The Stratospheric Supersonic Dew Drop Inn, Roswell, New Mexico

First topic message reminder :

Hello and welcome to the Virtual Rugby Pub, a place where you can come in for a sly beverage and discuss whatever's on your mind, or just eavesdrop on the regulars if you fancy a break from all the rugby chat.

The pub has made its way to "sleepy" Roswell New Mexico, take off point for the first ever supersonic free-fall this week.

The only rule in this pub is one of mutual respect for everyone in it, oh and no tampering with the pictures of Felix Baumgartner and Chris Budgen up on the wall.




Previous Pub
https://www.606v2.com/t35734p950-the-dew-drop-inn-virtual-rugby-pub-taihape#1612820

Holiday booking........ Successful


Australlia 2k13 babbbbbbbbbby woo hooooo

Rava wrote:Pete, that is quite brilliant. I wonder if he will dare?

I suspect the Christchurch constabulary may have found him by now. 18yo kid has learnt a valuable lesson. Though perhaps it should have been self evident.

Dan has an iq up in the genius range too, knowing him he'd have managed some witty, cutting and sarcastic commentary as he grabbed the guy.

WillyGilly wrote:Holiday booking........ Successful


Australlia 2k13 babbbbbbbbbby woo hooooo

Congratulations Willy.... we better do a bit of a tidy up before you arrive.

Spoiler:

Good Mooning Rava.

Linebreaker wrote:

WillyGilly wrote:Holiday booking........ Successful


Australlia 2k13 babbbbbbbbbby woo hooooo

Congratulations Willy.... we better do a bit of a tidy up before you arrive.

Tell all the surfer babes in bikinis that are in all the tourism promotional videos that I'm on my way!

Shall do. Do you like beer mate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX145Tu4MHY

Aye she'd be alright I guess. Didn't see any beer in that ad though...

Blimey I'm getting caught up on the weekends telly on the iplayer and I've got as far as have I got news for you? Anyone else catch it this week. Second item on it was this whole Jimmy Saville revelation. Very brave of the show to tackle the issue in what's supposed to be a light hearted satirical look at the news. I see mock the week ignored it like the plague...

Glos won, Burns' brother looks pretty good and man Ian Clark can shift...gassed Cato from a standing start!!

Evening all, just putting Mick & Joce to bed - chilled evening, only a few

Morning folks


Nice day as cover for me today, its a nice way to spend the day.

How are we all today??

We are grand, lurky, and your good self - run into any trouble recently?

& brewing

Morning Hughie and Asbo and any Suspicious Lurkers.
I'll have some please.

No no, keeping myself to myself asbo, you know me model citizen and all that.


I ended up going on that date Sunday as well. Needless to say I wasn't 100% like but she's still talking to me so I must be doing something right

Morning folks, I'll have a please. It's borderline cold on the docks this morning. Winter's on its way!

I hope I'm not upsetting anyone here, but what can any inquiry into the allegations against Sir Jimmy Savile possibly achieve? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're going to do something illegal, you're going to make sure there aren't any witnesses around, so the chances of finding anyone to verify these allegations are slim at best. Add to that the fact that the alleged perpetrator is dead and I don't see why there's a need for an inquiry at all, if all it'll produce is a list of unproven allegations, i.e. it won't be able to conclude anything.

Closure for the victims, maybe, Lucky? Not really sure

But what closure can they have if nothing can be proved?

I'm not saying the allegations should be swept under the carpet, but without proof, what can they be but allegations?

Lucky

Speaking as someone who has and is currently invesitgation historic allegations of sexual abuse, whilst it is difficult, there are ways of finding verifiable evidence relating to offences. Closure is often a massive issue for the victims, and even where charges are never brought after an investigation, they often feel a huge weight has been lifted from them simply by getting it out in the open.

In relation to Saville in particular, I fully understand your view that no as he is dead there is not a great deal of useful purpose to be served by inveistigating it as nothing can be achieved in the legal sense. That however for me is outweighed by what I have said above about victims, and it is worth noting that if he was alive, the burden of proof required to secure a conviction in a court would be very high. Given that Saville is no longer with us the enquiry would in effect not be a 'criminal' one in relation to him, and as such may require a lower burden of proof, such as balance of probabilities, meaning that he may be branded as 'guilty' on a lot less evidence than would be required in a court.

