Inevitably the front pages are once again dominated by the football – politicalbetting.com

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Is that even a question.
Of course you do.

Personally I would, in a heartbeat. Yet when racism / rioting gets exposed and people get the sack, there are always people saying that its a witch hunt...

With due respect, this is straw-mannery.

I doubt he’ll get many people defending his “right” to utter offensive racial slurs on the net.

People have been loosing their jobs over such things since before HTTP was a thing.

RochdalePioneers said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

"I want to take one!" isn't the same as being in any fit state to do so. We don't know how and why the list was finalised but had the game been won in open play it wouldn't matter. Anyone can miss a penalty.

No. Choosing a 19 year old, who has never taken an important penalty before, to take the deciding and crucial penalty in a Euro final is just insanely bad management

Southgate has got a lot right in this competition, and I salute him for that. But last night he got it horribly wrong, in multiple ways. He will no doubt soldier on, unfortunately

Leon said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

"I want to take one!" isn't the same as being in any fit state to do so. We don't know how and why the list was finalised but had the game been won in open play it wouldn't matter. Anyone can miss a penalty.

No. Choosing a 19 year old, who has never taken an important penalty before, to take the deciding and crucial penalty in a Euro final is just insanely bad management

Southgate has got a lot right in this competition, and I salute him for that. But last night he got it horribly wrong, in multiple ways. He will no doubt soldier on, unfortunately

If he didn't who would the alternative be? No better, that's for sure.

RochdalePioneers said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

"I want to take one!" isn't the same as being in any fit state to do so. We don't know how and why the list was finalised but had the game been won in open play it wouldn't matter. Anyone can miss a penalty.

Presumably Kane was preordained 1st up - There's a video of Southgate going round telling players "you're third (Rashford)", "You're fourth (Sancho)", "You're fifth (Saka)".
Saka isn't going to say no, it was a ridiculous responsibility to put on a nineteen year old's shoulders by Southgate - the fifth penalty, his most glaring error when Grealish was we now find out ready and willing to take a pen.

Fifth penalties are HARD https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/kylian-mbappe/elfmetertore/spieler/342229

tlg86 said:

Pulpstar said:

Rashford was absolubtely correct to be taking the 3rd penalty. He missed, it happens - it wasn't the wrong choice.

Worth looking at his kick in the Europa League shootout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN5Tls-TBaI

Pretty much identical. What went wrong last night is he got his run up wrong and kicked the ball with his heel.

That's a fair point.

Gardenwalker said:

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Is that even a question.
Of course you do.

Personally I would, in a heartbeat. Yet when racism / rioting gets exposed and people get the sack, there are always people saying that its a witch hunt...

With due respect, this is straw-mannery.

I doubt he’ll get many people defending his “right” to utter offensive racial slurs on the net.

People have been loosing their jobs over such things since before HTTP was a thing.

Often (which is perhaps @RochdalePioneers’s point) there is an ambiguity over things which seem a little unfair on the tweetee.

For example, saying “All Lives Matter” is a tiresome and pathetic argument, but it doesn’t really constitute anything apart from dimwittedness. I understand some have been sacked for saying that.

This time though, it’s an open and shut case.

People have been sacked for refusing to say "I believe X", where X is some company mandated position.

General this happens in the US.

I am quite sure Constable Savage gets 100% on his exam at the end of his equality course.

RochdalePioneers said:

Carnyx said:

StuartDickson said:

Charles said:

MaxPB said:

StuartDickson said:

Floater said:

StuartDickson said:

After hubris comes nemesis.

Yawn

Yawn

I wish you wankers had the bottle to actually fuck off and leave the UK. Sadly you didn't and we're stuck with the stench of a dead country that can't find its own dick because it's fallen off.

How can they be wankers AND have dicks that have fallen off? I’m assuming they aren’t transgender

Admirable logic Charles.

A very C19 attitude: that ladies don't, erm, ....

Well exactly! If they didn't then how would Leon earn a living?

Gentlemen of a certain persuasion?

Gardenwalker said:

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Is that even a question.
Of course you do.

Personally I would, in a heartbeat. Yet when racism / rioting gets exposed and people get the sack, there are always people saying that its a witch hunt...

With due respect, this is straw-mannery.

I doubt he’ll get many people defending his “right” to utter offensive racial slurs on the net.

People have been loosing their jobs over such things since before HTTP was a thing.

Often (which is perhaps @RochdalePioneers’s point) there is an ambiguity over things which seem a little unfair on the tweetee.

For example, saying “All Lives Matter” is a tiresome and pathetic argument, but it doesn’t really constitute anything apart from dimwittedness. I understand some have been sacked for saying that.

This time though, it’s an open and shut case.

BiB - really? That would surprise me, though I guess it might depend on the context and if they'd said anything else.

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

It is a judgement call by Southgate. He believed Saka was more likely to score than Grealish. Maybe he was right, we shall never know if Jack would have scored or missed.

Nonetheless, Grealish is right to call out Sky Sports fake news.

I am more surprised that with Kane so quiet, immediately after the Italy goal, Grealish was not brought on to liven up the quiet attacking midfield. I generally believe South gate doesn't rate Grealish.

