In the news

Being eligible =/= passing training surely

.

You are correct.

The selection criteria are not exactly high end either though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_Royal_Marine_Course

Arguably the US Navy selection process is a bit more demanding. It takes 12 weeks compared to the RN 4 days for a start.

Not sure why I'm posting on this, I'm not particularly invested in it, but selection is still not passing training:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marines_selection_and_training

Anecdotally I had a colleague who was monstrously fit and struggled to become a reserve royal marine, and was a thoroughly broken man every time he came back from training/exercise weekends.

Fair enough. I'm not invested in it either (other than getting a kicking doing some training with the RMs about ten years ago). Just don't agree with the "ours are better than theirs" arguments or vice versa.

"ours are better than theirs" arguments

There's only one way to test this properly:

BMI below 28

Woo! I'm out!

Fort Brag

Apt.

My old man was almost in a war* between the US marines and Royals.

* Maybe not a war, but a lot of US marines with big fucking guns against a smallish group of very drunk Royal Marines, after an inopportune comment about wine gums.

The US marines and Royal Marines are very different things though. One is the Navy's army branch, the other is a specialised land / sea force.

Royal also have berets, which is nice for them.

Sounds intense. What could be an inappropriate comment about wine gums that could lead to drunken fighting?

Royal also have berets, which is nice for them.

berets

berets

West Midlands berets

I miss that guy.

On the news front: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-state-tv-says-iran-thwarts-us-attempt-steal-oil-sea-oman-2021-11-03/

————
I also don’t want to get into an argument about which side is better, but on the difference between marines, (deleted)

ed.: it seems I conflated Royal Marines with RM Commandos, who have a 32 week selection process.

Adding to why soldiers feel their side is the best, basic training is also known as military indoctrination. And US jarheads are notoriously gung-ho.

What could be an inappropriate comment about wine gums that could lead to drunken fighting?

Any amount of booze + soldiers, and especially young US Marines, has a high chance of leading to drunken fighting.

One of the most memorable nights of my life was being in a karaoke bar in Naples with about 100 US Marines and US infantry soldiers who had been in Iraq less than 24 hours before. Talk about letting off steam. Awesome experience. There was a marked difference in spoken eloquence and political awareness between the marines and soldiers though. Very different backgrounds between the two sets.

Marines eat crayons.

Crayons are straight survival material, wasted on snotty kids

£100k for Patterson, which suggests that if you wanted to get all 280 MP's to do what you want it'd cost £28M - well within the range of most of the newly minted PPE millionaires, that pub-landlord mate of Hancocks could buy our government with taxpayers money.

Quick before it's paywalled:

https://www.ft.com/content/8c6041ff-a223-43e9-9e45-53c3f7cf47f7

Tldr: You can't chuck a brick at Johnson's parties without hitting a corporate spiv demanding payback:

£17.9m Amount that donors with property interests and links to development have given the Conservative party since Johnson became prime minister

£275,000 Annual earnings as a columnist at The Daily Telegraph, penning articles on a weekly basis

£4,250 Monthly rental income from Grade II-listed cottage in Thame, Oxfordshire

At least £88,000 Amount Johnson received as an advance for his book ‘Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius’

£250,000 Exact amount eight Tory donors gave in 2020

£37.4m Amount the Tory party raised in ‘large’ donations in the year running up to Johnson’s 2019 victory

£2.7m Johnson’s outside earnings over his eight years at City Hall

£1.2m Purchase price of Johnson and Symonds’ house in Camberwell, south London

£157,372 Prime minister’s annual salary

£830,000 Amount Johnson earned in his last year as a backbench MP before becoming prime minister

£450,000 Earnings for 21 hours of public speaking in just over seven months in 2018-19

£58,000 Donation from Tory patron Lord Brownlow, allegedly to pay for Downing Street refurbishments

I'm sure plenty of them would take less.

Might get a discount for buying the whole party, also.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-01/zillow-selling-7-000-homes-for-2-8-billion-after-flipping-halt

Has anyone else here heard something about banks and financial institutions buying property in bulk? Apparently Blackrock is very happy to take thousands of houses off of Zillow’s hands.

£1.2m Purchase price of Johnson and Symonds’ house in Camberwell, south London

That's a 3 bed mid terrace.