The slavish devotion of Republicans to one person is damaging to the country – politicalbetting.com
Comments
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If footballers taking the knee to oppose racism is political, so is them wearing shirts with poppies imprinted on them. I don't think either are.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
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I think at around 6/4 the England price is about right. Surprising given the hype as I would lay them at evens at this stage and expected the price to be a bit lower than 6/4 . Away from betting I dont realy want an England win , football dominates the sporting landscape too much anyway and the awards and platitudes for basically kicking a ball into a net (or heading it as England are genuinely good at!) will be far over the top compared to what really matters in life or indeed even in sport.Casino_Royale said:
I'm still laying England, although I now think there's a good chance I'll lose.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%
Casino Royale is right that the knee thing will rise again (if they do win)as a divisive issue.0 -
Harrowing story, and all too common.SouthamObserver said:
The worst thing my Dad ever did to me was make me a Spurs fan. It's been the biggest source of misery in my life. And now I have done it to my own kids and the first grandson.OldKingCole said:Good morning everybody.
I'd endorse Dr Foxy's comments about football and father-son bonding. Younger Son wanted to go and watch Southend (yes, really!) when he was about 9, but we lived 10 miles away. So I took him and that ended up with a couple of season tickets for two or three years until he got to secondary school and could go on his own.
Now, when he's around or we're with him, we still go to matches, although no longer Southend.
Never had quite the same 'both do' with Elder Son.
#EndTheCycle
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Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
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Boris could have fired him on the Friday - the fact he didn't destroys your argumenttheProle said:
I've wondered if the opposite is true. If Boris had had enough of Hancock's loony lockdownism, but didn't want to have open war with the zero covidians by sacking him to change policy, what could be better than pushing him out over a scandal, and installing a less insane health secretary. It wouldn't shock me if Boris's people were behind that video ending up in the public domain, to give Boris some cover to bin him.Cocky_cockney said:Sajid Javid's arrival seems to have coincided with a policy shift. It makes me think that Matt Hancock and his coterie of white coats held huge sway over Gov't policy. Javid and Sunak appear now to have shifted the weight towards 'learning to live with it' which is, frankly, brilliant news. The link between cases and deaths has been broken by the vaccines and we need to roll up our sleeves and get on with life. Banish fear. Live.
It does also show how incredibly weak Boris Johnson is. He gets pushed and pulled around, almost certainly in large part because he's lazy and doesn't have a grasp of the facts. I don't think he's as bright as he seems to think he is.2 -
Mr. Observer, equating support for the BLM gesture (even if they claim it's nothing to do with BLM despite being the exact same thing they were doing in the name of BLM...) with remembrance of those who perished in war is ridiculous.1
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As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.DecrepiterJohnL said:Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.1 -
That would still show him as weak as hed chosen to rely on nefarious methods to achieve a result available far more simply, to avoid a confrontation.theProle said:
I've wondered if the opposite is true. If Boris had had enough of Hancock's loony lockdownism, but didn't want to have open war with the zero covidians by sacking him to change policy, what could be better than pushing him out over a scandal, and installing a less insane health secretary. It wouldn't shock me if Boris's people were behind that video ending up in the public domain, to give Boris some cover to bin him.Cocky_cockney said:Sajid Javid's arrival seems to have coincided with a policy shift. It makes me think that Matt Hancock and his coterie of white coats held huge sway over Gov't policy. Javid and Sunak appear now to have shifted the weight towards 'learning to live with it' which is, frankly, brilliant news. The link between cases and deaths has been broken by the vaccines and we need to roll up our sleeves and get on with life. Banish fear. Live.
It does also show how incredibly weak Boris Johnson is. He gets pushed and pulled around, almost certainly in large part because he's lazy and doesn't have a grasp of the facts. I don't think he's as bright as he seems to think he is.2 -
i think both are to some extent . Therefore both best avoidedSouthamObserver said:
If footballers taking the knee to oppose racism is political, so is them wearing shirts with poppies imprinted on them. I don't think either are.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm0 -
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.0 -
Thank you. Appreciated.SouthamObserver said:
Happy to withdraw. Johnson and Patel should have said the same. But they didn't because they thought there may be political opportunities.Casino_Royale said:
If you'd spent more time on here (rather than Twitter, where you now reside) you'll know I repeatedly said I don't approve of booing.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I look forward to you withdrawing your remark.
I don't agree on Johnson and Patel. I think it's only with political leadership that certain divisive Woke troupes can be challenged, and I think they're playing a representative role there.
