I understand what you mean by needing to take a break from some shows - I do it myself. I suppose we all have our own way of dealing with people who insult us for our opinions - I decided a long time ago that being reasonable and factual with these idiots is like trying to bottle chips (I think you call them fries or French fries) it is never going to work. If I get such a poster I tell them and anybody else who wants to join in that they will be put on ignore where they can rant into the void. They prove their idiocy by continuing to respond - I don't see it of course - but I recognise the names when I am notified of a response. When you are dealing with that level of intelligence there is no reasoning with it. I guess it must be strange to you that I live in a country where nobody is armed except the gangs in big cities and farmers and of course the police - the police do not wear sidearms as a general rule - but they have access to weapons at short notice. Our major level of crime seems to be knife crime - even children are stabbing each other. We don't seem to have laws in place that deal effectively with child crime - there are always arguments about what to do with them and they end up doing virtually nothing. The trouble is that we don't really have any secure facilities for child criminals and you can't put them in with adults. The sentencing is ludicrous anyway - there is continuing uproar about the Jamie Bulger case where two ten year old boys - Robert Thomson and Jon Venables - kidnapped two year old Jamie - sexually molested him in the most hideous way - mutilated him and killed him. They just sat in the court room - not bothered - asking when they were going home. They were "jailed" for I think it was what they call "Her Majesty's Pleasure" which means in effect "we'll see". In the event they served 8 years and were released with a lifetime anonymity order. Thomson has kept his head down and doesn't seem to have got in to any more trouble - but Venables - he has been re-arrested over and over again for downloading images of the most serious levels of child pornography available. People have outed him and been prosecuted for it - he has even outed himself. He is a psychopath - in my view he still presents a serious level of danger to children and should never have been released.

@strangebedfellows said:

I guess it must be strange to you that I live in a country where nobody is armed except the gangs in big cities and farmers and of course the police - the police do not wear sidearms as a general rule - but they have access to weapons at short notice. Our major level of crime seems to be knife crime - even children are stabbing each other. ................... there is continuing uproar about the Jamie Bulger case where two ten year old boys - Robert Thomson and Jon Venables - kidnapped two year old Jamie - sexually molested him in the most hideous way - mutilated him and killed him. ................ Venables -...... is a psychopath - in my view he still presents a serious level of danger to children and should never have been released.

I understand the dynamics which led to the virtual ban on firearms in the UK which happened after that horrific school shooting in Scotland a couple decades or so back. The thinking is the same which drives the gun ban advocates here in the US. Effective media propaganda over time has created a kind of reflex reaction to blame the weapon. Politically it is the easiest move. A quickly passed law gives the impression that the issue has been addressed and the problem fixed. Politicians get to crow about 'keeping the people safe', and the public can reassure themselves that the danger has been dealt with so they can put the horror behind them and get back to normal. The root causes of such violence don't lie with weapons which have existed for a couple hundred years now. In America, in the first half of the twentieth century, the incidence of mass shootings was so rare as to be a non-factor; the exceptions were gang related killings such as the St. Valentine's Day massacre when Al Capone's gang murderered about 10 members of the "North side gang". The public was outraged over this at the time. Even among criminals this was unheard of. And this was at a time when more there were firearms in more households than there are today. What was different then? In the 1960s a student with a brain tumor climbed a bell tower on a university campus with a rifle and began shooting people at random. He'd had some military training. I believe he was killed and they never got to interview him to determine what he was thinking. Were drugs involved? Was the tumor somehow a factor? Even then, this was an unbelievable and rare event.
The culture in America, and in the UK I believe, was much more conservative and more grounded in Judeo Christian values and influence. This was reflected in the thinking of even those people who were atheists or non church members. Ordinate values of right and wrong were more clearly understood and accepted.
Communism with its the idea that the end justifies the means, was thoroughly rejected by the vast majority of people. People understood the fallacy of such thinking; the means used to achieve an end determine the end achieved. The 'end' is never really reached; we just live with the means. How we live and treat one another is of paramount importance. Back then, people rejected the Palestinian terrorist organizations and their use of terror. Killing innocent citizens, indiscriminately targeting and killing women and children as well as civilian men, and vowing to commit genocide of an entire nation was viewed as indefensible. It was wrong, period.

