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Could Johnson be planning to sack Sunak? – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,116
    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    RobD said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    No: it was because they had no choice, and the thing worked fairly well. Not because it was patriotic in any sense.

    In any case, how dol you explain Pfixer on that basis? We got what was available.
    Britain was the first in the world to approve the Pfizer vaccine. Again, trust in the MHRA, a British org, comes into play. Nobody in Britain believed that the approval of Pfizer was "rushed" as alleged by the EU.

    At a gut level, there was more trust in British institutions, than EU ones. If you trust British institutions more than EU ones, why would you leave Britain to join the EU? Does anyone join an organisation that they don't really trust at gut level? Would anyone in Scotland put their lives in Ursula von der Leyen's hands?
    We didn't get the choice, so you're trying to out-HYUFD with the possibilities.
    Pedant mode, but there is a choice. You can choose not to get it.
    Now that really would be insane, given that the vaccines offered (more correctly, allocated without choice) were decent options.
    And yet EU people rejected AZ, despite it being a decent option. Why did they do that? They believed that their identity as EU people required them to reject AZ.

    Interesting that Scots didn't share in that project. They didn't feel the need join in the trashing of AZ as part of their EU identity. They didn't feel the need to cheer when Ursula von der Leyen sued AZ.

    Maybe the reason is they have no EU identity...
    Eh? To a PB nerd (and I am one too TBF) and a leaver, it might mean a lot, but in the average world?

    It wasn't the EU citizens' identity that led them to reject AZ - it was the trashing of AZ, miserable as it was. Not tyhe same thing.
    It comes down to "who" trashed it, and do you trust the people who were trashing it.

    The point I'm making is that the trashing was done by the EU, and EU citizens trusted the people doing the trashing and thus refused to take the AZ vaccine.

    But in Scotland, they DIDN'T trust the EU people who were trashing the vaccine, and decided Boris, Sarah Gilbert, Chris Whitty and co were more trustworthy.

    If Scottish people don't trust the EU and what they say, why on earth would they want to join them?
    Scots don't trust Boris Johnson. But they do trust the scientists. There's a huge difference.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    RobD said:

    alex_ said:

    Eric Topol
    @EricTopol
    ·
    2h
    Is this 🦠 a challenge?
    The situation in Iceland, now vertical in case rise, yet one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world. No sequence data available http://outbreak.info, assuming this is d/t Delta

    In a 100% vaccinated population, 100% of cases, hospitalisations and deaths will be vaccinated people...
    Journalists will never understand this.
    I don't think that's his point. The point is that cases are rapidly increasing despite huge vaccination levels.

    He doesn't this but to me that looks like any hopes we have of herd immunity thru vax are being dashed by delta.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021
    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    Just finished the three part BBC documentary on the Olympic funding. Really interesting and shows just how focussed both the sporting bodies are as well as the athletes.

    An absolute must watch, memories of 2012 were quite amazing too. Just thinking back to those two/three weeks of the London Olympics and remembering how amazing it was to be a Londoner, living in terrible shared flat in Camden trying to get tickets for literally any possible event and scoring evening velodrome tickets for two nights and for the relay finals in the stadium. Some of the greatest sporting moments I've ever witnessed.

    What was really impressive, IMO, was the business like way that UK Sport approached the funding arrangements. It's sad that so much of the funding ruthlessness is being unwound and we're now wasting money on sports and categories we won't ever medal in and funding athletes that won't medal.

    Some of the scattershot methods they showed were great too "find tall women". It worked too. I do wonder whether we should try that again now for the run up to LA and then smash the Australians in Brisbane just for good measure.

    My wife suggested that UK Olympic success was one of the factors in Brexit. It made the nation proud to be British, for two weeks every four years being patriotic wasn't just acceptable, it was encouraged. She made a persuasive argument.

    Wasn't one of the complaints about the "find tall women/men" programme - which i don't think was actually designed primarily to bring medal success but to allow GB to reach a threshold standard to compete in London in events that we wouldn't normally get close to - that it was specifically a "one Games deal" (short of outstanding unexpected success) but the sports that were helped over this period thought that they had done enough to retain a level of financial support that didn't continue.

    Re: the complaint about Rugby sevens above - of course one of the reasons why things like cycling/sailing/swimming etc were prioritised was that they could deliver large medal hauls and were therefore pretty good value (multiple medals and (mainly) individual events. Funding something like rugby sevens requires potentially large scale per capita investment, and at the end of it you only get 1/2 medals at most. Bluntly, "seven" people may win a medal, but it only counts as one in the table.
    But we are also going to be taking money away from rowing, swimming, sailing, gymnastics, equestrian i.e. ones where loads of medals can be won. Also modern pentathlon, that gets cut....

    And BMX is getting a load of money, when you can only win 4 medals... skateboard thr same....
    To be honest i don't know much about what is set to happen now - my comment was addressing the 2012 and aftermath situation.

    I do know that some complained that there was too much focus on medals and/or sports which were allegedly unaccessible to the population at large, at the expense of grassroots sport and improving the health of the nation. Of course everything presented in simplistic arguments as these things usually are.
    This is the point, the funding model is changing, that is why some people are very annoyed. It isn't a secret the head has said it isn't solely about maximising medals anymore, its about being more diverse.

    Now to be fair, there is a negative feedback loop from only funding what you win in, but some of the choices are stupid e.g. basketball, they funded it before, all that happens is the money goes on the insurance premiums for an NBA ringer or two to come abd play with the team. And the difference between funding pentathlon or rugby 7s is opportunity for medals, Team GB isn't getting a medal in basketball in my lifetime...the UK league is held in front of basically non-existant crowds.

    And this funding isnt designed for widening participation among the population, there are other pots of money for that. This is about funding full time atheletes towards competiting at elite events.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087
    Andy_JS said:

    Every subject on BBC News is either something we should be incredibly pessimistic about, or something we should be ecstatic about. There's never anything in between.

    That's because sensation attracts viewers and clickbait. There's no interest in things being mundane, average, tolerable or satisfactory.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    RobD said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    No: it was because they had no choice, and the thing worked fairly well. Not because it was patriotic in any sense.