That's very interesting about the burden of proof Pete. So (and bear in mind I know feck all about Irish law, let alone UK law) would the enquiry be more like a civil case?

I remember being told while on jury service that the burden of proof in a civil case is lower than a criminal case.

What worries me about all this is that the BBC will get away with it by turning all the heat on Saville. The stories you are hearing now from women who were of age of routine groping being accepted as part of the culture and what you allowed if you wanted to get on are just as bad. These are however being ignored largely due to the furore about one, dead, man.

Thanks Ozzy - I can see that side of it; but if all we'll be able to do at the end of it is say that he's 'probably guilty' (and seeing as he can't argue his own case, the outcome seems inevitable), then it seems to me that any inquiry will be of little value. I do ackowledge that the alleged victims will feel differently.

And something else will come into play if an inquiry goes ahead: the power of suggestion. Savile must have met thousands of children in the course of his career, and it's likely that many of them came into physical contact with him (sitting on his lap, being hugged). Now the vast majority would have thought no more about it since, apart from being chuffed they met Jimmy Savile - who didn't write in to Jim'll Fix It? But once they hear the allegations being made by others, they might question the innocence or otherwise of what happened when they met him, when nothing untoward went on at all.

That is always a danger Lucky, and effectively it will be down to those conducting the investigation to in effect sort the wheat from the chaff.

I just don't like the fact that there's only going to be one possible verdict, unless they're going to interview every single child Savile met.

To steer the conversation in a more pleasant direction: am I the only one who wrote in to Jim'll Fix It? If any of you did, what did you want him to fix for you?

I understand what your saying luckless.

I don't condone any of what's being going on, but I feel thus case is open to bandwagoners as well. Any girl of a certain age bracket will remember exactly the day she met jimmy savill growing up, and now especially with talk of compensation being to offered to victims, how can they say prove that any alleged victim is telling the truth??

Lucky

I hope this doesn't come across as condescending but just to give an idea of how I work, and how many of my colleagues work. When conducting any investigation there is one question that I repeatedly ask myself theought my enquiries and it is this. 'What is the worst that can happen if I do something (specific thing) and what's the worst that can happen if don't do it." I then base my decision making around the answers to that question. (This is in very simplistic terms obviously).

So in this case, at the very outset the specific thing would be 'do we investigate this?'

For me the worst thing that can happen if we do investigate it is that we don't find any real evidence and we end up in the same situation as we are in now where we never really know what Saville did all those years, leaving people to make their own minds up about him, which people all do now anyway.

If we don't invesitgate it the worst thing that can happen in my mind is that victims get no closure and continue to live their lives haunted by their past, and potentially other people who are still alive and linked to Saville are still actively committing offences and abusing children and/or young adults. (I am not saying that this happened or is happening, just giving a worst case scenario in relation to the question.)

On that basis, my decision would be that it has to be investigated, as the potential for failing to safeguard people in the here and now far outweighs the risk to the reputation of a man who is no longer with us and many in their own minds had pegged as an offender many years ago.

You're an articulate fecker, Ozzy!

I think you may just have changed my mind as to whether an inquiry should be held - although I still think any inquiry will be prejudiced.

For what it's worth, I wrote to Jim'll Fix It twice, once to train with the Welsh rugby team, and once to jump into the Sarlacc Pit (I wanted to find out what happened to the actors when they fell in).

Sarlacc Pit??

Morning all.

Lucky, sorry, didn't ever write to Jim'll Fix It!

Does anyone else think that the 2 big "expose" stories this week, Savile and Armstrong, are really quite similar?

Two men who both, allegedly, seemed to think they could do whatever they wanted in the certain knowledge they were powerful enough to get away with it. They both brazened it out even though it would seem their actions were actually fairly widely known.

I think it is worth investigating if only to try to prevent anyone being allowed to be viewed as untouchable in the future.

(Perhaps "untouchable" was an unfortunate choice of word in the circumstances.)