I am slightly less impressed with Patel as she said whether to boo was "up to the fans" well after the tournament started, which I didn't think was quite cricket.0 -
Took my other son to football matches. Same response. Bored out of his mind. Which, frankly, I can understand when watching England. For all the talk of the goals it was a boring game yesterday, especially in the first half. England are a very tedious side to watch. In contrast to the crazy Italians.
Cricket on the other hand, now there's a magnificent game. One of the best days out ever was with my older son at the 2005 Ashes. We were there in the Hollies Stand at Edgbaston on Day Three. What a day.2 -
What is ridiculous is allowing an extremist organisation to take ownership of a gesture that was specifically and solely conceived as a means to express opposition to racism.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Observer, equating support for the BLM gesture (even if they claim it's nothing to do with BLM despite being the exact same thing they were doing in the name of BLM...) with remembrance of those who perished in war is ridiculous.
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It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.0 -
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
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I think you and @northern_monkey are right re Clarkson. I am a fan. I find him very entertaining. I also think it is an act exaggerating his obvious hatred of jobs worth and bureaucracy with which I have a lot in common, but contrary to popular belief (because of his act) I reckon he is an orange book liberal or liberal conservative. However I wouldn't dare say that to his face.Casino_Royale said:
He did tell me he voted Remain! I didn't raise it - my father did (who goes straight in there with the big stuff, rather embarrassingly) and that flushed it out, although he did say he hated the EU's bureaucracy as well.northern_monkey said:
Didn’t Clarkson vote Remain? Don’t think he’s a fan of Brexit. I’m a Guardian-reading Remainer. Been watching Top Gear since the William Woollard days, I think Jezza is a sound bloke beneath the irascible Gammony character he’s constructed for himself. Not a fan of the farming thing though, watched the first one the other week not been tempted back.Casino_Royale said:FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
Edit: Not that you mention Brexit, but the picture you painted conjures up a mental image of bitter Remainers!
I said to him to give it a try anyway as it shows a different side of Clarkson and the spotlight it shines onto the economics of farming is genuinely interesting.
FWIW, I think Jezza's politics are genuinely similar to Cameron/Osborne - he's a liberal establishment Tory.2 -
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.Dura_Ace said:
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
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Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.0 -
Argh.Casino_Royale said:
divisive Woke troupesSouthamObserver said:
Happy to withdraw. Johnson and Patel should have said the same. But they didn't because they thought there may be political opportunities.Casino_Royale said:
If you'd spent more time on here (rather than Twitter, where you now reside) you'll know I repeatedly said I don't approve of booing.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I look forward to you withdrawing your remark.
Have a good day everyone.0 -
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .Theuniondivvie said:I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)0 -
Ah!!!!!SouthamObserver said:
If footballers taking the knee to oppose racism is political, so is them wearing shirts with poppies imprinted on them. I don't think either are.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
As it happens I don’t like poppies on shirts either. Not sure if you remember, but that happened quite gradually. One team did it and then a few more.
Man Utd wouldn’t join in and got criticised. I suspect they understood why it wasn’t a good idea.1 -
Yes. Harry knows his cars, talks with passion and knowledge, and the farm bit is interesting as well. Having had endless trailers of it played on Prime I gave Clarkson's Farm 15 minutes. It was unwatchable. Its painfully scripted and not funny.Dura_Ace said:
Doesn't like 911s. Total arsehole and Pound Shop Harry Metcalfe. (From whom JC cribbed the farm idea.)malcolmg said:
His a wanker though, only gammons like him.Casino_Royale said:FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.0 -
With Trump I'm wary as I find him so odious a personality I find it impossible to understand him or the appeal he undoubtedly has with lots and lots of people.Scott_xP said:
As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.DecrepiterJohnL said:Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
Accordingly I'm wary of something that seems like it would so simply and quickly ruin him, if proven.1 -
My early memory is of standing on the bank at Woodcote corner at Silverstone, watching Senna’s red and white McLaren scream by producing sparks. We knew it was the Brazilian, because of the bright yellow helmet. 1988, I would have been ten.northern_monkey said:
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.Dura_Ace said:
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sadly, while today’s F1 power units are astonishing technical achievements, they lack the utterly visceral noise produced by engines of the past. The v12s of 2004 and 2005 were probably the peak.1 -
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.northern_monkey said:
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.Dura_Ace said:
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.0 -
We should. But too many people don't. These peope who boo their own team for pointing out your racism when you boo and name call the immigrants - and then claim that you are the real victim. White privilege in an absolute nutshell.Sandpit said:
How’s about we concentrate more on the content of people’s character, than the colour of their skin?DecrepiterJohnL said:
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.OldKingCole said:
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
The current trend is very worrying. “Anti-racism” appears to be just racism, treating people differently according to how they look.0 -
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
0 -
England vs Sri Lanka. 50 over game at Bristol, too!RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.0 -
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.1 -
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.RochdalePioneers said:
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.0 -
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?state_go_away said:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .Theuniondivvie said:I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)0 -
I think Trump is enormous value for the nomination, but I think that bet is much better value than for the Presidency itself. On that I will defer to the judgement of my Staten Island raised mother-in-law. She was confident that Covid would sink Trump - and it did. She is now confident that Trump will not be able to shrug off the label of being a loser, and that will be enough to prevent him from winning the Presidency.