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Now we've discovered Southgate isn't quite up to being England manager why doesn't he try for PM where the bar is much lower? A seat in parliament should be a doddle and we know from yesterday he's miles more popular than any of them.

tlg86 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Lazio and Rome have "proper" ultras i.e. the hooligan firms, based around extreme left and ring wing politics.

There were some disgraceful scenes in London yesterday, but to say I don't understand why English fans are so bad compared to our lovely European neighbours is absolute horsesh"t.

Hooliganism is really rare at Premiership games now, lower league there is some. But across the continent, it is in many leagues it is an integral part of match day "experience"...as is overt racism e.g. Italy, monkey chants of players, extremely common.

Stuartinromford said:

Gardenwalker said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Is that even a question.
Of course you do.

In 2021, it's not really a question.
But I wonder how far you would have to go back in time for it to be a question, and how much further back you'd have to go for it to be not a question but the other way.

I can't prove it, but I suspect the answers to both those questions are "not very many years". And a fair chunk of the discomfort in Britain at the moment is because society has quietly but decisively changed and some people either haven't noticed the change (so they get caught out) or have noticed the change and don't like being in the minority.

Take PC World tackle out guy, or firework up the bottom man. I'm sure things like that have happened before- but I don't recall them being figures to laugh at in quite the same way in the past. Or the fierce support of the English team after they lost- there's been pushback against the condemnation of Southgate, Rashford and the others which I don't recall from previous defeats.

It feels like a real change, and one I quite like.

Society is changing fast.

When I went to school here in 1993 (for a year) I was actually shocked by the casual homophobia expressed in the red-tops. It felt backward.

Now, everyone’s gay.

StuartDickson said:

Charles said:

MaxPB said:

StuartDickson said:

Floater said:

StuartDickson said:

After hubris comes nemesis.

Yawn

Yawn

I wish you wankers had the bottle to actually fuck off and leave the UK. Sadly you didn't and we're stuck with the stench of a dead country that can't find its own dick because it's fallen off.

How can they be wankers AND have dicks that have fallen off? I’m assuming they aren’t transgender

Admirable logic Charles.

Though it ignores the possibility of the one coming before the other.

Mexicanpete said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

It is a judgement call by Southgate. He believed Saka was more likely to score than Grealish. Maybe he was right, we shall never know if Jack would have scored or missed.

Nonetheless, Grealish is right to call out Sky Sports fake news.

I am more surprised that with Kane so quiet, immediately after the Italy goal, Grealish was not brought on to liven up the quiet attacking midfield. I generally believe South gate doesn't rate Grealish.

Southgate doesn’t like attacking, full stop. It is the quintessence of the man. Cautious, thoughtful, quietly clever. It’s just not enough to win huge prizes.

But he is likeable and eloquent, and he has humanized the team, and that’s no small thing.

Leon said:

Mexicanpete said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

It is a judgement call by Southgate. He believed Saka was more likely to score than Grealish. Maybe he was right, we shall never know if Jack would have scored or missed.

Nonetheless, Grealish is right to call out Sky Sports fake news.

I seriously pity Southgate. He very probably won’t win a tournament now, so he will go down as the man that lost the euros twice, 25 years apart, at home, first as player then as manager - on penalties

He is not redeemed. It is quite the tragedy. He’s a decent bloke who has been DP’d by Fate

"DP’d by Fate". lol. That was worth a 'like'.

Leon said:

Mexicanpete said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

It is a judgement call by Southgate. He believed Saka was more likely to score than Grealish. Maybe he was right, we shall never know if Jack would have scored or missed.

Nonetheless, Grealish is right to call out Sky Sports fake news.

I seriously pity Southgate. He very probably won’t win a tournament now, so he will go down as the man that lost the euros twice, 25 years apart, at home, first as player then as manager - on penalties

He is not redeemed. It is quite the tragedy. He’s a decent bloke who has been DP’d by Fate

Southgate has reached a major final. The first Manager to do so since Sir Alf. That in itself is one hell of an achievement.

It was all down to divine intervention. If only Italy hadn't taken the knee, it could have been so different.

Benpointer said:

For me Southgate has done well in a lot of areas, England have porogressed well under him in the past two tournaments (c.f. 2014 World Cup).

But... Despite it being widely acknowledged we had fantastic options on the bench, and the opportunity to use up to six substitutes, Southgate did too little, too late with that option.

Bringing on (even) more pace for the last 30 mins of normal time could have tipped it imho.

As for the penalties - pah! - it's a lottery, they could easily have gone the other way.

In any event, I find it strangely anticlimatic to win a competition on penalties - the 2008 Man U Champions League title is not as satisfying as the other two for me.

Another obvious change is to do penalties before extra time. It would make extra time much more interesting.

Endillion said:

On penalty takers: I assume the logic was to specify the takers in descending order of likelihood to score, in order to a) increase the pressure on the Italians taking the later penalties and b) reduce the pressure on England takers 4 and 5, presumably because Southgate reckoned he had 3 guaranteed scorers and the quality fell off pretty steeply after that.

Things went wrong when Rashford missed - if he'd scored, the Italians taking the last two would have been right up against it, and Sancho and (especially) Saka would have been able to relax (slightly).

I refuse to believe Southgate did not have a pre-specified written plan for penalties, and also that he did not know, to two significant figures, the scoring chances of every player on the pitch at the end of 120 minutes.

