning of any political goals - much less foreign policy goals that will likely require the cooperation of other countries. The US needs to start asking more of its political leaders and it's media. They are most responsible for the absolute shitshow that is US politics. They probably have needed to since Vietnam (or earlier)... but the next best time to do something that should have been done a long time ago is always "now."

Into the third book in the Detective Helen Grace series by M. J. Arlidge.

They say US officials went to Afghanistan and showed a 40 minutes long video evidence as proof. The then Taliban Chief Omar after seeing said can you prove guilty based just on this in any American court ? He got no conclusive answer. Even apart from this that Scottish journalist Yvonne Ridley who remained under Taliban captivity first breaked that Taliban were ready to hand him over to a third party possibly the Saudis and whatever the trial decides they'll accept but she was not taken seriously at that time 'stockholm syndrome' but now it's quite accepted that offer was in place but Rumsfeld Kissinger wanted to show military might

IMO the exit from Afghanistan marks the end of the "boots on the ground" era. The US will continue meddling in the Middle East but with a more discrete approach. Airstrikes and drone attacks, the use of small elite units and mercenaries are here to stay.

This can't be right. There are no Lewis Hamilton posters on the wall.

Yeah, pretty much. And it's worth noting that some of the warlords in the Northern Alliance aren't great guys at all - they're some of the guys associated with the collapsed Afghan government's complete corruption & kidnapping and trafficking of children, and other bad shit like that. But others part of the new resistance are members of the ANA who want to keep up the fight against the Taliban. And when we heard stories of so many soldiers immediately surrendering to the Taliban and letting them take over, it's worth pointing out that the notion the ANA genuinely had 300,000+ soldiers is looking increasingly like it was total bullshit and many sources are saying the Afghan military was about 70% smaller than it really was. Generals were inflating the size of the amount of troops they had when reporting to the US, so they could get extra funding from the US & allies... and then pocket a ton of extra cash. And many of those same generals were telling their troops to stand down & just go home when the Taliban approached their positions. It also appears many of the ANA hadn't been paid in months. So willingness to fight for generals who were essentially just stealing and who had no inclination to put up resistance to the Taliban was pretty low... ... but we're now seeing many of these former soldiers assemble in the Panjshir valley to join up with the Northern Alliance fighters. So one change to the civil war this time around is... we might see the Northern Alliance having better success with some better trained soldiers and maybe there will be some less shitty ideologies amongst the Northern Alliance so we see less of the bachebazi and other evil shit like that.

Yeah my first thought was "this looks pretty cool" and my next thought was "one day we'll be hearing about how a squad of robot soldiers slaughtered a village somewhere for no reason whatsoever"

I’m very frustrated and a bit depressed at the moment. The annoying thing is I can’t actually help with the babies, except hold one while I sit down but sitting down is a struggle! I wasn’t even going to play football this year but she let me ha. Pretty sure that’s me done for a while though !

Whoa. This looks like a massive improvement, it's crazy how far they've come already.