Fast forward to today: there are various groups which openly espouse communist revolution, such as Antifa (a real misnomer, since their tactics mimic those of the Nazi brown-shirts) who view violence as a just means of achieving political change in America. When someone believes that "oppressive speech is violence", they claim that political speech is a physical assault upon them which justifies 'retaliation'. Of course this rationale is disingenuous in the extreme, it is a transparently dishonest justification for committing violence. Because the culture today is permeated with moral relativism, since there are no longer clear views on right and wrong, many young people adhere to dishonest rationales to justify their chosen positions and actions. Tell them that "an argument is as bad as a fist, so a fist is as good as an argument" and they accept it as a 'truth', or what passes as truth these days.
So many of these same young people support terrorist actions against Israel, and repeat easily disproven propaganda to justify this support. They don't really care what the facts are; they have rejected honesty as an ordinate value. All that matters to them is the hatred they feel, and the jealousy and envy they feel toward those who were either more fortunate or more industrious.
With such thinking so common in our cultural current, it is surprising there are not more violent incidents. But these young people vote. It is easier for politicians to ban guns than to deal with these larger cultural, and moral issues.

Knife crime in the UK: yes, it has risen dramatically. London's murder rate has surpassed that of New York City, and it is mostly murders committed with edged weapons. What can the politicians do about this? They cannot very well attempt to ban sharp objects. Knife crime is much more dangerous to the weak. The strongest man with a knife will win. That is how it was before the advent of concealable handguns gave the elderly, the weak, the frail, an adequate means of defense against strong, dangerous, men.

And even if they could ban all knives and such implements, the underlying issues have not even been acknowledged, much less addressed. Indeed, acknowledging the underlying issues may be considered a crime today. Criticism of the moral deficiency of someone may be labeled 'hate speech', if they are in a 'protected class'. With this cruel irony, politicians enable the violent criminals by criminalizing those who seek to identify and address the issue.

Assailants fueled by hatred, jealousy, or ideology, who are lacking the moral certainty and belief in ordinate values of right and wrong are still willing to throw acid in your face, or bash your skull with a heavy blunt object, or strangle you with a garrote. Take away their knives and they will still get the job done.

So the case of the poor boy who was tortured and murdered by ten year children is a tragic, horrible, but not unsurprising case. Would this have happened 60 years ago in Britain? It is possible, given that Venable is apparently a psychopath. But it would have been much less likely to happen back then. Child pornography wasn't available the way it is today, and the societal views on right and wrong might have prevented the second boy from being convinced by Venable to consider committing this crime. But certainly the political and justice system response to the crime would have done more to protect the public, and to deliver the message that anyone thinking of such unthinkable evil would face damnation, and the most severe punishment the law could provide.

From what you've said, I agree that Venable should not be released from a prison psych ward, ever.

I think that various factors contribute to the rise in crime of any kind - and there are so many of them. Back in the sixties we had capital punishment - it didn't deter crime was the excuse for banning it - my response is - who cares - it removed a killer from the streets and saved millions in locking them up for life. I had a neighbour who stabbed his 27 year old wife to death whilst their five children were eating their supper downstairs. Nobody seemed to ask why he took a knife upstairs with him - he was out in 30 months served in a prison hospital. Most murderers serve no more than 14 years - unless their crime is particularly heinous and they show no remorse - even then they are likely to be paroled after twenty years. I wont belabour the point which is that in my view if you take a life your own should be forfeit or your sentence should be for the rest of your natural life. All we hear nowadays is that we don't have the right to judge anybody - people must be allowed to do exactly what they want with no censure from anybody. There are no standards to adhere to - truth is long gone - honour - laughed at - integrity - ridiculed. Freaks and deviants arouse no disgust - it's not allowed. They call it freedom - I call it decadence. Society has lost its moral compass - small wonder that crime proliferates - especially as the law seems increasingly geared to ensuring criminal rights are respected whilst the rights of their victims are ignored. Children in our area are running riot and it seems that nothing can be done to stop them - small wonder when smacking has been outlawed and parental discipline frowned on - have you seen the way a child behaves when nobody stops them from being naughty? They will go on and on and get worse and worse until they go mentally and physically crazy. Remind you of anything? As far as Venables is concerned the latest thinking is that the public should pay for him to go to Canada and have a new start in life - New Zealand has already said they don't want him - I can't imagine that Canada would put their children at risk by accepting this perverted monster into their midst - but no doubt a deal will be struck and nobody will take any accountability when he inevitably strikes again.

