Grumpy lawyer

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@customer_t98517 Hi, my email is [email protected], and my phone number is 07973746554 thanks Richard

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

Am trying to contact @bookingcom. Have messaged twice without reply. There is an issue with free cancellation policy. Just want a phone number to speak to someone about it.

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@ParkTheatre tonight to see Dracapella, a brilliant hilarious show, created by @1DanPatterson. Great songs, great singers, laugh out loud funny and quite joyous. On till mid January. Go see it.

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

Just finished season 5 of #SlowHorses one of the few shows where one feels bereft at it finishing.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

🚨JULIA HARTLEY BREWER SLAMS KEIR STARMER

"IT'S TOO LATE PRIME MINISTER"

"YOU GAVE THEM SUCKER"

"THIS IS ON YOU, DON'T YOU BLOOD DARE"

"YOU'RE PART OF THE REASON JEWS AREN'T SAFE IN THIS COUNTRY"

"SHAME ON YOU"

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@NoLayingUp how, how can sky go to an advert and not show Collin and Tyrell driving on the 18th. Madness!

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@millerja100 @YorkshireWater He means your piss poor performance @YorkshireWater

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@RealEmirHan Carlito’s Way, how to ruin a great film. Would probably have seen it 10 times by now. As it was, once was more than enough!

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@afrileaf_SW Actually turns out you can have four double bogeys and win.

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@TfL why can’t I pay congestion charge for today. Sick of trying to do this.

[Never Again @Never_Again2020]

Jacob Rees-Mogg destroys David Miller over Miller's "classic antisemitic tropes".

[David Collier @mishtal]

Exclusive: Yesterday the @bbcnews flagship BBC Verify published blatant pro-Iranian propaganda.

BBC Verify is an amateurish, propaganda device- that is driven by unacceptable bias, and publishes blatant lies worthy of a Russian Soviet era misinformation service.

Thread ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@ozmarshall @WestWingWeekly @HrishiHirway @JoshMalina Second best???

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@JamesBlunt in Ibiza this week, you around? Would be nice to pop into your bottom of the garden nightclub. Not nutters, just a group of middle aged fans.

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@BigRandyNLU When Doug Sanders was asked 20 years later if he still thought about his miss. He said “I’ve got it down to once a day now”. Think about it, as crushing a choke as you’ll ever see. I would imagine he’s in a state of shock.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

An incredible letter written by a non-Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel

It's a response from Dr. Denis MacEoin to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli, in which they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime.

Denis is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and was a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here's his letter to the students.

TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel .

That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that
permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is
this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why
aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.

On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid.

Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the
Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that
protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side.

Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and
that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin

[Grumpy lawyer @Ricland]

@GrowTheGolfGame @TheMasters Really not a debate. The money is irrelevant. One is a golf tournament with a history and all the pressure. While no one’s disputing the quality of the field, it’s still just a 3 round knock about with the lads.