Of course he had a written list for the penalties. The five takers should have been separated from the other players and had a heads-down with the the team psychologists and Southgate seconds after the final whistle.

tlg86 said:

Benpointer said:

For me Southgate has done well in a lot of areas, England have porogressed well under him in the past two tournaments (c.f. 2014 World Cup).

But... Despite it being widely acknowledged we had fantastic options on the bench, and the opportunity to use up to six substitutes, Southgate did too little, too late with that option.

Bringing on (even) more pace for the last 30 mins of normal time could have tipped it imho.

As for the penalties - pah! - it's a lottery, they could easily have gone the other way.

In any event, I find it strangely anticlimatic to win a competition on penalties - the 2008 Man U Champions League title is not as satisfying as the other two for me.

Another obvious change is to do penalties before extra time. It would make extra time much more interesting.

Penalties and the losing team for penalties can win by winning extra time - a draw or win for the other side is a win for them ?
One of Southgate's problems is that Trippier and Mount would have been in the original five pen takers.

I must say, the racist tweets I saw quoted by Sunder Katwala this morning really don't sound like they were written by English people.

If you wanted to sow division and hatred in a country, this is the kind of thing you would do, isn't it?

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

Pulpstar said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Savills will 100% sack him but I'd imagine they'd want to consult with employment lawyers 1st. Sacking people without following the correct processes can be expensive, and I'm quite sure a process needs to be followed no matter how egregious an incident.

Yup - suspend him, subject to a disciplinary hearing. Otherwise you risk giving a possibly (since the charge needs to be proved) very unpleasant person a large sum of money.

I'm not altogether sure about this. How far does the company own your private life? If you're well-known to be a spokesperson, sure, that definitely means you shouldn't bring the company into disrepute. Likewise if you say "As a manager for X, I must say that...". But if you merely tweet as Joe Bloggs and nobody except your colleagues and friends know you work for X, are you accountable to them? I don't think so. (I argued similarly for the communist behaviourist on SAGE and am trying to be balanced - I don't think being employed gives your employer a right to own your personal views.)

That's separate from the legality of what you say. If you post incitement to hatred, you should be prosecuted. But I'm assuming here that you say something that most people find offensive but isn't illegal.

The ship has long sailed on that. If you make public comments that can be traced back to you, your company has the right to bin you....

Unless you want to bring back the old style ACLU...

NorthofStoke said:

NickPalmer said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Charles said:

NickPalmer said:

StuartDickson said:

NickPalmer said:

I see someone got banned - who was that?

England did really better than most of us expected - can't win them all. Embarrassed by some of our fans though, even if Leon thinks them just being manly.

FUDHY I think. The mod said that if anyone screenshot his post and sent it to the media, he’d have to resign his seat.

Ah - didn't see that. I don't think I'd have squealed, not sure anyone would - as Leon said recently, we're a sort of family.

It wasn’t anything. He said we would have won if Rashford had spent more time practicing and less time campaigning. Typical pointless argument from him.

He was just being funny. It's his dry sense of humour. I was surprised people were getting hot under the collar about it

HYUFD was banned?!

Nah. It was @borisatsun for some obnoxious racist stuff. Rightly banned imo.

@HYUFD just left himself open to being publicly embarassed as an elected Conservative making ridiculous posts... if anyone can be bothered.

No I was not banned and I said the same thing in my WhatsApp for local Tories after I posted it here and most of them agreed with me.

The fact is Rashford was openly campaigning for Labour policy, he became too political given he is still a highly paid professional footballer with other things to concentrate on.

It was nothing to do with BLM or the knee which I see as personal choice though I am sceptical of the Marxism within the BLM manifesto now to dismantle capitalism obviously

HYUFD, you are wrong, and you have been posting questionable nonsense on here for the last twelve hours.

If you believe Rashford was being overtly party political, you are also wrong. If anything, Labour jumped onto the Rashford bandwagon rather than the other way around.

I think that's factually correct, though we were right to jump on it as it was a good cause. But anyway - how would Tories doing this stuff feel if Rashford had scored the winner and we said "This shows that Rashford and Lsbour were right"? They'd say "Idiots!" and they'd be right. Footballers sometimes score and sometimes miss an opportunity. There is NO political significance in it either way.

Rashford has very carefully avoided party political statements. He would probably make a very good politician if he decided to go that way.

I don't think so. Everything he does is careful handled by RocNation. He basically only does interviews on his activism with one particular journalist, who is big friends with the lady who runs his PR at RocNation.

Its not a secret (or unique for famous people) for RocNation handle his extremely informed tweets, which often occur during times he is training or very shortly after with facts that nobody knows off the top their head, as is the stream of liking, replying and retweeting.

That isn't to say he doesn't believe in whiat he does, that he doesn't make a difference, but it is all very carefully molded by extremely good PR people.

When the government get into a spat over thing he is lobbying / campaigning over, they are up against an individual footballer, they are playing against a whole PR team who work for an organisation whose mission is social change.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Nigelb said:

Malmesbury said:

Omnium said:

I've been listening to R4 much of the morning. I'm quite surprised that they've not mentioned (possibly I just missed) Branson's success with his space-plane.