Yes, you're right. The moral relativism has produced a culture in which it is deemed a crime to criticize or judge the behavior of the criminal or bad actor. No one can be criticized-except those who are critical of criminals! You're not allowed to say their behavior is bad or wrong, because 'value judgments' are forbidden. Of course, this creates a logical box since the moral relativist has no basis for banning value judgments. Why ban them? Whatever his answer to that question, no matter how he dances around it, he has to make a value judgment, he has to say it is wrong to make value judgments. Hypocritical? Absolutely, but it doesn't matter to those in power, because they have done away with the rule of law, except for paying lip service to it.

So there is no rational basis for their moral relativism. It boils down to those in power deciding to punish the conservatives, the traditionalists. The legal system is based upon the whims of those making the decisions at any given moment.

History shows us that periods of extreme immorality are sometimes followed by periods of extreme morality - we can only hope - but I'm not holding my breath !!

Just days before the three mass shootings took place, a black racist in Cincinnati Ohio was filmed shouting "I don't like white people in my 'hood" while firing a pistol at several passing cars. Fortunately no one was injured, not for his lack of trying. He was identified and arrested and is being held on a half million dollar bond. I doubt anyone will bail him out prior to trial.

I see this as being directly attributable to the Obama factor. That scumbag did more damage to race relations in this country than anyone in my lifetime. Not only did he claim that anyone who opposed him was a racist (if you protested that his level of spending was unsustainable, you only said it because he was black), he also actively organized groups such as Black Lives Matter, which is a domestic terror organization according to the FBI. Obama's efforts have directly led to violence and murder by blacks he radicalized.
Under Obama, unemployment among blacks rose to record levels. This was planned, as he wanted unrest and anger to grow among unemployed blacks.

Since Trump took office, unemployment among blacks has NEVER been lower. I am hoping that more and more of them leave the Democrat party which benefits from black poverty. A lot of blacks are waking up and leaving the Democrats. Well, that is local politics. Sorry.

It relates to what you were speaking of, the moral relativism, the lack of moral certainty, the refusal to condemn the acts of criminals, and the decadence it spawns. Instead of teaching personal responsibility, liberals teach the young to blame their problems on racism, sexism, conservatism. etc.

I am astonished at what you say about Barack Obama - I would have expected that as a black person he would have tried to improve the situations of black people - why did he want unrest and anger? That would only have led to more black people being killed. As for the response to people who disagreed with him - that is a saying over here - "It's because I'm black innit?" The standard response of every black criminal who ever lived - it's become a joke. To change the subject - I am still watching Luther and I have just re-watched an episode which annoyed me the first time around - regarding the killer under the bed and the appearance of Ned Dennehy yet again. The whole episode brought annoyance at every scene - Ripley - so easily turned from a friend he knew pretty well even though he recanted in the end- the black female DS - threatened with the loss of her job and with her career for trying to smear a superior officer now heads up an internal investigation Judas squad who have no offices and work out of a hole in the ground and has been promoted no less. The killer who hides under the bed - nobody tells us how he got into the flat in the first place - the male and female in bed - hears cat - assumes it's in the attic - female in room below - humping thumping bumping - she looks up - half her husband body arrives through the ceiling - so she hides in a cupboard? The second attempted killing - three females in a house - female sees something wrong about the wardrobe - ignores it - thinks she sees someone when she is in the bathroom - ignores it - they both hear thumping and bumping upstairs - this must be the noisiest clumsiest killer in London - they call their friends name just to give us a reason to believe that they are not completely retarded - of course Luther saves the day. He then visits the headquarters in the hole in the ground and calmly walks out unchallenged with "all their evidence against him" - hmm - doesn't that suggest that he had done something wrong if they had evidence? John is so intuitive in so many things - he makes so many correct assumptions about various crimes and criminals - and yet he doesn't question the fact that a woman deliberately drives into him and then makes sure that she develops a relationship with him. I also didn't like the fact that he threatened the criminal grandma with Alice to make her leave him alone - firstly - it was pretty hypocritical to use Alice in that way - especially as he is supposed to disapprove of her actions - and secondly criminal grandma doesn't have a clue who he is talking about so why would she give up so easily?.