Now, Trump has convinced GOP primary voters that he didn't actually lose, but that won't be enough to win him the general. While GOP states have moved to disenfranchise likely Dem voters, if the vote against Trump is strong enough from Independents then it can be enough to overcome such efforts.
That said, I'm more worried about the certification of the result than the votes themselves. If there is any way of being able to bet that bypasses the certification shenanigans then that would be worth considering. A GOP-controlled Congress, particularly the House, might well install Trump as President regardless.0 -
Do you think you might be a teeny-tiny bit biased?malcolmg said:
Heart for sure, no way should England be anywhere near favourites, Spain and Italy look miles better teams and England will do well to beat Denmark, absolutely deluded.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%0 -
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.RochdalePioneers said:
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.2 -
He raced a WSBK spec. VTR1000 at the Suzuka 8 Hour in 2002 but he's never been in WSBK. The wait continues for the first MotoGP/WSBK double champion.Theuniondivvie said:
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.northern_monkey said:
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.Dura_Ace said:
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.0 -
This came to a lure specifically for this species. You can get them from Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies. Alternatively, eBay has a selection, or there are Dutch companies that have a very wide range of species-specific lures. They are mostly to attract agricultural pests. However, the art is still somewhat in its infancy. We are trying to establish which species regularly come to lures intended for totally different species.Stocky said:
@MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark said:Been a while since I posted any moths for your delight, but I thought you might like this Lunar Hornet Moth, an astounding example of mimicry by one utterly harmless critter of another feared one, here the Hornet.
(It and two others came to a pheromone lure, which in itself was one of the more bizarre (but as it turned out, welcome) Christmas presents I have ever received!)
Nice one. What were you trying to lure, a clearwing?
Where you you get the pheromone lures from? What is the best time of day to put them out and where - hang on a tree I guess?
They are of interest because many of these species are not attracted to light traps or lures so are often unseen. We have no little or means of knowing the health or otherwise of these species in an ecosystem. Just this year, we have discovered that a lure for a pest of fruit trees is irresistible to another species that lives on oak trees. Previously thought rare, Pammene giganteana pops up in good numbers in a broad swathe of the country.
An ongoing project, but this study of the "by-catch" of pheromone lures is proving illuminating to the wider presence of a number of species.
This is another of the clearwing species, Yellow-legged Clearwing, which came in to a lure for that species. There had previously been no evidence of it being locally resident.
4 -
Personally I haven't heard a peep from Clarkson since he got kicked off Top Gear for bullying his underlings. Very much yesterday's man.0
-
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.JohnLilburne said:
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.RochdalePioneers said:
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.0 -
Lovely arthropods - thank you.MarqueeMark said:
This came to a lure specifically for this species. You can get them from Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies. Alternatively, eBay has a selection, or there are Dutch companies that have a very wide range of species-specific lures. They are mostly to attract agricultural pests. However, the art is still somewhat in its infancy. We are trying to establish which species regularly come to lures intended for totally different species.Stocky said:
@MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark said:Been a while since I posted any moths for your delight, but I thought you might like this Lunar Hornet Moth, an astounding example of mimicry by one utterly harmless critter of another feared one, here the Hornet.
(It and two others came to a pheromone lure, which in itself was one of the more bizarre (but as it turned out, welcome) Christmas presents I have ever received!)
Nice one. What were you trying to lure, a clearwing?
Where you you get the pheromone lures from? What is the best time of day to put them out and where - hang on a tree I guess?