On their website though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57797297

I know it's not quite the same league as Musk/Bezos etc, but its still an extraordinary achievement.

It isn't an extraordinary achievement - more a case of sunk cost fallacy crawling across the line.

Hybrid rocket motors are terrible at scaling and efficient combustion. Just looking at the exhaust yesterday, you could see the masses of unburnt propellant. Which makes for horrendous vibration and will cause another accident at some point.

The feathering system has killed one person already and doesn't work for more than low suborbital flight.

The development process was supremely incompetent and killed a number of people in totally avoidable accidents. Playing with pressurised tanks of a mono-propellant, known to be heat sensitive, in the desert sun? Without temperature pressure gauges through the entire system? While people stood a few yards away? While you open a "slam" valve?

NFW would I go on one of them (in the unlikely event of my having the spare cash).
Though I see his mate Elon has bought a ticket:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-richard-branson-space-flight-b1882180.html

Tbh I don't really see the point of this space tourism. You go up and come down again. It is not like there is a stop-off on Mars or the Moon, or even a decent view. It's a lot of money for bragging rights, and "I've almost but not quite been in space" is not much of a brag.

Musk is quite non-competitive on this - he could easily have given himself a seat on a Dragon flight by now, including a stay at ISS.

FrancisUrquhart said:

NorthofStoke said:

NickPalmer said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Charles said:

NickPalmer said:

StuartDickson said:

NickPalmer said:

I see someone got banned - who was that?

England did really better than most of us expected - can't win them all. Embarrassed by some of our fans though, even if Leon thinks them just being manly.

FUDHY I think. The mod said that if anyone screenshot his post and sent it to the media, he’d have to resign his seat.

Ah - didn't see that. I don't think I'd have squealed, not sure anyone would - as Leon said recently, we're a sort of family.

It wasn’t anything. He said we would have won if Rashford had spent more time practicing and less time campaigning. Typical pointless argument from him.

He was just being funny. It's his dry sense of humour. I was surprised people were getting hot under the collar about it

HYUFD was banned?!

Nah. It was @borisatsun for some obnoxious racist stuff. Rightly banned imo.

@HYUFD just left himself open to being publicly embarassed as an elected Conservative making ridiculous posts... if anyone can be bothered.

No I was not banned and I said the same thing in my WhatsApp for local Tories after I posted it here and most of them agreed with me.

The fact is Rashford was openly campaigning for Labour policy, he became too political given he is still a highly paid professional footballer with other things to concentrate on.

It was nothing to do with BLM or the knee which I see as personal choice though I am sceptical of the Marxism within the BLM manifesto now to dismantle capitalism obviously

HYUFD, you are wrong, and you have been posting questionable nonsense on here for the last twelve hours.

If you believe Rashford was being overtly party political, you are also wrong. If anything, Labour jumped onto the Rashford bandwagon rather than the other way around.

I think that's factually correct, though we were right to jump on it as it was a good cause. But anyway - how would Tories doing this stuff feel if Rashford had scored the winner and we said "This shows that Rashford and Lsbour were right"? They'd say "Idiots!" and they'd be right. Footballers sometimes score and sometimes miss an opportunity. There is NO political significance in it either way.

Rashford has very carefully avoided party political statements. He would probably make a very good politician if he decided to go that way.

I don't think so. Everything he does is careful handled by RocNation. He basically only does interviews on his activism with one particular journalist, who is big friends with the lady who runs his PR at RocNation.

Its not a secret (or unique for famous people) for RocNation handle his extremely informed tweets, which often occur during times he is training or very shortly after with facts that nobody knows off the top their head, as is the stream of liking, replying and retweeting.

That isn't to say he doesn't believe in whiat he does, that he doesn't make a difference, but it is all very carefully molded by extremely good PR people.

But he has the sense to do it that way in the first place. Which is 90% of the battle.

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

Pulpstar said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Savills will 100% sack him but I'd imagine they'd want to consult with employment lawyers 1st. Sacking people without following the correct processes can be expensive, and I'm quite sure a process needs to be followed no matter how egregious an incident.

Yup - suspend him, subject to a disciplinary hearing. Otherwise you risk giving a possibly (since the charge needs to be proved) very unpleasant person a large sum of money.

I'm not altogether sure about this. How far does the company own your private life? If you're well-known to be a spokesperson, sure, that definitely means you shouldn't bring the company into disrepute. Likewise if you say "As a manager for X, I must say that...". But if you merely tweet as Joe Bloggs and nobody except your colleagues and friends know you work for X, are you accountable to them? I don't think so. (I argued similarly for the communist behaviourist on SAGE and am trying to be balanced - I don't think being employed gives your employer a right to own your personal views.)

That's separate from the legality of what you say. If you post incitement to hatred, you should be prosecuted. But I'm assuming here that you say something that most people find offensive but isn't illegal.

I this particular instance (if as it appears) the person has surely made his/her position completely untenable. Post something like that in public - how can that person work with black colleagues, black clients?

It's overt racism, different to political views. I can be a member of the BNP and I wouldn't really care whether the person selling my house is a communist and vice versa. But if I'm black I would care, I think, if the person selling my house, who I would have to deal with extensively, is openly racist. If I'm gay I care whether they are openly homophobic. You can have a perfectly good professional relationship with someone who has completely opposite political views to you, but not with someone who openly hates you.