About Obama and his goals and motivations, there are theories as to why he did what he did, but of course one cannot really know unless classified information is revealed, hacked communications between him and his cohorts, and that sort of thing. It would take a long time to develop and discuss theories and offer supporting evidence. But it is certain is that he did use federal monies to help "protesters" take buses to at least a couple of cities to riot over legitimate shootings. It is certain that he played the race card, and had his subordinates do so, on a regular basis. Unemployment among blacks in particular skyrocketed to record levels during his term. He sometimes made public comments regarding police investigations which were prejudicial, and inflammatory. There is a lot I could say about that man. He was a communist whilst in college. A fellow communist student who knew him said he favored the violent revolutionary overthrow approach for a communist coup. His meetings with Black Lives Matter radicals and his support for them would seem to indicate that his views on that issue have not changed a great deal.
Anyway, I don't want to get into all that here and now. I could go on for a long, long, time. The US dodged a bullet with Obama. He might have done much worse damage than he did, and he did a whole lot of it.

Yes, the writers pushed the bounds of credibility a fair amount with the way they wrote that sick criminal, and the way people responded to clear, red flags. They meant to create a sense of horror of course, but it seems they frequently resort to unreal reactions, stupid decisions, and so on, such as those you mentioned above: the killer who slips into locked apartments and hides under the bed, like some twisted, perverted ninja criminal, and the couple who hear those knocking sounds and it occurs to neither of them that those sounds are not normal. Certainly the hairs would go up on the back of the neck and one's senses and vigilance would be extremely heightened. It's the same old trope: the good guy becomes stupid and investigates the obvious danger without precautions, naively, and gets hit, or hurt, or killed.

And yes, that sort of 'black ops', off the books, internal investigation seemed weird to me. Internal affairs investigations is a major division within the police department. they don't operate out of an abandoned store front, and they're not run by some retired copper with a hatred of the target. Their evidence against him is mostly circumstantial, and the head of the unit seems to have drawn his conclusions from the start. Now he is trying to collect evidence to support the conclusion he wants to reach, or has already reached.

Didn't you view this as another way to show Luther up against an evil force, something the audience could legitimately root against and pull for Luther to outsmart? I thought so too. But as you indicated, I think the way it was set up was pretty contrived.

At this point the writers have already gotten us to suspend our disbelief about this porn business criminal family with power and influence such that they can pound a nail through Luther's hand with impunity. Another contrivance to pit Luther against an evil force he must overcome.

So the writers figure we will once again suspend our disbelief and accept that this powerful criminal organization becomes worried about a psychotic criminal genius girl, because she is a wildcard they don't know how to account for. Why don't they find and kill Alice if she is that big of a threat? She is one person.

But we are to instead accept this without question. The picture we are meant to focus on is that of Luther, once again, working outside the rules to foil a criminal, this time using crazy killer Alice.

I do like that bit of the story though. Alice Morgan is a great character in this story. She is like a secret weapon, if she can be directed accurately and if she doesn't decide to improvise and do something on her own.