They are of interest because many of these species are not attracted to light traps or lures so are often unseen. We have no little or means of knowing the health or otherwise of these species in an ecosystem. Just this year, we have discovered that a lure for a pest of fruit trees is irresistible to another species that lives on oak trees. Previously thought rare, Pammene giganteana pops up in good numbers in a broad swathe of the country.
An ongoing project, but this study of the "by-catch" of pheromone lures is proving illuminating to the wider presence of a number of species.
This is another of the clearwing species, Yellow-legged Clearwing, which came in to a lure for that species. There had previously been no evidence of it being locally resident.0 -
What are the viewing figures? Is there any evidence that people that hate him can't resist watching his programmes or is that just something you made up?Casino_Royale said:
He's someone certain type of people love to hate, but they also can't resist watching his programmes - which is why he gets such high viewing figures.malcolmg said:
His a wanker though, only gammons like him.Casino_Royale said:FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
With you and Sean T singing his praises you could also say that a "certain type of person" loves him.0 -
While at the same time making excuses for that English cricket player who was spewing bile all over social media.SouthamObserver said:
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.0 -
The Sunday Rawnsley:
The significance of this byelection is not that it is a triumph achieved, but a catastrophe averted. “It avoids a disastrous sequence of events for Keir,” observes one member of the shadow cabinet. If Labour had lost this byelection, hard on the heels of the drubbing in Hartlepool, Sir Keir would have been framed in an even more doomy narrative.
If a reprieve is all it turns out to be, he will soon be under pressure again. He needs to turn this breathing space into a turning point. The pandemic and the restrictions it has imposed on campaigning have provided some excuse for Sir Keir’s struggles to achieve connections with the public, but it is not an alibi that will serve him for much longer.
Every Starmer-sympathetic MP I have spoken to, and many of the Starmer-sceptic ones as well, agree that his speech to this autumn’s party conference is taking on a critical importance. The conference stage is always a big moment for opposition leaders, because they get many fewer opportunities than prime ministers to grab the attention of the public. The imperative for this one to be a success is intense because he has yet to deliver a proper conference speech since he became leader.
A wafer-thin byelection win in a seat Labour already held is no proof that Sir Keir has what it takes to beat Mr Johnson. It does offer him a fresh opportunity to address the anxieties about his leadership and persuade people that he is a man with a plan. He has been given extra time that he cannot afford to squander.1 -
@RochdalePioneers - have you seen this?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/04/out-how-brexit-sent-one-uk-tennis-kit-firm-to-romania
'The Walkingtons decided they had to relocate lock, stock and barrel with their two children – after whom the company is named – last autumn and are now in the process of moving into new premises in Romania, where they are not only free of Brexit bureaucracy but are also benefiting from abundant skilled labour and help from the country’s authorities.
Six months after the UK finally left the EU’s single market, thousands of other small companies have faced similar problems, and many have either relocated entirely to the EU or set up branches or warehouses inside the EU to avoid the export delays and costs. Advisers at the Department for International Trade have encouraged many to do so.'
The DIT bit did surprise me a little ...1 -
Heart over head?malcolmg said:
Heart for sure, no way should England be anywhere near favourites, Spain and Italy look miles better teams and England will do well to beat Denmark, absolutely deluded.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%
0 -
“Been done many times before”SouthamObserver said:
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?state_go_away said:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .Theuniondivvie said:I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
1 Has it? I can’t think of any examples, though I may not have been paying attention.
2 Even if it has, formula TV is not always a bad thing: someone is murdered, eccentric detective solves the case is the basic plot of hundreds of series of books and TV shows.