    In any case, how dol you explain Pfixer on that basis? We got what was available.
    Britain was the first in the world to approve the Pfizer vaccine. Again, trust in the MHRA, a British org, comes into play. Nobody in Britain believed that the approval of Pfizer was "rushed" as alleged by the EU.

    At a gut level, there was more trust in British institutions, than EU ones. If you trust British institutions more than EU ones, why would you leave Britain to join the EU? Does anyone join an organisation that they don't really trust at gut level? Would anyone in Scotland put their lives in Ursula von der Leyen's hands?
    We didn't get the choice, so you're trying to out-HYUFD with the possibilities.
    Pedant mode, but there is a choice. You can choose not to get it.
    Now that really would be insane, given that the vaccines offered (more correctly, allocated without choice) were decent options.
    And yet EU people rejected AZ, despite it being a decent option. Why did they do that? They believed that their identity as EU people required them to reject AZ.

    Interesting that Scots didn't share in that project. They didn't feel the need join in the trashing of AZ as part of their EU identity. They didn't feel the need to cheer when Ursula von der Leyen sued AZ.

    Maybe the reason is they have no EU identity...
    Eh? To a PB nerd (and I am one too TBF) and a leaver, it might mean a lot, but in the average world?

    It wasn't the EU citizens' identity that led them to reject AZ - it was the trashing of AZ, miserable as it was. Not tyhe same thing.
    It comes down to "who" trashed it, and do you trust the people who were trashing it.

    The point I'm making is that the trashing was done by the EU, and EU citizens trusted the people doing the trashing and thus refused to take the AZ vaccine.

    But in Scotland, they DIDN'T trust the EU people who were trashing the vaccine, and decided Boris, Sarah Gilbert, Chris Whitty and co were more trustworthy.

    If Scottish people don't trust the EU and what they say, why on earth would they want to join them?
    It wasn't really "the EU" trashing the vaccine (indeed they complained that their citizens were being denied it at the expense of the British). The trashing was done by national leaders and (if you want to call it trashing) national medical bodies. Scottish people presumably trusted Scottish leaders.

    Where there is an argument is that the Scots, along with the rest of the UK, were dismissive of any criticism of AZ in how the trials etc were handled and how that potentially contributed to some of the initial uncertainty.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    They've "got the gig" this time!
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    alex_ said:

    Eric Topol
    @EricTopol
    ·
    2h
    Is this 🦠 a challenge?
    The situation in Iceland, now vertical in case rise, yet one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world. No sequence data available http://outbreak.info, assuming this is d/t Delta

    In a 100% vaccinated population, 100% of cases, hospitalisations and deaths will be vaccinated people...
    Journalists will never understand this.
    I don't think that's his point. The point is that cases are rapidly increasing despite huge vaccination levels.

    He doesn't this but to me that looks like any hopes we have of herd immunity thru vax are being dashed by delta.
    It would be interesting to see how clustered the cases are. That is a concern wrt herd immunity, it is likely to require a very high (much more than the 70% level they have) to achieve it.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021
    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    You mean you don't enjoy demeaning Sir Chris Hoy by using his screen time to have him putting fake sticky medals on a cardboard chart like something out of Blue Peter circa 1980, while actual racing was going on in the velodrome.....and then asking him to comment on the diving competition, rather than the bike racing, something he obviously doesn't know that much about.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    RobD said:

    alex_ said:

    Eric Topol
    @EricTopol
    ·
    2h
    Is this 🦠 a challenge?
    The situation in Iceland, now vertical in case rise, yet one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world. No sequence data available http://outbreak.info, assuming this is d/t Delta

    In a 100% vaccinated population, 100% of cases, hospitalisations and deaths will be vaccinated people...
    Journalists will never understand this.
    The point is the vaccine makes it safe(ish) to have a wave..
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    The same thing happened with Malta, along with the same kind of pessimistic (or anti-vaxxer) memes about vaccines not working. There was a sharp outbreak caused by unvaccinated visitors, which rapidly diminished.

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    Just finished the three part BBC documentary on the Olympic funding. Really interesting and shows just how focussed both the sporting bodies are as well as the athletes.

    An absolute must watch, memories of 2012 were quite amazing too. Just thinking back to those two/three weeks of the London Olympics and remembering how amazing it was to be a Londoner, living in terrible shared flat in Camden trying to get tickets for literally any possible event and scoring evening velodrome tickets for two nights and for the relay finals in the stadium. Some of the greatest sporting moments I've ever witnessed.

    What was really impressive, IMO, was the business like way that UK Sport approached the funding arrangements. It's sad that so much of the funding ruthlessness is being unwound and we're now wasting money on sports and categories we won't ever medal in and funding athletes that won't medal.

    Some of the scattershot methods they showed were great too "find tall women". It worked too. I do wonder whether we should try that again now for the run up to LA and then smash the Australians in Brisbane just for good measure.

    My wife suggested that UK Olympic success was one of the factors in Brexit. It made the nation proud to be British, for two weeks every four years being patriotic wasn't just acceptable, it was encouraged. She made a persuasive argument.

    Wasn't one of the complaints about the "find tall women/men" programme - which i don't think was actually designed primarily to bring medal success but to allow GB to reach a threshold standard to compete in London in events that we wouldn't normally get close to - that it was specifically a "one Games deal" (short of outstanding unexpected success) but the sports that were helped over this period thought that they had done enough to retain a level of financial support that didn't continue.

    Re: the complaint about Rugby sevens above - of course one of the reasons why things like cycling/sailing/swimming etc were prioritised was that they could deliver large medal hauls and were therefore pretty good value (multiple medals and (mainly) individual events. Funding something like rugby sevens requires potentially large scale per capita investment, and at the end of it you only get 1/2 medals at most. Bluntly, "seven" people may win a medal, but it only counts as one in the table.
    But we are also going to be taking money away from rowing, swimming, sailing, gymnastics, equestrian i.e. ones where loads of medals can be won. Also modern pentathlon, that gets cut....

    And BMX is getting a load of money, when you can only win 4 medals... skateboard the same....