Yes - I like Alice - she really makes that part her own and somehow believable - I think the interest wanes when she is not around. I notice that Idris Elba is an associate producer on this series - I usually fear the worst when this becomes the case - I have no idea of how the film/tv process works - I don't know how much power that producers wield over the shows/films as a whole - if any - but I have to say that when stars become producers the quality of the show/films seems to deteriorate. This was especially obvious with "Columbo" ( or so it seemed to me) when he was named as a producer the show was filled with his good mates Patrick McGoohan - the guy who thinks that the staged direction barked with laughter means literally bark - Robert Culp etc )the stories were ludicrous and his acting even worse. I thought Poirot was bad enough with his attitude to evidence and crime scenes but Columbo - entering crime scenes with no protective clothing and chewing on a cigar - immediately approaching the villain and engaging his/her help etc. It is odd how something I enjoyed thirty years ago now fills me with contempt and derision. !! By the way if you like Ruth Wilson she is in a series called "The Affair" . I don't know if it is available to you over there on Netflix - it isn't over here.

By the way, now it has come out that the Ohio shooter was a Left wing nut, who tweeted Hail Satan, that he was going to hell and was not coming back, and that he hated "Fascists", the leftist term for non leftists, and he hated government employees of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

So....ANOTHER liberal who went on a mass shooting spree. This is what happened when people are taught to identify as victims. Eventually one of the idiots takes it to heart and feels justified in getting back at his "oppressors", or whomever he can get in his sights.

But the media is blaming President Trump for the shootings. Sure, it's his fault. Maybe they think he colluded with Russia to make it happen.

Sorry, I will stick to TV shows.

The Affair is available on Showtime, or you can buy the episodes for $3 apiece on Prime. I am not doing that. Maybe it will be available on Prime or Netflix sometime.

I see that Prime has The Sopranos. I didn't watch that when it came out but it was very popular then. I think I will see what the fuss was about and start that sometime soon.

I watched the "Rome" series on Prime. It tells the story of Caesar from when he is coming back from Gaul through his death, and then follows Mark Anthony and Cleopatra until their deaths. It is a pretty good show.

I used to love Columbo. He had that crazy eye, the busted car, the cigar and the trench coat, and he would go bumbling into the crime scene. He always acted sort of dumb and friendly. The guilty party wasn't ever a crime boss or anything, just someone with a character flaw who committed one murder. And Columbo would say "Say let me ask you something...". And as he left he would turn and say "oh, one more thing..."

I have not seen that show in a long time. I suppose if I saw it now I would see plenty that isn't right about the way they handled things. But that was a different kind of show. You knew it was really only about the mystery, and the bumbling detective who asked the right questions, noticed obscure clues, and so on.

You can talk about what you like - I don't mind - I am always interested in the American perspective of things. There's more to life than movies !! I think what happens with older shows is that people change - they get more sophisticated - more knowledgeable about police procedures and crime scene protocols and the forensic side of things. What once seemed plausible now seems ridiculous. What annoyed me most with Columbo was the way he treated his audience like cretins - one particular episode dealt with a forensics officer who was having an affair with the victims wife (played as I recall by Falk's own real life wife - Shera Danese - A Trace of Murder) he invites them both to a café (not sure what you call it in America - coffee shop maybe?) and then when the killer puts the saccharin sachet in front of the wife Columbo has to go to the bathroom and fuss and hit his head and all the rest of it - he returns to the couple and then watches in amazement as the killer opens the front door of the vehicle so as the wife can sit in the front - he then does his thing and arrests the killer - not content with that he has to go to his two retarded friends in the café and re-enact what we have seen already "and then he does THIS" moves sugar - "ooh ooh " retards are suitably impressed so he takes them outside and re-enacts the car scene "and then he does THAT" ooh ooh - retards are almost fainting with admiration at this point and Columbo does his silly walk into the camera. The end - and God was I grateful. This reflects what I was saying earlier about stars being producers - the earlier episodes were much better. They should not have tried to revive this series in my view. But - as I say - I am very picky!! I am still watching Luther - Ripley has been ridiculously stupid and refused to stand down to a guy with a shotgun who is now standing outside Luther's house - Ripley is now R.I.P. I mean - why would he do that? What was the point? He who fights and runs away etc. And what happened to "I will not kill any innocents?" BANG. I enjoyed "Rome" I like anything that teaches me stuff. I haven't seen "The Affair" and I wouldn't pay for it either - it's getting old now - so it will probably turn up free somewhere. I have the complete set of "The Sopranos" on DVD - I watched the first episode on some channel or other but I just couldn't seem to get into it. I don't know why - I like James Gandolfino - I think it is probably one of those shows that you need to wade through a few episodes to really get into it. I am very impatient - you have to grab my interest in the first half hour or I'm gone !!!