IshmaelZ said:

tlg86 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Can't remember if it was in the Buford book or an article I read back in the 80s, about hardcore Italian thugs expressing perplexity that their UK counterparts hooliganised while drunk. The Italians thought it would take the edge off their game, and preferred to do their work on water and reminisce after the event over a carafe or 2 of vino.

The Russian mob at Euro 2016 looked like an elite outfit compared to our lot!

IshmaelZ said:

tlg86 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Can't remember if it was in the Buford book or an article I read back in the 80s, about hardcore Italian thugs expressing perplexity that their UK counterparts hooliganised while drunk. The Italians thought it would take the edge off their game, and preferred to do their work on water and reminisce after the event over a carafe or 2 of vino.

I am trying to remember which South American country had openly nazi* types controlling supporters clubs, which in turn had a chunk of control of the clubs themselves. It was organised like an army....

*Fans of Hitler kind of Nazis

Carnyx said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NorthofStoke said:

NickPalmer said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Charles said:

NickPalmer said:

StuartDickson said:

NickPalmer said:

I see someone got banned - who was that?

England did really better than most of us expected - can't win them all. Embarrassed by some of our fans though, even if Leon thinks them just being manly.

FUDHY I think. The mod said that if anyone screenshot his post and sent it to the media, he’d have to resign his seat.

Ah - didn't see that. I don't think I'd have squealed, not sure anyone would - as Leon said recently, we're a sort of family.

It wasn’t anything. He said we would have won if Rashford had spent more time practicing and less time campaigning. Typical pointless argument from him.

He was just being funny. It's his dry sense of humour. I was surprised people were getting hot under the collar about it

HYUFD was banned?!

Nah. It was @borisatsun for some obnoxious racist stuff. Rightly banned imo.

@HYUFD just left himself open to being publicly embarassed as an elected Conservative making ridiculous posts... if anyone can be bothered.

No I was not banned and I said the same thing in my WhatsApp for local Tories after I posted it here and most of them agreed with me.

The fact is Rashford was openly campaigning for Labour policy, he became too political given he is still a highly paid professional footballer with other things to concentrate on.

It was nothing to do with BLM or the knee which I see as personal choice though I am sceptical of the Marxism within the BLM manifesto now to dismantle capitalism obviously

HYUFD, you are wrong, and you have been posting questionable nonsense on here for the last twelve hours.

If you believe Rashford was being overtly party political, you are also wrong. If anything, Labour jumped onto the Rashford bandwagon rather than the other way around.

I think that's factually correct, though we were right to jump on it as it was a good cause. But anyway - how would Tories doing this stuff feel if Rashford had scored the winner and we said "This shows that Rashford and Lsbour were right"? They'd say "Idiots!" and they'd be right. Footballers sometimes score and sometimes miss an opportunity. There is NO political significance in it either way.

Rashford has very carefully avoided party political statements. He would probably make a very good politician if he decided to go that way.

I don't think so. Everything he does is careful handled by RocNation. He basically only does interviews on his activism with one particular journalist, who is big friends with the lady who runs his PR at RocNation.

Its not a secret (or unique for famous people) for RocNation handle his extremely informed tweets, which often occur during times he is training or very shortly after with facts that nobody knows off the top their head, as is the stream of liking, replying and retweeting.

That isn't to say he doesn't believe in whiat he does, that he doesn't make a difference, but it is all very carefully molded by extremely good PR people.

But he has the sense to do it that way in the first place. Which is 90% of the battle.

Erhhh, not quite. RocNation ask their clients what is something that concerns you / have personal experience and they develop campaigns from this. Its part of being with them as an agency.

There are two reasons, they want to use star platforms to enact some change and it is great for branding / commercial opportunities.

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

tlg86 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Lazio and Rome have "proper" ultras i.e. the hooligan firms, based around extreme left and ring wing politics.

There were some disgraceful scenes in London yesterday, but to say I don't understand why English fans are so bad compared to our lovely European neighbours is absolute horsesh"t.

Hooliganism is really rare at Premiership games now, lower league there is some. But across the continent, it is in many leagues it is an integral part of match day "experience"...as is overt racism e.g. Italy, monkey chants of players, extremely common.

Quite. Anyone who asks ‘why are English fans so uniquely bad?!?’ is either being disingenuous or has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. As this is NPXMP, I favour the latter explanation.

Nick is not duplicitous, just weirdly and totally ignorant in certain areas. Which is probably true of most of us

Fair enough. I confess to ignorance. My experience of football is pretty limited, and mostly Danish, where hooliganism is really rare.

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Nigelb said:

Malmesbury said:

Omnium said:

I've been listening to R4 much of the morning. I'm quite surprised that they've not mentioned (possibly I just missed) Branson's success with his space-plane.

On their website though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57797297

I know it's not quite the same league as Musk/Bezos etc, but its still an extraordinary achievement.

It isn't an extraordinary achievement - more a case of sunk cost fallacy crawling across the line.

Hybrid rocket motors are terrible at scaling and efficient combustion. Just looking at the exhaust yesterday, you could see the masses of unburnt propellant. Which makes for horrendous vibration and will cause another accident at some point.