    So you argument doesn't really hold up.
    Why does they call it "modern pentathlon", but just plain "decathlon" and "heptathlon"?
    Because the "modern pentathlon" was specifically invented as a competition designed as "modern" interpretation of the historic elements of success of warriors in battle.
    I think the modern pentathlon was designed to reflect the skills required of a postman in revolutionary France. The ancient pentathlon included, I think, running, discus, shot, wrestling and long jump - though I think there were significant differences between the modern and ancient versions of these events.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021
    AKA he understands that Government has a responsibility to the country and its citizens that goes beyond the pursuit of short term popularity?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    alex_ said:

    AKA he understands that Government has a responsibility to the country and it's citizens that goes beyond the pursuit of short term popularity?
    What's he doing in the Tory party?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021
    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    They've "got the gig" this time!
    OK, get the gig next time round too.

    Presumably we're all due a big reduction I our license fees with the savings the BBC are making on not sending massive amounts of journalists to Japan.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Cookie said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    They've "got the gig" this time!
    OK, get the gig next time round too.

    Presumably we're all due a big reduction I our license fees with the savings the BBC are making on not sending massive amounts of journalists to Japan.
    Don’t worry, they are going to spend it on snazzy new election graphics for the next GE. ;)
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    RobD said:

    alex_ said:

    AKA he understands that Government has a responsibility to the country and it's citizens that goes beyond the pursuit of short term popularity?
    What's he doing in the Tory party?
    In the Tory Party, or in Johnson's Tory party?

    Maybe he got lost.
  • RobD said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    Not sure it says much about allegiance, just that the are a sensible folk not easily swayed by the ramblings of Macron et al.
    Has there been a more dangerous, irresponsible or brazenly idiotic statement around the entire covid pandemic made by a leader than Macron's on AZ, even by Trump?
  • RobD said:

    Cookie said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    They've "got the gig" this time!
    OK, get the gig next time round too.

    Presumably we're all due a big reduction I our license fees with the savings the BBC are making on not sending massive amounts of journalists to Japan.
    Don’t worry, they are going to spend it on snazzy new election graphics for the next GE. ;)
    And of course will be 3hrs behind the results we already know from the likes of PB....
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Carnyx said:

    felix said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    FPT Carnyx
    'A Presbyterian would wonder why they need bishops at all, never mind something so centralising as archbishops and a London-based mortal as the head of the C of E (though I do understand that the Cantuar:/Ebor: division deviates from neat centralisation).'

    The Church of England is a Protestant church but also a Catholic and Apolostic church which believes in and practices the liturgy while having some evangelicals within it. Much like the Scottish Episcopal Church.

    The Presbyterian church by contrast is more of an evangelical church.

    If the C of E ceased to have bishops it would become a largely evangelical church and cease to be a Catholic and Apostolic Church, leading Anglo Catholics within it in particular to move to Rome

    You have not answered the basic issue - of your disgraceful and deliberate exclusion of all non-Catholic Christians from representation in the HoL through their churches.
    Far from it. Less than 5% of Lords are Bishops, I said you could add some Catholic Bishops (if the Vatican agreed) and Imams and Rabbis too.

    I would not have a problem adding a few prominent evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals and Presbyterians and Methodists too but as they tend to have fewer Bishops and in the case of Presbyterians none at all rather more difficult to choose them unless you randomly pick some ministers and elders
    HAve you not even heard of Moderators in the Presbyterian Churches, and the equivalents in the other free churches? They are elected, unlike the bishops and archbishops. But maybe that is too democratic for the HoL in your view.
    Tbf HYUFD was convinced that CoS had bishops up till a couple of years ago. His grasp of the issue is on a par with his grasp of Scottish geography and ferry routes.
    I often wonder why central office let such a doofus loose on the sensitive topic of Jockland. You’d almost think they want rid of us.
    I wonder that anyone could be so silly as to think what is said on here has any actual impact on voters anywhere.
    Just wait till HYUFD becomes a candidate for Westminster. He's been warned by me (a pro-in dy Scot), Charles (whom we all know) and everyone in between, [edit] of the risk he is running in his comments here.

    Profoundly unlikely. We have the screenshots. As do half of Fleet Street.
    Is 'half of Fleet Street really hanging off everyone word of a parish Councillor from Essex?
    They will be when they get the screenshots the other half have.
    Don't think so. Whatever HYUFD's reputation on here, about the most "outrageous" thing that anyone could unearth would be around his somewhat idiosyncratic views on how quickly the UK govt would be to deploy the armed forces (including nuclear weapons) in defence of Gibraltar or to suppress unilateral rebellion in Scotland.

    There are any number of Tory MPs out there where the main question is in determining the extent to which their public statements are an indication of mere ignorance or insanity. HYUFD doesn't really express many views on things that could really attract interest (dodgy statements on ethnic minorities or women or whatever).
    Aha. You weren’t around for that thread. No probs. Most of us have a real life.
    What thread? I have never expressed a racist or misogynist comment on here
    Fascinating. Where do you do it? Down the Black Boy pub with the lads from the Lodge?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    Just finished the three part BBC documentary on the Olympic funding. Really interesting and shows just how focussed both the sporting bodies are as well as the athletes.

    An absolute must watch, memories of 2012 were quite amazing too. Just thinking back to those two/three weeks of the London Olympics and remembering how amazing it was to be a Londoner, living in terrible shared flat in Camden trying to get tickets for literally any possible event and scoring evening velodrome tickets for two nights and for the relay finals in the stadium. Some of the greatest sporting moments I've ever witnessed.

    What was really impressive, IMO, was the business like way that UK Sport approached the funding arrangements. It's sad that so much of the funding ruthlessness is being unwound and we're now wasting money on sports and categories we won't ever medal in and funding athletes that won't medal.

    Some of the scattershot methods they showed were great too "find tall women". It worked too. I do wonder whether we should try that again now for the run up to LA and then smash the Australians in Brisbane just for good measure.

    My wife suggested that UK Olympic success was one of the factors in Brexit. It made the nation proud to be British, for two weeks every four years being patriotic wasn't just acceptable, it was encouraged. She made a persuasive argument.

    Wasn't one of the complaints about the "find tall women/men" programme - which i don't think was actually designed primarily to bring medal success but to allow GB to reach a threshold standard to compete in London in events that we wouldn't normally get close to - that it was specifically a "one Games deal" (short of outstanding unexpected success) but the sports that were helped over this period thought that they had done enough to retain a level of financial support that didn't continue.