I really like history. And I am always interested in movies about Caesar and that period. I never read it in school so I searched around for an original source history about him. I read Plutarch's The Life of Caesar (link below) online for free. Plutarch is easy to read.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html

Sometimes when I think of life long ago I wonder how different it would be, not just from the technology and superstition aspect, but the people, how they act, how they joke, and the various customs. Some things never change it seems, and others change a lot. Much of my knowledge would be useless to me there and I would seem like an uneducated dunce as I tried to learn the basics of knowledge of that time. Anyway, reading Plutarch it occurred to me how much people are the same as they've always been.

I've seen the first couple episodes of the Sopranos. It seems like the idea for the show might have come from a popular movie called Analyze This. "A Mafia don suffers anxiety attacks which force him to visit a psychiatrist. Renowned for his brutality, the mobster is worried about his reputation when he finds himself bursting into tears for no apparent reason. " That movie was a comedy with Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro. The Sopranos pilot has Tony Soprano passing out from an anxiety attack and going to a therapist. They made this a drama instead of a comedy, but added in a lot of normal family stuff instead of just mob stuff. And you're right, it does start slow, setting the pace for developing a lot of character backstories and plotlines. But I will give it a little time to see if it picks up. It was really a popular show for a while. It has to get better than this.

I'm gonna finish watching this season of Luther and get back to you on it.

I tried to watch "Analyse This" because I am a great De Niro fan - but I am not a fan of comedies and I couldn't get through it. I don't think human beings will ever change - some may become more knowledgeable or sophisticated but the basic human faults and virtues will always remain. I have just watched Season 5 of Luther - I don't think there will be another one given how busy he is now. It gave me the impression that the writers didn't bother to watch Season 4. What was annoying to me was how they never explained how the woman who pretended to be a psychic knew about Alice's saying "Meep Meep" I wont detail the events any further because I don't know whether it is available to you yet. I watched it on BBC Player. I don't know if that is available over there.

I am well behind you still on Luther. In season 2 If anyone ever needed killing, Toby sure did.

Luther had to hide the body. He couldn't report it to the police because Toby's grandmother would kill Jenny and probably turn in Luther as well. That is all because Luther allowed himself to be manipulated into doing a favor for Jenny's mother, and because he capitulated to the mob rather than have them busted for a felony assault on a police officer. I can't get past that bad bit of writing. I notice that Luther's hand is completely healed from having the nail driven through it, just a few days afterward.

Also, if he wanted to hide the fact of Toby's death from the grandmother, putting the body in the ex cop's trunk was the wrong way to do it. And it was not believable that the grandmother would be scared off because Luther said he told someone to go after her if anything happened to Jenny or to him. If she could be scared off that easily, why didn't he say that to begin with?

By the way, Jenny doesn't know the first thing about driving a car.

DS Erin Gray is a holier than thou bitch, eh? She has STANDARDS! How many times has the police department or the government fed false information to the media in order to deceive criminals or our enemies? But DS Gray is upset that it seems Luther has fed the media a false impression.

When the twin with the bomb was walking down the deserted street, the right move would have been to shoot him then. It's true that some people may have been injured in some ground level shops or offices, but it would have been the right call. Of course the way they wrote it was very cool. Being able to convince the twin to disarm the dead man's switch was a nice trick, but there was no way to be able to plan that out. There were too many variables. Bomber twin had to choose the container where he was hidden from view and would feel safe disarming the switch, and Luther couldn't know he would do that.

I will have to search around for season 5. I'm slowly going through seasons 3 and 4 now.

If I had gone into the attic with a flashlight and seen that guy sitting there under the plastic I would have instantly cracked him over the head with the flashlight. The adrenaline would have been flowing and I would have been ready to fight that crazy jackass.