Quote from The Guardian

Government pledges to raise legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales

The government has committed to raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales in a victory for campaigners.

Currently, 16 and 17-year-olds can marry with parental consent, but a coalition of charities has warned that this legal loophole is being exploited to coerce young people into child marriage.

In a letter to campaigners from the Ministry of Justice, shared with the Guardian, it said it was committed to raising the minimum legal age to 18 “as soon as legislative opportunity arises”.

An update to this story, the government will bring in legislation to ban under 18 marriages, so at least that will stop forced marriages between some ethic groups.

A interesting development coming from the G7 today in that the CPS has been given the go ahead to engage with Anne Sacoolas' lawyers, this comes after Boris raised the case with Biden yesterday.

This seems a very odd case in that it looks like our own government helped the American woman to leave the country, even though she didn't have diplomatic immunity and essentially facilitated her escape from justice.

They are the replacements OB, the renters.

They're better in a sense that the old neighbours got up everyday with the sole intention of making our lives hell, these new batch of scumbags (I say new, they've been here two years now) are just so noisy and foul, it is unbearable.

Last year from March to October I had them shouting and swearing (as well as drinking and smoking) every single day. One person is bad enough, but eight of them all doing it is horrible, along with their blasting rap/tech music.

I barely have time for this place at the moment OB, so I'll pass on that invite, but thanks anyway.

Couldn't agree more OB.

Of course the original Race Relations Act which has now morphed into the modern Equality Act does the exact opposite of treating everyone fairly. It gives some groups more rights than others and that is discrimination. So our very law, is, by definition, racist.

No one should ever incite hatred or violence upon anyone, regardless of what their ethnic origin is, but all this taking the knee crap will do is incite the very crap that it's supposedly meant to be against.

Quote from mike murphy

looks like the Scotland team will be forced to take the knee now.. ( Shower of woke idiots ).

Hopefully a few petrol bombs will be thrown. (of course I don't mean that, honestly, I don't....)

Quote from Heero Yuy

Stereotypes, don't you just love 'em.

But sometimes there are very good reasons for them.

Have a nice time Heero.

Still on my break from gardening at the moment, not least because I haven't got anything to plant yet until I get to a garden centre.

Already had some time in the garden this morning and will have a bit more in a minute, but the scum neighbours are all out of bed by lunchtime and it becomes too noisy and unpleasant with their constant swearing to spend any time in my own garden for the rest of the day, so will go inside then.

Quote from France 24

Amazon share in French football TV rights sparks furious Canal+ boycott

The award of a share of French league television rights to Amazon on Friday sparked a furious boycott from the other winning bidder Canal+.

France's League had just announced the rights to show Ligue 1 games were attributed to Amazon and Canal+ in a deal worth €663 million ($802.23 million) before Canal+ said it was withdrawing.

Canal+ said it was not prepared to share the rights with Amazon.

"Canal+ will not, therefore, be broadcasting Ligue 1," it said in a statement.

With less than two months to go before the start of the 2021-2022 French season in early August, the French league (LFP) TV rights picture has again been thrown into chaos.

Just when it seemed Amazon might have cooled on making big moves into sport, think again. They've just grabbed all/most of the French footie rights.

If Amazon choose to, and I think they will, grab as many premium sports rights as they can in the future, this will cast serious doubts on the long term viability of existing pay tv companies like Sky and BT.

I thought I'd wind myself up tonight and watch some news on the BBC...

I started off with Newsnight, then switched over to the BBC news channel afterwards. Both presenters totally biased and think it's madness for people in the crowd to boo players taking the knee. One commentator on the show feared the booing will get much worse when then are crowds of 80k instead of 8k. I certainly hope so!

I'm now suitably wound up.

Quote from casablanca

Whether the behind-the-scenes identity is Antifa or the Ku Klux Klan, this crowd of "kneejerks" represents everything that phoney, vacuous or lachrymose about so many people in Britain or the US.

From white people, I agree. They are phoney. Don't assume that people from other origins aren't serious, though.

Quote from mike murphy

It's good to see that Scotland has more sense than to perform the idiotic act of taking the knee. I wonder why England wants to demean themselves ??..

Perhaps because many English players are from cities and take a different view to the majority of us who do not live in such areas. (read between the lines there...)

At least you're posting in a font and size that most people can read for a change, so that's start.

Leaving aside the pandemic and understandably politically expedient decisions, I think Dominic Cummings would probably agree with you.

There's needs to be a decent level of expertise at the heart of government and when there isn't, which is most of the time, then we get into all these issues over cronyism and corruption.

The cakes are glowing with a bit of novichok..... Biden should say to him, you try them first.

Cooler start today and overcast ish at the moment in London, but the sun is trying to come out. A very pleasant 20C at the moment.

Quote from OLD BOY

PS - This post is not an endorsement of Dido!

Indeed. One thing I think we can all agree with Jenny on, is, that the test and trace system was/is a complete shambles and the who hell is Dido Harding anyway? What experience did she have to get that job?

He's not Trump and lets face it, Trump was bad news to everyone.

I'm waiting for his meeting with Putin next week. I don't expect anything interesting to come out of it, but at least we'll be able to see the body language between the two.

I've got my firesticks, so it doesn't matter to me either way Except, I had to buy the firesticks in the first place because VM's premium tv service isn't so premium.

Quote from OLD BOY

Let’s hope they don’t come back even stronger than before and threaten the West yet again with terrorist attacks.

You would know this anyway, but of course it wasn't the Taliban that attacked America, they just played host to the attackers.

I am a interventionist by nature, but only when it's in our interests to do so or whether there could be a huge loss of innocent life.

We cannot turn a medieval culture into a western liberal democracy in a few decades. Either we stayed there for the next 100 years or get out and obviously the Americans have chosen to leave.

I feel very sorry for the many girls and women who will suffer under any new Taliban administration, but it is for Afghans to decide what their culture should and shouldn't be and the Taliban has widespread support in the south of the country.

Thanks chaps. Looks interesting and I like Sean Bean, so a definite watch for me.