None of this is a comment of Clarkson’s show. I will give it a go, but having grown up on a farm I will probably have a different perspective on it to many here.0 -
Just imagine Jeremy Clarkson in a Maxi. Sounds like a Viz cartoon.RochdalePioneers said:
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.JohnLilburne said:
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.RochdalePioneers said:
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.0 -
Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.0 -
What Red Robbo got right is the government needed to invest in BL if it were to have a prayer of competing with European car manufacturers. As it was, all 70s and 80s BL development was an exercise in rummaging through the parts bin to reuse existing engines and components, with some belated badge engineered Hondas.RochdalePioneers said:
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.JohnLilburne said:
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.RochdalePioneers said:
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.0 -
The grand projet of the right currently is to convince everyone else that open racists, Nazi saluters and white supremacists are absolutely nothing to do with them. We all know what the S in NSDAP stood for after all.RochdalePioneers said:
We should. But too many people don't. These peope who boo their own team for pointing out your racism when you boo and name call the immigrants - and then claim that you are the real victim. White privilege in an absolute nutshell.Sandpit said:
How’s about we concentrate more on the content of people’s character, than the colour of their skin?DecrepiterJohnL said:
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.OldKingCole said:
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
The current trend is very worrying. “Anti-racism” appears to be just racism, treating people differently according to how they look.0 -
You may well be right, I wasn’t a particular fan I just tagged along for shits and gigs. Deffo the Rossi one, he’s the only rider I know!Theuniondivvie said:
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.northern_monkey said:
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.Dura_Ace said:
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.RochdalePioneers said:
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.Cocky_cockney said:I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.0 -
I have to agree with your mother-in-law there, as you can easily imagine Trump being labelled with the lose tag and watch him going apeshit mad everytime someone mentions it.LostPassword said:I think Trump is enormous value for the nomination, but I think that bet is much better value than for the Presidency itself. On that I will defer to the judgement of my Staten Island raised mother-in-law. She was confident that Covid would sink Trump - and it did. She is now confident that Trump will not be able to shrug off the label of being a loser, and that will be enough to prevent him from winning the Presidency.
Now, Trump has convinced GOP primary voters that he didn't actually lose, but that won't be enough to win him the general. While GOP states have moved to disenfranchise likely Dem voters, if the vote against Trump is strong enough from Independents then it can be enough to overcome such efforts.
That said, I'm more worried about the certification of the result than the votes themselves. If there is any way of being able to bet that bypasses the certification shenanigans then that would be worth considering. A GOP-controlled Congress, particularly the House, might well install Trump as President regardless.0 -
EXC: Hancock's fixer Lord Bethell sponsored Gina Coladangelo's parliamentary pass until December 2020 - longer than thought
For first time friends offer an explanation: she was giving Bethell "presentational advice"
Bethell declined to provide evidence
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f9860442-dbf7-11eb-9988-ad45b1fbe7e6?shareToken=95183e583c315cfa670262b55013f0390 -
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%1 -
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.3 -
It's one of the few times you actually want Amazon buying a company as it would then stand a chance of surviving as it is.RochdalePioneers said:Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.1 -
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.."DecrepiterJohnL said:
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.OldKingCole said:
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
The other problem is that it concedes ground to the good immigrant/bad immigrant argument. Does it really make any difference to how we should feel about immigration from the Windrush generation that their descendants are now in the England football team? That implies that if there weren't any players in the England team from the background, that they weren't immigrants good enough to be here.0 -
No discussion and the only thing in favour of this PE deal seems to be it is not quite as bad as the previous PE deal. Maybe HMG will block it. On an even wider point, is the increasing trend of PE taking over and de-listing companies a good thing?RochdalePioneers said:Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.0 -
1
-
Ollie Robinson was not spewing bile all over social media. He posted some offensive tweets as a teenager.Tres said:
While at the same time making excuses for that English cricket player who was spewing bile all over social media.SouthamObserver said:
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.0 -
Johnson never endorsed booing. His initial statement fell short of condemning it but said that he wanted the whole country to get behind the team. A few days later he said the booing was totally wrong.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
Patel, of course, is another matter. She described taking the knee as "gesture politics" and said fans have the right to boo.0 -
This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.0
-
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.0 -
I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
6 -
The USA could be in a lot of trouble if it had a leader who was like Trump, but more intelligent when it comes to removing any obstacles to his exercise of power. When all is said and done, Trump is a blowhard.kle4 said:
With Trump I'm wary as I find him so odious a personality I find it impossible to understand him or the appeal he undoubtedly has with lots and lots of people.Scott_xP said:
As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.DecrepiterJohnL said:Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
Accordingly I'm wary of something that seems like it would so simply and quickly ruin him, if proven.1 -
We're also all royal if you look back far enough, and doubtless all slaves too. And all African.LostPassword said:
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.."DecrepiterJohnL said:
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.OldKingCole said:
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
.
It's like saying "In the long run, we're all dead". We still need to worry about the short and medium term.0 -
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.Sandpit said:
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.RochdalePioneers said:
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.1 -
There was a Welsh Labour councillor who wrote to Private Eye, about twenty years ago, suggesting the Diana Memorial Fountain be in the form of a "giant spurting phallus."RochdalePioneers said:This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.
1 -
Farmers quite like it, listening to reviews on farming today.SouthamObserver said:
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?state_go_away said:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .Theuniondivvie said:I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
It gets more of the complexity across, and the range of things that have to be juggled every day.