    Re: the complaint about Rugby sevens above - of course one of the reasons why things like cycling/sailing/swimming etc were prioritised was that they could deliver large medal hauls and were therefore pretty good value (multiple medals and (mainly) individual events. Funding something like rugby sevens requires potentially large scale per capita investment, and at the end of it you only get 1/2 medals at most. Bluntly, "seven" people may win a medal, but it only counts as one in the table.
    But we are also going to be taking money away from rowing, swimming, sailing, gymnastics, equestrian i.e. ones where loads of medals can be won. Also modern pentathlon, that gets cut....

    And BMX is getting a load of money, when you can only win 4 medals... skateboard the same....

    So you argument doesn't really hold up.
    Why does they call it "modern pentathlon", but just plain "decathlon" and "heptathlon"?
    Because the "modern pentathlon" was specifically invented as a competition designed as "modern" interpretation of the historic elements of success of warriors in battle.
    They need to create a post-modern pentathlon with events like the drone strike, the cyberattack and the troll.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    You mean you don't enjoy demeaning Sir Chris Hoy by using his screen time to have him putting fake sticky medals on a cardboard chart like something out of Blue Peter circa 1980, while actual racing was going on in the velodrome.....and then asking him to comment on the diving competition, rather than the bike racing, something he obviously doesn't know that much about.
    Did this really happen? It is all too believable.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    You mean you don't enjoy demeaning Sir Chris Hoy by using his screen time to have him putting fake sticky medals on a cardboard chart like something out of Blue Peter circa 1980, while actual racing was going on in the velodrome.....and then asking him to comment on the diving competition, rather than the bike racing, something he obviously doesn't know that much about.
    Did this really happen? It is all too believable.
    Happened this morning on BBC One....his face was one of WTF is his nonsense, I thought you wanted me on to talk about bike racing.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    RobD said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    Not sure it says much about allegiance, just that the are a sensible folk not easily swayed by the ramblings of Macron et al.
    Has there been a more dangerous, irresponsible or brazenly idiotic statement around the entire covid pandemic made by a leader than Macron's on AZ, even by Trump?
    Well, when 30% of the the US population will hang on his every word, suggesting ingesting bleach probably ran it close.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
  • alex_ said:

    RobD said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    Not sure it says much about allegiance, just that the are a sensible folk not easily swayed by the ramblings of Macron et al.
    Has there been a more dangerous, irresponsible or brazenly idiotic statement around the entire covid pandemic made by a leader than Macron's on AZ, even by Trump?
    Well, when 30% of the the US population will hang on his every word, suggesting ingesting bleach probably ran it close.
    How many people ingested bleach on Trump's advice?

    How many do you think haven't been or won't get vaccinated because of Macron?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    You mean you don't enjoy demeaning Sir Chris Hoy by using his screen time to have him putting fake sticky medals on a cardboard chart like something out of Blue Peter circa 1980, while actual racing was going on in the velodrome.....and then asking him to comment on the diving competition, rather than the bike racing, something he obviously doesn't know that much about.
    Did this really happen? It is all too believable.
    Happened this morning on BBC One....his face was one of WTF is his nonsense, I thought you wanted me on to talk about bike racing.
    To be fair, they also asked him to explain how tired the riders would be at the end of the Madison event, and it was a bit like asking Usain Bolt to comment from experience on the closing stages of a Marathon ;)
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    alex_ said:

    RobD said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    Not sure it says much about allegiance, just that the are a sensible folk not easily swayed by the ramblings of Macron et al.
    Has there been a more dangerous, irresponsible or brazenly idiotic statement around the entire covid pandemic made by a leader than Macron's on AZ, even by Trump?
    Well, when 30% of the the US population will hang on his every word, suggesting ingesting bleach probably ran it close.
    How many people ingested bleach on Trump's advice?

    How many do you think haven't been or won't get vaccinated because of Macron?
    The question didn't address consequences directly.
  • alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    You mean you don't enjoy demeaning Sir Chris Hoy by using his screen time to have him putting fake sticky medals on a cardboard chart like something out of Blue Peter circa 1980, while actual racing was going on in the velodrome.....and then asking him to comment on the diving competition, rather than the bike racing, something he obviously doesn't know that much about.
    Did this really happen? It is all too believable.
    Happened this morning on BBC One....his face was one of WTF is his nonsense, I thought you wanted me on to talk about bike racing.
    To be fair, they also asked him to explain how tired the riders would be at the end of the Madison event, and it was a bit like asking Usain Bolt to comment from experience on the closing stages of a Marathon ;)
    It was more than a tad prickly between Cram and Radcliffe last night with the marathon coverage. A lady pulled up and Cram said well you shouldn't just quit like that, you have to finish you race....
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Florida has a minimum of 10days of growth in its deaths figure (based on their past lag between cases peaking and deaths peaking) , which will be about a doubling to take them to 180 a day. The UK equivalent of 540 a day.

    At what level does DeSantis get sunk (if any)?
  • Alistair said:

    Florida has a minimum of 10days of growth in its deaths figure (based on their past lag between cases peaking and deaths peaking) , which will be about a doubling to take them to 180 a day. The UK equivalent of 540 a day.

    At what level does DeSantis get sunk (if any)?

    None. Those who die, will die. The rest will live.

    They're OK with that.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021
    Alistair said:

    Florida has a minimum of 10days of growth in its deaths figure (based on their past lag between cases peaking and deaths peaking) , which will be about a doubling to take them to 180 a day. The UK equivalent of 540 a day.

    At what level does DeSantis get sunk (if any)?

    Get with the message. It's all Biden's fault because of failure to shut the border to Mexican immigrants. Or something...
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021

    Alistair said:

    Florida has a minimum of 10days of growth in its deaths figure (based on their past lag between cases peaking and deaths peaking) , which will be about a doubling to take them to 180 a day. The UK equivalent of 540 a day.

    At what level does DeSantis get sunk (if any)?

    None. Those who die, will die. The rest will live.

    They're OK with that.
    His polling numbers are shaky. He may find himself relying on voter suppression measures. A lot of GOP leaders are waking up to the reality that it's their own voters who are anti-vaxx and dying...
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    On topic

    Caught up with ITV News who reported Shipman's story. Johnson came across as a vile bully threatening the little guy in Cabinet last week.