The feathering system has killed one person already and doesn't work for more than low suborbital flight.

The development process was supremely incompetent and killed a number of people in totally avoidable accidents. Playing with pressurised tanks of a mono-propellant, known to be heat sensitive, in the desert sun? Without temperature pressure gauges through the entire system? While people stood a few yards away? While you open a "slam" valve?

NFW would I go on one of them (in the unlikely event of my having the spare cash).
Though I see his mate Elon has bought a ticket:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-richard-branson-space-flight-b1882180.html

Tbh I don't really see the point of this space tourism. You go up and come down again. It is not like there is a stop-off on Mars or the Moon, or even a decent view. It's a lot of money for bragging rights, and "I've almost but not quite been in space" is not much of a brag.

It's a very expensive amusement park ride - the ability to experience weightlessness for a few minutes.

I'd pay for a safe orbit of the earth though. Out and round the moon would be even better but for an ordinary mortal like me I supect a week of weightlessness would be an enourmous ordeal.

Maybe I'll wait until they have spinning space cruisers with artificial gravity 😃

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Z, I haven't bought one but I was quite tempted by a wrist-mounted sundial, with a compass so you can align it properly.

There was one, a while back, that had a motorised mount, with GPS built in. So, when you held your wrist level, and pressed the button, the sundial would rotate to the correct orientation.

Yes, GPS means that you actually know the time to the nano-second.....

IshmaelZ said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. JohnL, perhaps it's like silver cutlery of a ten thousand pound watch. It's not that the knife is sharper. Or the time is more accurate. But it sure is fancy.

Bragging rights have driven a lot of human behaviour.

In the Middle Ages, and a little later, there were (usually ignored) laws on what quality/type of fur people could wear. Even in falconry, it was meant to be only emperors who could have a golden eagle (though good luck telling a king he wasn't important enough).

My mechanical watch is currently 9 seconds out. Last set for BST change.

My iPhone is spot on, and I have never had to set it.

Mr. Carnyx, Mesolithic?

Nothing so steeped in vulgar modernity!

AlistairM said:

Endillion said:

On penalty takers: I assume the logic was to specify the takers in descending order of likelihood to score, in order to a) increase the pressure on the Italians taking the later penalties and b) reduce the pressure on England takers 4 and 5, presumably because Southgate reckoned he had 3 guaranteed scorers and the quality fell off pretty steeply after that.

Things went wrong when Rashford missed - if he'd scored, the Italians taking the last two would have been right up against it, and Sancho and (especially) Saka would have been able to relax (slightly).

I refuse to believe Southgate did not have a pre-specified written plan for penalties, and also that he did not know, to two significant figures, the scoring chances of every player on the pitch at the end of 120 minutes.

I agree with this. Rashford was the killer-miss for me. He'd done all the hard work by sending the keeper the wrong way and just needed to finish it off. If he had we would've been in a very strong position. Italy would've been under a lot of pressure. I suspect that Sancho and Saka would have been a bit more relaxed.

Having said that, I can't really see the logic in putting in a 19yo kid as your fifth and potentially decisive penalty taker. Had he ever taken a penalty in a professional match before? Surely there were better options? Even Jordan Pickford who belted in a great penalty 2 years ago for England.

A bit of post hoc logic, I think. If Rashford and Sancho had scored, and Saka had then followed suit to win it for us, we'd be talking about what a great decision it was to put faith in a youngster who could step up without the baggage of previous misses, or seeing his boss miss one live when he was a kid.

It can go either way - the main difference is not that Saka is worse placed to deal with the pressure of having to score, but that he's much worse placed to deal with the guilt of having missed.

contrarian said:

I must say, the racist tweets I saw quoted by Sunder Katwala this morning really don't sound like they were written by English people.

If you wanted to sow division and hatred in a country, this is the kind of thing you would do, isn't it?

I think its been established before that even a lot of things that seem like they must be by bots, for example, often are not. Simplest explanation is usually the best, and conspiracy is not the simplest.

nico679 said:

Remember Patel and Johnson refused to criticize the booing of players taking the knee and now they’re pretending they’re outraged by the racist abuse . Will the media call them out on this ?

Racist abuse that more likely came from Moscow than Manchester...??

tlg86 said:

Nigelb said:

Incidentally, was this criminal assault ?
https://twitter.com/bnhwalker/status/1414328923966644227

It's a serious foul in the NFL (15 yard penalty). Don't see so often in association football, but I thought a red card would have been appropriate.

Point being that there is reasonable doubt about motive, if some effort is being made to compete for the ball. Here, it was blatant assault, for which there is no implied consent on the part of a player taking part in a contact sport.

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Z, I haven't bought one but I was quite tempted by a wrist-mounted sundial, with a compass so you can align it properly.

In Yorkshire ?
That's just daft.

NickPalmer said:

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

tlg86 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NickPalmer said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

**.... tiptoes in gently. Sees that PB still talking about football.

Quietly leaves this - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/hiding-in-plain-sight/ - and this - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-the-grim-list-of-sex-abuse-claims-against-metropolitan-police - here.

Tiptoes out muttering "Il calcio e tornato a casa" .....**

@Cyclefree, you're Italian for God's sake!

