Oh No, The New Awesome Primary Thread

Originally, you said hundreds a day - as things are, car burning in France is a weird new year's day phenomenon.It's a French problem, this New Year car burning thing - seems to date back to the 1990s - and seems in part to do with protest (of a variety of types), and in part to do with a bizarre form of ritual vandalism.It's pretty shitty, obviously, and they are trying to stamp it out, but it is certainly not something brought in by Muslims. French farmers were burning British lorries (and live sheep) back in the 1990s, when they were upset they weren't being paid enough. It seems that a protesting Frenchman likes a nice fire. But there you go - every country has a few skeletons in its closet.I suspect that Muslim involvement in some of the burnings this January have less to do with religious protest than they do with protests about deprivation in the banlieus (where there are a disproportionate number of poorer people, protesting about standards of living, and a disproportionate number of out of work young people, bored and happy to be shitty little toe rags, burning someone's car).As a matter of interest, did Christian radio definitely say "100s every day" ?

We're using math - specifically the field of probability. The math indicates that if you are interested in the ethnic breakdown of the arsonists, then given a statistically significant sample, the breakdown is very likely to reflect the ethnic mix of the population in the areas affected.There may be factors which skew the breakdown, but the starting point for the analysis is that we would expect to see a reflection of the breakdown of the set, when examining the sub-set. That's your base position according to the math.If you want to show that the breakdown of the arsonists is other than the base position, you have to introduce evidence. Real evidence - not just something said by someone with an agenda and zero accountability.Our position is based on the mathematical principles of probability - you need to bring hard data to make your assertions anything more than that.

It's getting that way over here too. Perhaps I'm looking at it with rose tinted spectacles, but I seem to recall so much more intelligence and thoughtfulness in politics in the past.Progressively, there's been a gradual lowering of politics towards the lowest common denominator - Trump seems to have dispensed with the gradual bit.

Well, that is hearsay evidence, but leaving that to one side, if we are going to look to the impressions of those watching events unfold, wouldn't it be the sensible thing to do, to look to the impressions of people who are directly watching the events - ie not media commentators from across the other side of the world ?And if what we are looking to is hearsay evidence only, then surely we should treat it with skepticism, particularly if we know that the person providing it is interested in promoting a particular political agenda ?France has its extreme right wing, but it has a huge number of voices who see life in an ethnically diverse country as nothing to raise even a mild Gallic eyebrow about.

You'd be surprised at just how often in the past few decades Muslim people haven't taken over France. They could almost be said to make a habit of not doing so.

Interesting brief piece on the BBC News website. Have they got the reporting of this correct guys ? (In short, it's the statement by Bernie Sanders that he will work with Clinton to transform the Democrats and to beat Trump).US elections: Sanders 'to work with Clinton' to beat Trump - BBC News

Thanks.It'll be interesting to see (assuming he and Clinton can work together in practice), whether his willingness to do so will bring a lot of his supporters with him, despite the bad blood with Clinton.

I rather suspect that respect for the voice of the people was not at the absolute apex of Putin's thought process when he decided to annex the Crimea.

The majority of Crimeans, no doubt. I don't believe that was why he did it however. I believe the referendum made the decision to annex easier to justify, rather than motivated it. For that reason, I think that the annexure remains a very dangerous international precedent.Frustrating and lengthy as your process has no doubt been in relation to Istra, it remains infinitely preferable to finding reasons to invade somewhere. They're capable of being found with depressing ease.