Within the framework of a Clarkson-style semi comic strip.
Personally I prefer it to him attempting to be too serious - when he did the VC documentary and St Nazaire raid he skipped over a lot of elements, and much of it was a repeat of overimagined wartime legend.0 -
One thing i wonder about the Trump thing is whether the Federal authorities, which might in normal times have stepped in to take over the case at some point, will be reluctant to do so because of a fear that a future GOP President might then pardon anyone convicted or likely to be convicted...0
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Grew up almost equidistant between Swindon and Southampton. Dad chose to take me to Swindon. #39yearsofhurt.kle4 said:
Harrowing story, and all too common.SouthamObserver said:
The worst thing my Dad ever did to me was make me a Spurs fan. It's been the biggest source of misery in my life. And now I have done it to my own kids and the first grandson.OldKingCole said:Good morning everybody.
I'd endorse Dr Foxy's comments about football and father-son bonding. Younger Son wanted to go and watch Southend (yes, really!) when he was about 9, but we lived 10 miles away. So I took him and that ended up with a couple of season tickets for two or three years until he got to secondary school and could go on his own.
Now, when he's around or we're with him, we still go to matches, although no longer Southend.
Never had quite the same 'both do' with Elder Son.
#EndTheCycle
They fuck you up your mum and dad...2 -
Very well said!The_Apocalypse said:I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Part of the problem is influential sports and media stars tend to be younger so probably are naturally more socially liberal than those who moan about them. It is also why the right may win the short term electoral spoils from the culture war as the voters skew older, but they will lose the long term war as todays kids will listed to the younger influencers more than the moaners.1 -
Correct on Morrisons; that's why I shop there.DecrepiterJohnL said:
No discussion and the only thing in favour of this PE deal seems to be it is not quite as bad as the previous PE deal. Maybe HMG will block it. On an even wider point, is the increasing trend of PE taking over and de-listing companies a good thing?RochdalePioneers said:Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.
How they dealt with the My Lidl Pony scandal was instructive imo.0 -
I am on 23rd July Zooming into a lecture on the Celts, the invite to which saysLostPassword said:
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.."DecrepiterJohnL said:
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.OldKingCole said:
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
The other problem is that it concedes ground to the good immigrant/bad immigrant argument. Does it really make any difference to how we should feel about immigration from the Windrush generation that their descendants are now in the England football team? That implies that if there weren't any players in the England team from the background, that they weren't immigrants good enough to be here.
'They appeared four thousand years ago, from the steppes somewhere north of the Caspian, moving constantly westward with their animals and carts. Never stopping long enough to build towns or cities; unusually quarrelsome, their warrior culture seemed mostly to be an internal affair, tribe versus tribe.'
Migration into Western Europe and the Northwestern European islands from places South and West seems to be the traditional pattern, established over thousands of years. As I'm at least 50% Celtic, according to Ancestry I'm interested. Most of the rest is SE Midlands, but Ancestry's genetic screening isn't sophisticated enough, apparently, to determine how much of that, if any, is pre-Saxon.0 -
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.tlg86 said:
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.0 -
Super Frankie Lampard is a Tory? Never knew that. I wasn’t impressed with Hector Bellerin’s “Fuck Boris” Tweet on the day of the 2019 GE. But that’s his own account and he can do what he likes on there.The_Apocalypse said:I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Would we tolerate any party political messaging on the pitch itself? Probably not, but I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
The problem is the whole “how can anyone object to anti-racist gestures?” Well, the same could be asked of the poppy shirts. Who could possibly object to those? James McClean did. And that’s why these things aren’t good ideas, in my opinion.0 -
Of course they should have the right to boo, it is a free country. They may be stubbornly not listening to why people are taking the knee, but some people are stubborn and ill informed. And taking the knee is gesture politics, it is the literal definition of it! Gesture politics is not bad by definition as Patel may assume, it has its use for those without direct political power.prh47bridge said:
Johnson never endorsed booing. His initial statement fell short of condemning it but said that he wanted the whole country to get behind the team. A few days later he said the booing was totally wrong.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
Patel, of course, is another matter. She described taking the knee as "gesture politics" and said fans have the right to boo.1 -
I see new cases per day is rising again in Bolton and Blackburn. I was assured it was mathematically impossible for that to happen.0
-
The International Football Assocation Board. They govern the laws of the game. It has eight members - four permanent (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and four rotating members from the rest of the world. Any changes to the laws of the game require six votes.JohnLilburne said:
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.tlg86 said:
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
Not sure they’re motivated by money, but you might be right.0 -
I like himmalcolmg said:
His a wanker though, only gammons like him.Casino_Royale said:FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.0 -
Its true! The official government advice from DiT was that the border issues everyone raised were unsolvable and the solution was to set up an in-market subsidiary. Once you do that its easier for some businesses to simply move.Carnyx said:@RochdalePioneers - have you seen this?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/04/out-how-brexit-sent-one-uk-tennis-kit-firm-to-romania
'The Walkingtons decided they had to relocate lock, stock and barrel with their two children – after whom the company is named – last autumn and are now in the process of moving into new premises in Romania, where they are not only free of Brexit bureaucracy but are also benefiting from abundant skilled labour and help from the country’s authorities.