    Was it Paxman who asked Johnson, "you are a nasty piece of work aren't you"?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
  • alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    RobD said:

    Candy said:

    Carnyx said:

    Candy said:

    isam said:

    If there were another Indy Ref, I think Leave would win. Brexit changed everything I reckon

    I don't think it changed as much as the pundits think.

    In the Great Vaccine Wars, note that Scots (and Northern Irish and Welsh) had no hesitation at all in taking the English vaccine. Whereas in the EU, individuals were walking out of vaccine centres when they were told they were going to be jabbed with AZ - and this happened across the EU, whether in Germany, Finland, France Denmark or Greece etc.

    That leads me to think that the Scottish mentality, at a gut instinct level, is still British rather than EU. When it came to the crunch in a life-and-death issue, their instinct was to trust the British govt and Oxford University, rather than UrsuIa von Leyen and her crew.
    I think you are confusing perceived efficacy with the label on the box.
    I don't think so. Your average person doesn't know the ins and outs of how vaccines are made and how effective (or safe) they are. They just go by what their tribal leaders say.

    In the EU, they poured scorn on AZ, and ordinary EU citizens took note and refused to be jabbed with AZ.

    If Scots felt they were part of the EU tribe, they'd have behaved in the same way.

    But they didn't. They rolled their eyes at the EU behaviour and got their AZ jabs as soon as they were offered.

    At bottom they didn't think they were being given a foreign suspect English vaccine, but that they were being given a good British vaccine which they as Brits collectively owned. Their gut tribal allegience, in a life-and-death situation, was with Britain and Oxford University.
    Not sure it says much about allegiance, just that the are a sensible folk not easily swayed by the ramblings of Macron et al.
    Has there been a more dangerous, irresponsible or brazenly idiotic statement around the entire covid pandemic made by a leader than Macron's on AZ, even by Trump?
    Well, when 30% of the the US population will hang on his every word, suggesting ingesting bleach probably ran it close.
    How many people ingested bleach on Trump's advice?

    How many do you think haven't been or won't get vaccinated because of Macron?
    The question didn't address consequences directly.
    I presumed they were implied.

    Since I didn't imply them, I should include in Macron's implied consequences that he's played a large part, as have the EU, in ensuring that no pharma will ever try to make a vaccine at cost again.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal over multiple Olympics.
  • Gents' marathon under way!
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    There isn't exactly huge scope for pro-Swedish jingoism in the Olympics...

    But as i said, we have Eurosport coverage here as well. Obviously not available to a large chunk of the population.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742

    On topic

    Caught up with ITV News who reported Shipman's story. Johnson came across as a vile bully threatening the little guy in Cabinet last week.

    Was it Paxman who asked Johnson, "you are a nasty piece of work aren't you"?

    Eddie Mair

    https://youtu.be/oTAClNQUUeE
  • CandyCandy Posts: 51
    alex_ said:



    It wasn't really "the EU" trashing the vaccine (indeed they complained that their citizens were being denied it at the expense of the British). The trashing was done by national leaders and (if you want to call it trashing) national medical bodies. Scottish people presumably trusted Scottish leaders.

    They were all acting in concert. Merkel and Macron decided to ban AZ for the over 65's, and this is based on nothing but their own prejudices. Then Draghi and others did the same because they don't want to be perceived to being against the EU consensus. Even Ireland meekly banned Az for the over 65s, because under pressure from the EU consensus (and because they wanted to show they were anti-British). Then they all reversed themselves in concert.

    If Scottish leaders didn't follow suit, that means that even Sturgeon and co don't trust the EU and it's consensus... So why join an org you don't trust?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    On topic

    Caught up with ITV News who reported Shipman's story. Johnson came across as a vile bully threatening the little guy in Cabinet last week.

    Was it Paxman who asked Johnson, "you are a nasty piece of work aren't you"?

    Eddie Mair

    https://youtu.be/oTAClNQUUeE
    Thanks.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    There isn't exactly huge scope for pro-Swedish jingoism in the Olympics...

    But as i said, we have Eurosport coverage here as well. Obviously not available to a large chunk of the population.
    Sweden easily beats TeamBoris on a per capita basis. Swedish kids are actually fit. That’s what produces lifelong life quality and elite athletes.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited August 2021

    Gents' marathon under way!

    More exciting than the racing is will Paula Radcliffe end up smacking Steve Cram....several hours in a small commentary booth together is rather straining on their ability to remain civil.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,722
    ...

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
    What this policewoman tweeted was probably 50 times worse than what Ollie Robinson did, and police should be held to a much higher standard than Sportsmen anyway.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister
    Bad news for the Tories does not necessarily lead to good news for Labour: backing for Keir Starmer is also down

    Boris Johnson’s personal approval rating has slipped to its lowest level since he became prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

    His overall approval rating has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that. It is even lower than the -15 he recorded back in January…

    … Keir Starmer’s approval rating is also down, with a net score of -11. It fell from -6 two weeks ago. 28% approve of the job he is doing, while 39% disapprove. It is his worst score since Opinium started tracking him in this way.

    …The poll also exposed public confusion over the government’s vow to “level up” the country. Less than a fifth (18%) of the public have a clear idea of what the term meant, with a further 30% saying they had a vague idea. Three in ten (30%) had not heard the term before.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/07/boris-johnson-approval-rating-slips-to-lowest-level-since-he-became-prime-minister
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    There isn't exactly huge scope for pro-Swedish jingoism in the Olympics...

    But as i said, we have Eurosport coverage here as well. Obviously not available to a large chunk of the population.
    Sweden easily beats TeamBoris on a per capita basis. Swedish kids are actually fit. That’s what produces lifelong life quality and elite athletes.
    Not true actually (re: per capita). Anyway not sure what the relevance is. "Jingoism" (as you call it, others might more neutrally term it "focussing more on national interest") is always going to be more prevalent in countries that win large numbers of medals (and these will obviously be mainly the larger nations). I'll bet the Swedish commentators make a big fuss in the relatively small number of events where the Swedes are competitive.

    And i say this as somebody who far prefers watching Eurosport. But then they aren't the ones getting the mass complaints whenever they miss a British medal in their coverage.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    isam said:

    ...