As the bloke in The Italian Job spake:

"Well, look 'appy, you stupid bastards! We won, didn't we?!"

She's being supremely tactful.

A friend in italy reports much spontaneous joy, singing and fireworks. Zero violence or aggression to Brits as far as she can see.

Why is fan behaviour so much worse in Britain? Genuine question - I have no idea.

You have obviously never seen the likes of the Rome derby.....its total standard for people to be stabbed in the butt left, right and centre.

My friends did Lazio v Arsenal in October 2000. They were locked in the ground for an hour after the game and when they came out it looked like a war zone.

Lazio and Rome have "proper" ultras i.e. the hooligan firms, based around extreme left and ring wing politics.

There were some disgraceful scenes in London yesterday, but to say I don't understand why English fans are so bad compared to our lovely European neighbours is absolute horsesh"t.

Hooliganism is really rare at Premiership games now, lower league there is some. But across the continent, it is in many leagues it is an integral part of match day "experience"...as is overt racism e.g. Italy, monkey chants of players, extremely common.

Quite. Anyone who asks ‘why are English fans so uniquely bad?!?’ is either being disingenuous or has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. As this is NPXMP, I favour the latter explanation.

Nick is not duplicitous, just weirdly and totally ignorant in certain areas. Which is probably true of most of us

Fair enough. I confess to ignorance. My experience of football is pretty limited, and mostly Danish, where hooliganism is really rare.

Even there you are wrong! Denmark has a very developed hooligan culture

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/denmark-hooligans-organise-insane-20-24403451


https://www.joe.ie/uncategorized/video-mental-footage-of-a-punch-up-between-two-gangs-of-football-hooligans-in-denmark-350029

I have finally concluded that most of your opinions derive from an idealistic, naive and almost determinedly uninformed view of the world. Which is sweet in a way. But it also explains your support for Corbyn

nico679 said:

Remember Patel and Johnson refused to criticize the booing of players taking the knee and now they’re pretending they’re outraged by the racist abuse . Will the media call them out on this ?

When it is two separate things, why would they? Why do you believe they must be pretending to be outraged by racist abuse? People are very often outraged by such a thing even if they are a nasty piece of work on something else, that's not even necessarily inconsistent.

tlg86 said:

Nigelb said:

Incidentally, was this criminal assault ?
https://twitter.com/bnhwalker/status/1414328923966644227

It's a serious foul in the NFL (15 yard penalty). Don't see so often in association football, but I thought a red card would have been appropriate.

I think the one thing that might change the balance of reward for fouling would be a sin bin - five minutes off the pitch for every tackle leading to a free kick.

tlg86 said:

Nigelb said:

Incidentally, was this criminal assault ?
https://twitter.com/bnhwalker/status/1414328923966644227

It's a serious foul in the NFL (15 yard penalty). Don't see so often in association football, but I thought a red card would have been appropriate.

It's not a red card unless he's denying a clear goalscoring opportunity, which he isn't because it's miles from goal and there are other players who could cover. Chiellini knew exactly what he was doing, which was taking a meaningless yellow card for shutting down a dangerous-looking attack at a crucial moment.

It's a loophole that badly needs addressing, because the rules are a relic of a 19th century game which never envisaged that such blatant cynicism could happen between gentlemen. It would be easy to fix as well: just replace yellow cards with [10] minute timeouts, while keeping straight reds for the most violent offences. Also fixes a number of other problems: the soft second yellow cards leading to reds late in the game, or which are wrongly given, and the nonsense of players randomly missing crucial games because they've racked up too many yellows in the competition. Punishment should be in the same game as the crime as far as possible - the only remaining issue is what you do about deliberate yellow card offences in the final minutes of a match.

Carnyx said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

NorthofStoke said:

NickPalmer said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Charles said:

NickPalmer said:

StuartDickson said:

NickPalmer said:

I see someone got banned - who was that?

England did really better than most of us expected - can't win them all. Embarrassed by some of our fans though, even if Leon thinks them just being manly.

FUDHY I think. The mod said that if anyone screenshot his post and sent it to the media, he’d have to resign his seat.

Ah - didn't see that. I don't think I'd have squealed, not sure anyone would - as Leon said recently, we're a sort of family.

It wasn’t anything. He said we would have won if Rashford had spent more time practicing and less time campaigning. Typical pointless argument from him.

He was just being funny. It's his dry sense of humour. I was surprised people were getting hot under the collar about it

HYUFD was banned?!

Nah. It was @borisatsun for some obnoxious racist stuff. Rightly banned imo.

@HYUFD just left himself open to being publicly embarassed as an elected Conservative making ridiculous posts... if anyone can be bothered.

No I was not banned and I said the same thing in my WhatsApp for local Tories after I posted it here and most of them agreed with me.

The fact is Rashford was openly campaigning for Labour policy, he became too political given he is still a highly paid professional footballer with other things to concentrate on.

It was nothing to do with BLM or the knee which I see as personal choice though I am sceptical of the Marxism within the BLM manifesto now to dismantle capitalism obviously

HYUFD, you are wrong, and you have been posting questionable nonsense on here for the last twelve hours.

If you believe Rashford was being overtly party political, you are also wrong. If anything, Labour jumped onto the Rashford bandwagon rather than the other way around.