Six months after the UK finally left the EU’s single market, thousands of other small companies have faced similar problems, and many have either relocated entirely to the EU or set up branches or warehouses inside the EU to avoid the export delays and costs. Advisers at the Department for International Trade have encouraged many to do so.'
The DIT bit did surprise me a little ...
Its not just GB. Obviously we used to ship to NI when that still existed as a UK customs zone. RoI was a bolt-on to our market. I'm now in negotiations with an Irish company to distribute my clients products in that market. Not only will they ship products direct to bypass GB, they will then be able to supply NI as well. A clear loss of trade for GB who used to act as the warehouse and distribution hub for the entire British isles.2 -
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%0 -
Certainly the US polling shows that the GOP is still very much Trump's party.
If Trump wants to run again in 2024 he is therefore highly likely to win the GOP nomination for a third time, a feat only previously achieved by Nixon.
However with President Biden still governing as a relative moderate and with solid approval ratings he is unlikely to defeat the incumbent if he runs again, in which case I think Trump would likely sit it out and let a fellow Trumpite like DeSantis get the nod.
However if Biden steps down and VP Harris ends up the 2024 Democratic nominee then Trump would fancy his chances as she would allow him to run the divisive, culture war campaign he wants far more than Biden would2 -
Yes, it makes no sense at all. I can understand electing a police commissioner, but elected prosecutors make the whole investigation process political. There may or may not be problems with Trump’s companies, but it comes across to outsiders as a witch hunt when the prosecutor is so partisan.RochdalePioneers said:
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.Sandpit said:
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.RochdalePioneers said:
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.1 -
Frankie Boyle’s infamous joke about the Diana memorial was much better.Sean_F said:
There was a Welsh Labour councillor who wrote to Private Eye, about twenty years ago, suggesting the Diana Memorial Fountain be in the form of a "giant spurting phallus."RochdalePioneers said:This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.
0 -
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%0 -
Brazil? I couldn’t sleep the other night and put on the Copa America. It was Brazil v Chile and the standard was terrible. Europe had all four semi finalists in 2018, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens again next year.noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%0 -
The American political apparatus is utterly mad but for Trump I think if he did less crimes he would probably have less trouble with the law.Sandpit said:
Yes, it makes no sense at all. I can understand electing a police commissioner, but elected prosecutors make the whole investigation process political. There may or may not be problems with Trump’s companies, but it comes across to outsiders as a witch hunt when the prosecutor is so partisan.RochdalePioneers said:
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.Sandpit said:
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.RochdalePioneers said:
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.Dura_Ace said:
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.Scott_xP said:
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.Dura_Ace said:Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.3 -
On topic I have backed both bets for a while and the nomination since the Biden inauguration. I was originally a layer of Trump presidency as dont think he can win, but switched position as it has become clear he does not need to win. If the Republicans win enough office holders in the mid terms, they will just lie about the winner, and it will be more effective next time with moderates purged and the pathway of what needs to happen clearer.
Still I must disagree with the last four words, the nomination is by far the better bet. I think he is between 2.5-3 for the nomination and 7-10 for the presidency (harder to judge).1 -
I did encounter similar views the other day on a Belgian beer fan group on Facebook. Most of the members have of course been bemoaning the fact that mail ordering beer from the EU has become difficult since Brexit, not helped by the fact that one of the main suppliers manage to go bust during lockdown, how is beyond me but apparently he rented a new warehouse and I suspect he over-extended himself, maybe by losing too much business during the move to new premises. Anyway, this arch-Remainer was saying that the balance of payments has tanked, the economy is in freefall, however much we like Belgian beers we should at very least be buying from UK importers and preferably drinking Briish beer.RochdalePioneers said:
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.JohnLilburne said:
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.RochdalePioneers said:
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.MattW said:
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?Foxy said:
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.FrancisUrquhart said:
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businessesLostPassword said:
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?FrancisUrquhart said:
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.LostPassword said:Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is:
"Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
* https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-will-make-buy-and-sell-more-in-britain/
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/03/rachel-reeves-labour-will-side-british-businesses/
Perhaps @david_herdson can enlighten us?