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
    What this policewoman tweeted was probably 50 times worse than what Ollie Robinson did, and police should be held to a much higher standard than Sportsmen anyway.
    Chatting with the ISIS bride who had a slave was a lovely touch too
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Floater said:
    Yes, and by the look of it deservedly so.

    A story that gives the Mail all its Christmases at once.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosport in the UK focuses to some extent on the British athletes, and is suitably interested when they do well, but not to the detriment of covering the event as a whole. It doesn't paint the victory of a British competitor as somehow a triumph for the whole British nation, nor a defeat for a British competitor as a national disaster. It is most refreshing.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Candy said:

    alex_ said:



    It wasn't really "the EU" trashing the vaccine (indeed they complained that their citizens were being denied it at the expense of the British). The trashing was done by national leaders and (if you want to call it trashing) national medical bodies. Scottish people presumably trusted Scottish leaders.

    They were all acting in concert. Merkel and Macron decided to ban AZ for the over 65's, and this is based on nothing but their own prejudices. Then Draghi and others did the same because they don't want to be perceived to being against the EU consensus. Even Ireland meekly banned Az for the over 65s, because under pressure from the EU consensus (and because they wanted to show they were anti-British). Then they all reversed themselves in concert.

    If Scottish leaders didn't follow suit, that means that even Sturgeon and co don't trust the EU and it's consensus... So why join an org you don't trust?
    Well this is a different argument - you are switching from the reaction of the general public, to the reaction of their political leadership.

    And i say this as somebody who broadly agrees with your basic premise. That Scots are basically British in outlook, even when they reject the "British" political label.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673

    Floater said:
    Yes, and by the look of it deservedly so.

    A story that gives the Mail all its Christmases at once.
    Is it any surprise? If you wear the hijab, it is pretty likely you follow the Koran closely and have toxic views on Jews and nonbelievers. There are plenty of moderate Muslims about but generally they don't think women showing their hair is immodest.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited August 2021
    Cookie said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    Just finished the three part BBC documentary on the Olympic funding. Really interesting and shows just how focussed both the sporting bodies are as well as the athletes.

    An absolute must watch, memories of 2012 were quite amazing too. Just thinking back to those two/three weeks of the London Olympics and remembering how amazing it was to be a Londoner, living in terrible shared flat in Camden trying to get tickets for literally any possible event and scoring evening velodrome tickets for two nights and for the relay finals in the stadium. Some of the greatest sporting moments I've ever witnessed.

    What was really impressive, IMO, was the business like way that UK Sport approached the funding arrangements. It's sad that so much of the funding ruthlessness is being unwound and we're now wasting money on sports and categories we won't ever medal in and funding athletes that won't medal.

    Some of the scattershot methods they showed were great too "find tall women". It worked too. I do wonder whether we should try that again now for the run up to LA and then smash the Australians in Brisbane just for good measure.

    My wife suggested that UK Olympic success was one of the factors in Brexit. It made the nation proud to be British, for two weeks every four years being patriotic wasn't just acceptable, it was encouraged. She made a persuasive argument.

    Wasn't one of the complaints about the "find tall women/men" programme - which i don't think was actually designed primarily to bring medal success but to allow GB to reach a threshold standard to compete in London in events that we wouldn't normally get close to - that it was specifically a "one Games deal" (short of outstanding unexpected success) but the sports that were helped over this period thought that they had done enough to retain a level of financial support that didn't continue.

    Re: the complaint about Rugby sevens above - of course one of the reasons why things like cycling/sailing/swimming etc were prioritised was that they could deliver large medal hauls and were therefore pretty good value (multiple medals and (mainly) individual events. Funding something like rugby sevens requires potentially large scale per capita investment, and at the end of it you only get 1/2 medals at most. Bluntly, "seven" people may win a medal, but it only counts as one in the table.
    But we are also going to be taking money away from rowing, swimming, sailing, gymnastics, equestrian i.e. ones where loads of medals can be won. Also modern pentathlon, that gets cut....

    And BMX is getting a load of money, when you can only win 4 medals... skateboard the same....

    So you argument doesn't really hold up.
    Why does they call it "modern pentathlon", but just plain "decathlon" and "heptathlon"?
    Because the "modern pentathlon" was specifically invented as a competition designed as "modern" interpretation of the historic elements of success of warriors in battle.
    I think the modern pentathlon was designed to reflect the skills required of a postman in revolutionary France. The ancient pentathlon included, I think, running, discus, shot, wrestling and long jump - though I think there were significant differences between the modern and ancient versions of these events.
    To add to the confusion, what is now the heptathlon used to be the (or a) pentathlon, famously won by Mary Peters in the 1972 Munich Olympics. Hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, 200m.

    Here is Mary Peters' pentathlon in 3 and a bit minutes.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmrLisn-fkw
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742
    isam said:

    ...

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
    What this policewoman tweeted was probably 50 times worse than what Ollie Robinson did, and police should be held to a much higher standard than Sportsmen anyway.
    Does walking under the high jump bar count as limbo?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742
    King Midas at it again




  • isamisam Posts: 40,722

    isam said:

    ...

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
    What this policewoman tweeted was probably 50 times worse than what Ollie Robinson did, and police should be held to a much higher standard than Sportsmen anyway.
    Does walking under the high jump bar count as limbo?
    Don’t worry about that old nonsense, just rest assured the two are incomparable
  • isamisam Posts: 40,722

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    Try BBC Scotland right now!


  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021
    isam said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    Try BBC Scotland right now!


    I'm interested in how Stuart is managing to catch so much of the BBC coverage from Sweden. Even if he's somehow got access to it, he must have two TVs running simultaneously since he's apparently glued to Eurosport.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    isam said:

    ...

    I think the MoS headline story is going to cause some waves...

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9872649/Muslim-policewoman-hailed-hero-confronting-anti-lockdown-protesters-tweeted-racist-messages.html

    Looking back to tweets 7 years ago, I can see some serious limbo dancing among the tw@tterati who are quick to call for people to be cancelled for very old offensive tweets.