I think that's factually correct, though we were right to jump on it as it was a good cause. But anyway - how would Tories doing this stuff feel if Rashford had scored the winner and we said "This shows that Rashford and Lsbour were right"? They'd say "Idiots!" and they'd be right. Footballers sometimes score and sometimes miss an opportunity. There is NO political significance in it either way.

Rashford has very carefully avoided party political statements. He would probably make a very good politician if he decided to go that way.

I don't think so. Everything he does is careful handled by RocNation. He basically only does interviews on his activism with one particular journalist, who is big friends with the lady who runs his PR at RocNation.

Its not a secret (or unique for famous people) for RocNation handle his extremely informed tweets, which often occur during times he is training or very shortly after with facts that nobody knows off the top their head, as is the stream of liking, replying and retweeting.

That isn't to say he doesn't believe in whiat he does, that he doesn't make a difference, but it is all very carefully molded by extremely good PR people.

But he has the sense to do it that way in the first place. Which is 90% of the battle.

Precisely. I've never really got this criticism that he is being carefully advised and presented by savvy PR advisers. That in itself is a choice he has made, and one most campaigners, particularly celebrity campaigners, don't make very well. He makes a good front man for what they are trying to do, he obviously believes in the work they want him to promote, and he hasn't, so far, overstepped or become uber partisan or arrogant and undermined that work.

Shows he is pretty sensible, and is careful to present things in a way to appeal to as many as possible, not just a base to make himself feel good about being on the right side of things, and as such is more effective - skills a politician would need.

tlg86 said:

The Russian mob at Euro 2016 looked like an elite outfit compared to our lot!

IIRC there were members of the Russian parliament cheering on their hooligans.

kle4 said:

Leon said:

Mexicanpete said:

Leon said:

Hmmm. Once we get over our knee-taking reverence for Southgate, I feel this will impact


‘I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…’

He chose Saka over Grealish. Why??

https://twitter.com/jackgrealish/status/1414522271859888132?s=21

It is a judgement call by Southgate. He believed Saka was more likely to score than Grealish. Maybe he was right, we shall never know if Jack would have scored or missed.

Nonetheless, Grealish is right to call out Sky Sports fake news.

I seriously pity Southgate. He very probably won’t win a tournament now, so he will go down as the man that lost the euros twice, 25 years apart, at home, first as player then as manager - on penalties

He is not redeemed. It is quite the tragedy. He’s a decent bloke who has been DP’d by Fate

He'll be fine. He'll be remembered for it, sure, but he still achieved the best results one of our managers has for a long time. He hasn't erased what he'll be known for, but there will always be a 'but' after they mention it, which is more than most of ours.

No, football is cruel. He’s now a double loser.

As he’s obviously such a nice guy, it is particularly unfair. But unless he does something miraculous in the WC he will be the bloke that lost the euros. Twice. At home. On penalties

There will be footnotes but when fans think of him the first reactions will be a sigh, and a frown

We have now had 3 threads in a row about football. I personally find the issues raised by Cyclefree about sexism in the police far more interesting - and disturbing.

Nigelb said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Z, I haven't bought one but I was quite tempted by a wrist-mounted sundial, with a compass so you can align it properly.

In Yorkshire ?
That's just daft.

Hand-operated windup torch included as backup. (No spending on batteries.)

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

Pulpstar said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Meanwhile, the woke monster rears its ugly head again. Savills are launching an investigation after one of their managers tweeted the "Niggers ruined it for us" message last night. The woke doing further digging and have found a sock-puppet twitter account with even more racism.

Question. You are a company. A member of your staff is outed as posting horrendous racism causing people to react against your company. Do you sack him for gross misconduct?

https://twitter.com/Savills/status/1414484312137912321
https://twitter.com/HeathertheHeron/status/1414510292525101060

Savills will 100% sack him but I'd imagine they'd want to consult with employment lawyers 1st. Sacking people without following the correct processes can be expensive, and I'm quite sure a process needs to be followed no matter how egregious an incident.

Yup - suspend him, subject to a disciplinary hearing. Otherwise you risk giving a possibly (since the charge needs to be proved) very unpleasant person a large sum of money.

I'm not altogether sure about this. How far does the company own your private life? If you're well-known to be a spokesperson, sure, that definitely means you shouldn't bring the company into disrepute. Likewise if you say "As a manager for X, I must say that...". But if you merely tweet as Joe Bloggs and nobody except your colleagues and friends know you work for X, are you accountable to them? I don't think so. (I argued similarly for the communist behaviourist on SAGE and am trying to be balanced - I don't think being employed gives your employer a right to own your personal views.)

That's separate from the legality of what you say. If you post incitement to hatred, you should be prosecuted. But I'm assuming here that you say something that most people find offensive but isn't illegal.

That's a really important point.

It wasn't so long ago that Public Authorities were sacking everyday bloggers under 'damage our reputation' clauses. How far does that right extend?

Should Drs making party political commentary about the NHS (especially conspiracy theories about it) still be in their jobs? What about Professors who say 'the wrong things'?

Now perhaps we see it sharply with people carrying media Job Titles on their Twitter bios to build a profile, with a 'retweet is not endorsement' and 'opinions are not my employer's' smokescreens.