2 - That Reeves policy may well fall foul of the UK-EU FTA, unless it is more subtle. Get Lord Mandelbrot on it.
France and Spain have already formally complained to teacher, when we haven't actually done anything other than ask a question.
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/brexit-live-spain-france-file-formal-complaint-over-british-products-eu-rules-broken-politics.html
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.1 -
These are better rankings:turbotubbs said:
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%
https://www.eloratings.net/
Although a fast declining and aging Belgium are too high in both.
Note these are also up to date whereas England and Italy have both won a lot of matches since the official rankings on 27th May.1 -
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).0 -
2002. Before that, 1970.turbotubbs said:
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%0 -
Re Frank Lampard - yep. Sol Campbell’s been pretty vocal about his conservative beliefs as well. Mourinho has been rumoured to be pretty right wing, I believe he did endorse the conservative candidate for the Portuguese presidency in the last few years as well. Bellerin’s been pretty vocal about his liberal/left leaning beliefs for years now, so his tweet on GE day didn’t surprise me.tlg86 said:
Super Frankie Lampard is a Tory? Never knew that. I wasn’t impressed with Hector Bellerin’s “Fuck Boris” Tweet on the day of the 2019 GE. But that’s his own account and he can do what he likes on there.The_Apocalypse said:I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Would we tolerate any party political messaging on the pitch itself? Probably not, but I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
The problem is the whole “how can anyone object to anti-racist gestures?” Well, the same could be asked of the poppy shirts. Who could possibly object to those? James McClean did. And that’s why these things aren’t good ideas, in my opinion.
In my view just because someone might object or disagree with a gesture doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. People rarely all agree on something. People should be free to express both their agreement and disagreement with a gesture.0 -
Poor timing on both counts!Sandpit said:
2002. Before that, 1970.turbotubbs said:
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%1 -
The number of times he talks about how well he has done in cognitative tests suggests to me that somebody within his close circle has convinced him to do them quite regularly - and that can only because they think he is right on the brink of dementia... (and somehow they have convinced him that doing well in them is something to boast about)noneoftheabove said:On topic I have backed both bets for a while and the nomination since the Biden inauguration. I was originally a layer of Trump presidency as dont think he can win, but switched position as it has become clear he does not need to win. If the Republicans win enough office holders in the mid terms, they will just lie about the winner, and it will be more effective next time with moderates purged and the pathway of what needs to happen clearer.
Still I must disagree with the last four words, the nomination is by far the better bet. I think he is between 2.5-3 for the nomination and 7-10 for the presidency (harder to judge).1 -
It is completely up to the players, but eh why not blame the FA?Stocky said:
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).1 -
The FA want to project an anti-racism image? How awful.Stocky said:
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).2 -
I admit I am a cynic who believes that top flight football is not about moving the ball about, it's about moving money abouttlg86 said:
The International Football Assocation Board. They govern the laws of the game. It has eight members - four permanent (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and four rotating members from the rest of the world. Any changes to the laws of the game require six votes.JohnLilburne said:
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.tlg86 said:
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.JohnLilburne said:
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.tlg86 said:
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.SouthamObserver said:
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.Casino_Royale said:
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.SouthamObserver said:
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.Casino_Royale said:
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.Cocky_cockney said:Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/2251338.stm
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
Not sure they’re motivated by money, but you might be right.0 -
If my reference is correct, England have never beaten Brazil in a competitive match.tlg86 said:
Poor timing on both counts!Sandpit said:
2002. Before that, 1970.turbotubbs said:
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?noneoftheabove said:
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.prh47bridge said:
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.OldKingCole said:
Betting with the heart or the head?DecrepiterJohnL said:Euro 2020 Betfair prices and their implied probabilities:-
1 England 2.66 37.6%
2 Italy 3.4 29.4%
3 Spain 4 25.0%
4 Denmark 11.5 8.7%
https://www.11v11.com/teams/england/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Brazil/0