    I think the MoS will be accused from some quarters of targetting unfairly a PoS for a deep dive of their twitter history.
    Will the limbo bar be lower or higher for the 'who cares if Ollie did a racism' guys?
    What this policewoman tweeted was probably 50 times worse than what Ollie Robinson did, and police should be held to a much higher standard than Sportsmen anyway.
    Does walking under the high jump bar count as limbo?
    Trouble with this sort of story is, everybody's too mealy mouthed to print what anyone actually said, so hard to tell what one is up against. But the worst Ollie ism I can find is

    “My new Muslim friend is the bomb”. In another: “I wonder if Asian people put smileys like this ¦) #racist”, while a third tweet quipped: “Guy next to me on the train definitely has Ebola.”

    So appalling I need a lie down after reading it obvs, but I think the policewoman is ahead on points.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    King Midas at it again




    Is that Father Jack in Father Dougal's Lions shirt?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Aslan said:

    Floater said:
    Yes, and by the look of it deservedly so.

    A story that gives the Mail all its Christmases at once.
    Is it any surprise? If you wear the hijab, it is pretty likely you follow the Koran closely and have toxic views on Jews and nonbelievers. There are plenty of moderate Muslims about but generally they don't think women showing their hair is immodest.
    Is it that time already? I must be off. Particularly when posters post unpleasant bollox like this.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    King Midas at it again




    Is that Father Jack in Father Dougal's Lions shirt?
    I knew I’d seen that demeanour before.

    Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls!
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    Sweden fully vaccinated 43%, England fully vaccinated 58%
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    ...and then came Brexit.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    Sweden fully vaccinated 43%, England fully vaccinated 58%
    Bogus measurement.

    The objective of the Swedish government is to minimise long term damage to children and young adults. We’re doing a lot better job than nearly every other government in the world.

    (I say this as someone who didn’t vote for them.)
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    It would be interesting to hear who you feel the devolved administrations have been held back in their ability to respond effectively to Covid. And your assessment of U.K. Govt performance in relation to non-devolved Covid linked competences.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    55% of adults registered to vote in Scotland. Which is not the same thing.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    It would be interesting to hear who you feel the devolved administrations have been held back in their ability to respond effectively to Covid. And your assessment of U.K. Govt performance in relation to non-devolved Covid linked competences.
    Nah. You say you’re “interested”, but you’re not really.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    55% of adults registered to vote in Scotland. Which is not the same thing.
    The SNP explicitly claim to advocate for civic nationalism. They also wanted to exclude Scots living outside the country, especially in England, from ability to vote in the referendum.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    It would be interesting to hear who you feel the devolved administrations have been held back in their ability to respond effectively to Covid. And your assessment of U.K. Govt performance in relation to non-devolved Covid linked competences.
    Nah. You say you’re “interested”, but you’re not really.
    No I am. It would help to establish if your opinions are seriously thought out, or based on anti English and/or anti Johnsonian and/or pro Scottish prejudice/bias.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    55% of adults registered to vote in Scotland. Which is not the same thing.
    The SNP explicitly claim to advocate for civic nationalism. They also wanted to exclude Scots living outside the country, especially in England, from ability to vote in the referendum.
    How is The Clown going to identify “Scots” resident in England? DNA? Membership of the Conservative Party? Donations to his latest John Lewis invoice?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    ...and then came Brexit.
    And 52% of Scots still want to stay in the UK

    https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1424074941381713921?s=20
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    edited August 2021
    HYUFD said:

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

    Whichever way one looks at the picture, Johnson looks like a dick.

    It's not the wearing of the shirt, it is just everything else about Johnson in the picture, Dilyn excepted. It is like he is parodying or characaturing his created Boris persona/character. It is bizarre. Has he no self- awareness, or is he laughing at us stupid peasants?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    You really do talk a load of cr*p sometimes in trying to twist things to your pro-Sindy opinions.

    The BBC has its own approach to broadcasting sport in this country. I agree with the comment you were responding to. But the idea that it is motivated by some sort of "TeamBoris" agenda (whatever that means) is nonsensical. And if you really want to see jingoistic broadcasting you should try Australian or American media.

    It's been quite interesting during the course of the pandemic how you have managed the contradiction in both echoing the prevailing criticism of the UK Government for being so cavalier with English lives whilst simultaneously lauding the Swedish approach which gets ridiculed when cited by lockdown sceptics in the UK.
    The Swedish government has done a good job.

    The English government has done a dreadful job.

    Just calling it as I see it.
    And the Scottish Government?
    The Scottish, Welsh and N Irish governments have done a good job within the strict confines of devolution. As Unionists so often bleat: power devolved is power retained. It’s like the school bully sitting on some poor chap’s chest while holding their hand and making them hit themselves: “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” So very witty.
    An arrangement 55% of Scots themselves endorsed in 2014
    55% of adults registered to vote in Scotland. Which is not the same thing.
    The SNP explicitly claim to advocate for civic nationalism. They also wanted to exclude Scots living outside the country, especially in England, from ability to vote in the referendum.
    How is The Clown going to identify “Scots” resident in England? DNA? Membership of the Conservative Party? Donations to his latest John Lewis invoice?
    Not sure what that’s got to do with the 2014 referendum. But how are you identifying the “registered but not really” Scots living in Scotland?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    HYUFD said:

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

    Sturgeon looks like a normal, fun-loving 51 year old woman.

    Johnson looks like a sub-species the boffins found in a Stone Age cave.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    I'm watching the highlights packages on Eurosport. It's so much less inane than the BBC. You get actual sport rather than endlessly focusing on Tom Daley's knitting. They give you insight into the technicalities of the event. They have more interesting questions than "how proud do you feel" or "what does this mean to you". I'd be very happy for Eurosport to get the gig next time round.

    Eurosport won the contract in Sweden. No Olympics on our equivalent of the BBC (SVT) or ITV (TV4). It’s been fantastic. Totally free from jingoism. Wonderful commentary. Zero expensive sets and dud studio guff.
    Eurosports deal with the IOC is a single Europe wide deal.
    Fine by me.

    We do occasionally get the English language feed. I primarily watch the road cycling, where the Swedish Eurosport commentators have what you could nearly call a cult following in the country. They are the best sports commentators I have ever listened to. But the English language guys are also very good, on the few occasions the technical guys get their wires crossed.

