Dr. Gonzo

Tbh, it's been the richest in the West that are the most against any of the restrictions because they've found it detrimental to their wallets. I agree that few people care about poorer countries, but also in these poorer countries things like staying at home or social distancing are genuine luxuries that only the elite there can afford. Too many Western countries were too slow to act to lockdown and slow the spread - definitely. And I'm absolutely not in favour of any more lockdowns, even though this omicron variant is meant to be very very contagious (because it's supposedly not as severe as other variants - although I question how much doctors and virologists actually know about the new variant). I think some countries have gone absolutely mental with their restrictions. I think at this stage, the Western world needs to have more of a focus on vaccinating the rest of the world - I think if you live in the West and you want a vaccine... you've probably gotten one at this point. Trying to convince people who don't want to get the vaccine, imo, is a fruitless effort. But getting the vaccines to parts of the world that are poorer and have far less access to the vaccine I think would give millions exactly what they want & do a huge amount in slowing the spread of the virus worldwide. I can't see that happening though because there are too many people in the west that are apathetic to people that don't even live that far from them, let alone people that live in places very far away with people they never think about.

Reducing the standards that are expected of leaders is how we ended up with people like David Cameron & Boris Johnson.

Yeah, exactly. Honestly, most people I know back home did follow the rules except for a few people - but even those I know who didn't follow those Christmas rules... I don't know if it's right to hold them to the same standard as the people who are running the country. And the people who run the country need to be held to a higher standard than ordinary people because... this is absolutely right. If you can't trust the people at the very top to lead by example and follow the same rules they're expecting the rest of the nation to follow... you just can't really trust their leadership. These are the absolute worst types of leaders in any sort of situation, let alone a public health crisis. And that's without even considering the economic impact of COVID and Brexit happening simultaneously with these utterly untrustworthy bags of shit at the helm.

How're you holding up? Hope you're doing as well as you can be with the fucking disease.

The people I saw were definitely in the same family. They screamed and crawled to each other so they could hold each other in their final moments. It was totally fucking hearbreaking.

I highly recommend everyone not watch the video. I would very much like to go back in time and not see that.

Fucking hell, I've just seen some really graphic scenes out of Myanmar. People being burnt alive. I need some eyeball bleach to unsee that. Shit like that makes me lose faith in humanity. It really is disgusting cruelty.

Even with more details, it seems like a really weird "punishment." The right to travel has fuck all to do with drug use. I can understand it with regards to drug traffickers - but drug traffickers should have their right to travel restricted by being arrested & convicted of drug trafficking and locked up, rather than having their passports taken away. Personally, I think we could learn a thing or two from Portugal on tackling systemic drug abuse. It is a damning indictment the state of UK politics. I have about as little faith/trust/whatever you want to call it in BoJo's ability to lead the country... but I've got even less faith in Gove in pretty much every regard. He is an absolute slimeball of a human with even less integrity than Johnson, which is impressive because Johnson's got virtually no integrity. Because I'm so pessimistic about the prospect of Gove becoming PM, I'm sure it'll happen very soon.

Shouldn't have been jailed tbh

I'm surprised you're not more concerned about the government's attempts whittling away of our rights outside the realm of public health, considering you've expressed concern about the whittling away of rights done in the name of slowing/stopping the pandemic. Personally, I see the worry in government overreach in curtailing freedoms with regard to covid restrictions... but I find them more palatable when it's temporary measures meant to curtail the spread of a fairly recent disease spreading around the world. But even I can see some worry of a slide to authoritarianism and an erosion of rights/freedoms with these measures. But nonsensical (like this taking away passports for drug use proposal) measures that whittle away our human rights for no good reason are strange and we should be asking if they're willing to whittle away unrelated rights in the name of "stopping drug use" - what other rights are going to be targeted in the name of other issues that are probably going to be unrelated to the rights that are taken away? British rights being subject to sudden changes due to a few penstrokes in parliament should be worrying to everyone, regardless of wherever we may fall on the political spectrum.

Not like they really give a shit about how the NHS is supposed to cope because so many of them want to privitise the NHS

Do they repost anything and everything written by Richard Littlejohn?