It's in Return of the Jedi, Hughie. It's this giant monster mouth thing that lives in the desert and Jabba the Hutt tries to have Luke Skywalker and Han Solo thrown into it.

MrsP, if the allegations against either of them is true, you have to be amazed at the sheer nerve of them.

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:It's in Return of the Jedi, Hughie. It's this giant monster mouth thing that lives in the desert and Jabba the Hutt tries to have Luke Skywalker and Han Solo thrown into it.

That's an amazing thing to ask for

I hadn't thought about any similarities between the two MrsP, but your assessment there appears to be correct. The Armstrong stuff fascinates me. I understand that there is a 1000 page dosier which details his guilt, and I have to say I would love to have proper read of it, as so far I have heard that it is 'damning' but I have no idea of the content. The bit that really interests me is that as I understand it, all of the evidence pointing towards his guilt comes from witness testimony. As far as I am aware there is no physical evidence, given that he passed over 500 random drugs tests. He has also apparently said that he is prepared to take a lie detector test.

I am still not 100% sure which I a fall on this one, as without reading the testimonies of his team mates, I cannot really decide on how much weight I would put on the reliability of them.

I thought they must have some kind of crash mat or trampoline for the actors after they fell in.

I would expect Armstrong to pass a lie detector test fairly easily.

I reckon anyone who has lied so freely and so easily for so long would have no problem. There has to be an element of regret or guilt in the physiological responses and I really don't think he would show those. I also think a professional athlete would be able to control their responses in a way that would make the test much less reliable.

MrsP, I am no expert on lie detector machines, my experience being limited to watching Jeremy Kyle on my days off, but I suspect that you are right and a top athlete would potentially be able to control their physiological responses sufficiently to fool the machine.

Does anybody know if the file on Armstrong has been published publicly at all? As I say, I would love to read the statements. (Never off duty )

Found this Ozzy,

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/!invesitgations%20and%20enterprise%20docs/armstrong-reasoned-decision.pdf

Have not looked so I'm not sure exactly what it is.

Wow lucky, that's a pretty unique request alright

Well I've always been a weirdo, Hughie!

Morning all,

Ozzy, someone on the thread in cycing posted about reading the 200page summary, so I presume it's out there somewhere.

And here's an interview with one of the former teammates http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/sport/7805721/Swart-feels-vindicated-by-report


Never wrote to Jim'll fix it, it never aired in NZ. Though at my old job a colleague rang Saville and pitched a mini-revival (as an ad campaign with a twist) back in 2009, and he was dead keen on the idea. I bet that client is glad they opted for something else.

I'm just reading the thing I posted the link to and it seems to be what you were looking for Ozzy!

Cheers folks, I shall get to reading that this evening when at home.

Morning all, again.

Don't see the connection between Savile and Armstrong. As far as I know Armstrong has never been accused of abusing children which must rank a very close second to murder in it's vileness. The psychological effects carried for years by any child who has been molested just doesn't bear thinking about. It is a very current topic in Ireland with allegations of institutional and religious based abuse never far from the surface.

As far as Armstrong is concerned, I think most people have known for years that he was a cheat. But can any professional sportsperson put up their hand and say they never cheated?

As far as Armstrong is concerned, I think most people have known for years that he was a cheat. But can any professional sportsperson put up their hand and say they never cheated?

Richie McCaw

Suspicious lurker wrote:

As far as Armstrong is concerned, I think most people have known for years that he was a cheat. But can any professional sportsperson put up their hand and say they never cheated?

Richie McCaw

Evey time ref!!!

Rava,

I'm not suggesting that their "crimes" were similar or even of similar severity.

I was referring to their apparent complete belief that they could do what they are accused of doing without any chance of them being held to account simply because of their position. What was going on in both scenarios was an open secret and yet it was allowed to continue for many years.

I just see similarities in the nature of the 2 men. Narcissism almost to the point of Pychopathy.

Not in anyway trying to suggest that cheating in a bike race is as bad as molesting kids.

Aye fair enough Mrs P. There will always be those who feel their position/stature gives them different "rights" to us mere mortals.

Morning all, how is everyone?

I am starting to feel a poorly dreamer, cold is a coming