    Why can’t the BBC get the basics right? I think they simply give too many gigs to defunct sportspeople, instead of employing people on their commentating skills.
    BBC Sport seems to be run by people who see sport as drama, rather than as sport. They don't have the confidence that the sporting event is interesting enough in its own right. It has to be given a human interest angle.
    They give the impression that TeamBoris have won every single event, that the world is chockablock full of Yoonyun Flags, and that other competitors are merely a backdrop for the achievements of the master race. Totally bizarre.
    I think you're reading far too much politics into this Stuart. The BBC is not famous for its enthusiasm for Boris Johnson, nor its fondness for the UK. They're just not particularly good at covering sport for its own sake and don't think we'd be interested if we can't be persuaded to somehow identify with the competitors.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    HYUFD said:

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

    Sturgeon looks like a normal, fun-loving 51 year old woman.

    Johnson looks like a sub-species the boffins found in a Stone Age cave.
    I’m not sure even the most ardent Sturgeon fan would describe her as “fun-loving” as a key character attribute.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

    Sturgeon looks like a normal, fun-loving 51 year old woman.

    Johnson looks like a sub-species the boffins found in a Stone Age cave.
    I’m not sure even the most ardent Sturgeon fan would describe her as “fun-loving” as a key character attribute.
    It’s just yet another case of Boris Bad, [other politician] good, when they are doing exactly the same thing.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister
    Bad news for the Tories does not necessarily lead to good news for Labour: backing for Keir Starmer is also down

    Boris Johnson’s personal approval rating has slipped to its lowest level since he became prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

    His overall approval rating has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that. It is even lower than the -15 he recorded back in January…

    … Keir Starmer’s approval rating is also down, with a net score of -11. It fell from -6 two weeks ago. 28% approve of the job he is doing, while 39% disapprove. It is his worst score since Opinium started tracking him in this way.

    …The poll also exposed public confusion over the government’s vow to “level up” the country. Less than a fifth (18%) of the public have a clear idea of what the term meant, with a further 30% saying they had a vague idea. Three in ten (30%) had not heard the term before.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/07/boris-johnson-approval-rating-slips-to-lowest-level-since-he-became-prime-minister

    VI 42/35/7/5, lead 1 point down. Most polls seem to be settling around a 7-point lead for now, though in practice a chunk of those 35/7/5 will vote tactically, mostly for each other.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    King Midas at it again


    What a twat.

    Why can’t Tories see what the rest of us see?
    Sturgeon of course never involves herself in sport at all, absolutely not, never would she be seen to be supporting Scotland for political gain
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-leaps-air-frustration-24317033

    Sturgeon looks like a normal, fun-loving 51 year old woman.

    Johnson looks like a sub-species the boffins found in a Stone Age cave.
    I’m not sure even the most ardent Sturgeon fan would describe her as “fun-loving” as a key character attribute.
    Have you not seen the Krankies?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Almost every time I go on Twitter these days "GB News" is trending. I wonder why.

    Isn't it because of your own timeline, being tailored to your interests? It doesn't on mine, though there are several trending hashtags on mine to do with the football.
    It may be in the "UK Politics" category which I'm interested in. But I've never searched specifically for GB News on Twitter.
    Yes, but because you are interested in right wing politics and views, the algorithm pops it into your feed, but it doesn't in mine. That is how social media works, it keeps you in your bubble.
    God knows what Guido's must be like. 'Stormfront' on a loop
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited August 2021
    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Almost every time I go on Twitter these days "GB News" is trending. I wonder why.

    Isn't it because of your own timeline, being tailored to your interests? It doesn't on mine, though there are several trending hashtags on mine to do with the football.
    It may be in the "UK Politics" category which I'm interested in. But I've never searched specifically for GB News on Twitter.
    Yes, but because you are interested in right wing politics and views, the algorithm pops it into your feed, but it doesn't in mine. That is how social media works, it keeps you in your bubble.
    I don’t think that’s how Twitter trending works. I get stuff that is completely irrelevant to anything that my internet searches or posting might produce, other than “general subject matter” perhaps, as suggested.

    Right now: “Barella”.

    Still interesting to learn from that that Inter Milan are apparently on the brink of liquidation.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister
    Bad news for the Tories does not necessarily lead to good news for Labour: backing for Keir Starmer is also down

    Boris Johnson’s personal approval rating has slipped to its lowest level since he became prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

    His overall approval rating has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that. It is even lower than the -15 he recorded back in January…

    … Keir Starmer’s approval rating is also down, with a net score of -11. It fell from -6 two weeks ago. 28% approve of the job he is doing, while 39% disapprove. It is his worst score since Opinium started tracking him in this way.

    …The poll also exposed public confusion over the government’s vow to “level up” the country. Less than a fifth (18%) of the public have a clear idea of what the term meant, with a further 30% saying they had a vague idea. Three in ten (30%) had not heard the term before.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/07/boris-johnson-approval-rating-slips-to-lowest-level-since-he-became-prime-minister

    VI 42/35/7/5, lead 1 point down. Most polls seem to be settling around a 7-point lead for now, though in practice a chunk of those 35/7/5 will vote tactically, mostly for each other.
    Doubtless true, but raises obvious questions as to how meaningful midterm, silly season polls during an epidemic are.

    My own view: not at all.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    edited August 2021
    I am in California at the moment, and was talking to a well-connected friend in Sacramento about the likelihood of a recall of the Governor, Newsom. I have to say this wasn't on my radar at all, but it certainly sounds like there could be a fascinating race to succeed him. Apparently there are likely to be dozens of candidates, so the next Governor may well win with 15% of the vote. California is a heavily Democratic state, but even the Republicans there might be able to manage that, if they can unite around one charismatic figure a la Arnie.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Fishing said:

    I am in California at the moment, and was talking to a well-connected friend in Sacramento about the likelihood of a recall of the Governor, Newsom. I have to say this wasn't on my radar at all, but it certainly sounds like there could be a fascinating race to succeed him. Apparently there are likely to be dozens of candidates, so the next Governor may well win with 15% of the vote. California is a heavily Democratic state, but even the Republicans there might be able to manage that, if they can unite around one charismatic figure a la Arnie.

    Just for clarity, California is around 60/40 Democrat/GOP. Democratic dominance is partly down to disorganisation on the part of the Republicans and the Democrats changing the electoral rules to entrench partisan advantage
  • Laura Kenny is making a mess of the omnium.
This discussion has been closed.