I agree with you that cocaine is a horrible drug that can absolutely change people for the worse. And when people are addicted but can no longer afford it, they can turn to even more dangerous drugs and that leads to worse addiction with worse societal effects. Cocaine and heroin are horrible enough and have the potential to destroy lives on their own - but the cheaper "alternatives" are arguably more devestating, and addiction to those 2 drugs can eventually lead to meth/crack use (with cocaine) and opioid abuse (with heroin). If you end up addicted to either of these, it's easy to get on a downward slope that will likely impact you and the people in your life really negatively. But taking away passports is weird because: 1.) it's not really related to drug use, it's a bit of just a generally strange penalty; 2.) it does fuck all for the underlying issue of combatting dangerous drug use. As a former cocaine addict and someone who generally struggles with addiction (because I've definitely developed a bit of a bad drinking habit after COVID), I definitely agree that something should be done about drug addiction - but as you say, there's underlying societal issues that are the root of the demand for drugs. Because the demand is there and it's not going anywhere despite being illegal (that just creates a black market, which presents opportunities for organised crime) and harsher penalties for drug use. When considering withdrawing passports is typically considered a human rights violation and this penalty doesn't really have much to do with the underlying crime and issues of drug addiction... it's just really hard for me to get my head around.

I think withdrawing passports is illegal under existing human rights laws, but probably why the tories want to abolish the European Human Rights Act & withdraw the UK from the ECHR - replacing the existing rules with the British Bill of Rights. This would allow parliament to change human rights laws with the stroke of a pen as they see fit. One thing that's suspected of coming from it is locking up assylum seekers... but for ordinary British people, I think there are a lot of valid concerns to be had here and the whittling away of rights for British people. Taking away these peoples' passports restricts their ability to travel - which has already been a bit more restricted than normal because we're not part of the EU anymore so free movement between EU countries isn't really possible either. The cynic in me wonders if ability to travel is being specifically targeted by certain corporate interests - because at the end of the day, I personally think this idea of having easily changeable human rights is probably to allow for erosion of our existing rights to push a "social agenda" that benefits certain corporate interests.

The proposed plan to strip drug users of their passports is bizarre.

That’s disgraceful tbh

Tbf Klopp was our manager over our worst run in our history as a club and I wouldn’t want anyone else in as manager

I also think it’s a bit of a western trait to understate how Covid can still be so bad in the developing word. But in many countries where vaccine access is poor and things like “social distancing” and “work from home” are luxuries to a lot more people, each wave of Covid overflows the healthcare systems they’ve got and more people die overall when they otherwise probably wouldn’t have. But I do see the point in how some people have used Covid panic to push some things that I think are very questionable all in the name of public health.

Isn’t providing potable water for the planet also guaranteed money? Especially because we’re seeing more and more drought?

I would miss ya so you fucking better not die any time soon mate. Feel better asap please

When the premier league started didn’t Everton have more league titles than United and Arsenal? They were (and still are) one of the biggest clubs in the country. They’ve been utterly robbed of their ambition by greedy and lazy ownership in the premier league era. I’m honestly surprised it’s taken THIS long. United go 7 years without a title and they show up to Woodward’s house, etc…

Yeah, I don't really understand why western leaders can't seem to fathom that a global pandemic means the virus needs to be contained all over the world... and not just in the western world. There's people literally dying to get vaccines in some parts of the world - but we're talking about boosters and future boosters being rolled out for us while they struggle to even get the first jabs rolled out. It's one of those things that just highlights western selfishness. From a personal perspective, it's particularly annoying. I've lost family members in Iran due to COVID early on when the pandemic first broke out and people there were struggling to get basic PPE like masks because of sanctions. Now because of sanctions & also some good old fashioned IRI government incompetence, there's a huge demand for vaccines but barely any supply for them. And now I've just learned a few minutes ago that pretty much most of my family there has received positive test results as of yesterday.

My wife's mum got COVID early on (pre-vaccine) and got it again the week before she was going to get her first jab. She's fairly healthy, but she's shown some long term effects of having the virus twice - shortness of breath for months. COVID can cause pneumonia also. It attacks your lungs, your heart, and your brain - so for a lot of people it can be quite bad. I think aside from the vaccine making it more likely for people to catch it to not show the more serious symptoms of COVID... it's also important for significantly reducing the spread of COVID. I think it's important to realise this isn't a flu or anything that we've had around for years and years. COVID's a relatively new coronavirus and so there's no real natural immunity.

The US once again showing us why I don't think the vast majority of police should have guns: if you don't wanna watch an old fella in a wheelchair take a full clip to the back, I wouldn't watch that

Car accidents on there so we maybe we shouldn't use seatbelts anymore