Rayvin

Gonna align with Fish and Gemmill on this - given how much of a fuck on signing players seems to be we've done well to get one in early doors. I think most of us would have been happy with 3 in place by end of the window and I still reckon that'll happen. Still also think this team as it presently is can scrap itself into some points in the coming days.

I mean it's par for the course at this point I suppose.

I think I can safely and sincerely agree with that.

I would be interested in seeing the gap between incomes taken and government expenditure on that front. I mean it must be public knowledge to some extent in order for the government itself to be accountable. Governments could absolutely spend the money better, we've seen that with PPE scandals and so on over the last year. You need rules in place to ensure the money isn't given away through intentional corruption (i.e. the Tories) or through poor and unaccountable management (Labour, at least as far as their local councils go). Transparency is very important as a result. I've often thought that a good way of solving this problem would be to bring in private sector consultants who specialise in efficiency/cost savings and pay them a -fair- rate, but incentivise them further by saying that they get a 10% percentage of any savings made over the course of the coming 5 year period or something like that. This means they are encouraged to fix as many problems as possible first time around. Obviously you need to have pushback from the management structure of whatever service you're dealing with to ensure non-financial performance metrics are adhered to, but that would be the give and take you would normally expect. After the 5 years, the service just keeps the lasting benefits. However, full disclaimer, I'm a management consultant who specialises in reducing costs and efficiency, so I would say all of this

Those LIARS! They're just trying to manipulate the system to they can buy players before they have to play Brentford. We should push for a full investigation into this immediately!

I don't think we should let that one worry us too much. We were fairly confident before it and the cup can always throw up results like this. Will feel a lot better if we get a few new players in this week but I doubt we'll see another performance that bad.

I do wonder a bit if all the speculation about signings is eating at the players though. Maybe they're throwing the towel in since they're getting replaced anyway?

Aye fair, need to read the room

He's a bit emotional but that doesn't make him a bad guy or a poor player. Yeah it's not the best sort of behaviour, yeah it might be a concern as time moves on, but let's not start turning on players who are on the team sheet every week. While this sort of stuff isn't great, and neither were his comments about Bruce, he's said and done a lot in the past that make me think he's a solid fella.

Well we're a complete laughing stock so that's me dipping out of comment sections on football for a bit. Can't wait for the tables to turn... and they will.

We had 23 shots, 9 on target. Yeah we didn't play well but for me it feels like if we had a striker playing we would have scored one or two just from those stats. Let's not overreact. Complacency probably was a factor too. Watford won't be the same, we haven't played this badly against other teams. We do urgently need a striker though.

That graphic is absolutely ludicrous to me every time I go through it, it really is utterly mental that we've allowed this to happen.

Interesting points. I'm not totally sold on UBI as a solution either. I think it is a solution insofar as it keeps us in the game (transitional), but it's not a solution in terms of why are we here and what are we aspiring towards. We would need a major reorientation of the way we think about things. Idealistically, I would suggest that we should pivot towards scientific advancement and exploration into space/deeper science/whatever and focus society around progress in those areas rather than individual gains. This obviously sounds very socialist indeed, but at least it's internally consistent within the ideology, more or less. I'm not sure how capitalism can survive so well once we reach this stage since the incredible disparity between rich and poor will eventually lead to a complete breakdown in society - i.e. the disparity gets so large, and the conditions for the none rich get so shit, that the system can't sustain itself. If the state is the worry there though, for you, it could well be that decentralisation comes in and takes a lot of the burden of this, one way or another. Agree on the capitalism versus corporatism point. Agree on the left right suffering point. As I have tried to judge it over the years, I would argue from my end that the right is unwilling to make the individual sacrifices necessary to prevent suffering, and the right would argue that the left is unwilling to push people to resolve their own situations. But I don't think anyone wants people to suffer, no. I think wealth disparity is a problem that needs to be solved. I don't actually mind too much about wealth when we're comparing millionaires and normal people - but billionaires? It's obscene. There's a really good graphic that demonstrates just how obscene it is, which I will link to here. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ That looks obscene to me, and like a problem. A problem that will eventually destroy capitalism, I might add.

Mixed economy is a better solution. Socialism needs to be the general underpinning of society for us to reach a point where the vast majority of people are protected and looked after, but you still need to have an incentive to work and try to improve your lot in life to some extent, and I think capitalism therefore has a role to play, subservient to socialist values. Ultimately this is all going to be moot in the end anyway. I'm not sure what capitalism's great plan for the world is once AI and full on automation is in play, but I rather fancy socialism is the thing with the better longterm outcome there.

How can anyone possibly think the Tories are competent with the economy. It boggles my mind, it really does.

Aye we should go for shock and awe. 5 signings by the end of next week.

Great signing, great statement of intent. Really pleased that we're finally going to be a football club again.

Do you think the fact that we're looking only for overseas players at this point means that the board do believe they will be thwarted by domestic clubs in any potential transfers?

This is such an RTG thing to happen So desperate to be loved and acknowledged that whenever any other fan pops over and agrees with them on anything, he becomes some kind of celebrity. It's like in the movies where untouched cannibal tribes meet 'an outsider' for the first time and immediately make him their god. That spurs fan will be loving the attention for now, but wait until they try to cook and eat him. Might well be talking literally here tbh.

I enjoyed this thread

Have watched video, can believe it's possible and am reassured by peer reviewed paper supporting the conclusion, but not sure what your argument is? Are you saying they should have done this instead of vaccinating everyone? If so, I have the following thoughts: 1 - If this is something that is actually done with such diseases, it's very likely that they tried with earlier variants but they weren't successful - or rather, the process was so lengthy that it took them until now to achieve it. 2- If we had waited and done nothing on the vaccine front it would have been horrendously irresponsible. 3 - Many more people would have died while we were waiting for Omicron, given that we're 2 years into the disease now and one year into the vaccine program. How many deaths would the wait have been worth? 4 - We don't know the long term effects of Omicron yet, genetically engineered or otherwise - far less than we do about the long term health effects of the vaccine. Why do you trust the virus more than the vaccine? 5 - The guy in the video isn't making the case that we developed Omicron, he's saying it happened randomly. So.. I mean are you saying we should just trust dumb luck in future? Or is the argument that as of now, there's no need for the vaccine? So your contention becomes you've cheated the system by not being vaccinated for long enough that the far more dangerous form of the disease has been nerfed by the more recent one. That's not a gotcha moment though, that's the same thing as I mentioned in an earlier post. Equivalent to a someone giving the right answer with the wrong working out. It's just dumb luck. It's an interesting video though, I do grant you that.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/20/vitamin-d-is-a-vital-covid-defence-tool "Vitamin D is a vital Covid Defence Tool" May 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/10/does-vitamin-d-combat-covid Does Vitamin D combat Covid Jan 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/05/matt-hancock-orders-third-review-on-link-between-vitamin-d-and-covid UK keeping the link between Covid and Vit D under review - Feb 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/add-vitamin-d-bread-milk-help-fight-covid-urge-scientists-deficiency-supplements Scientists urge people to add Vitamin D to bread and milk to help fight Covid - Oct 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56180921 The truth about an alleged Vit D Cover up - April 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52371688 Should I start taking Vitamin D - Dec 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/23/health/vitamin-d-uk-coronavirus-wellness/index.html Britons urged to take more Vitamin D if they don't go outside April 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/health/vitamin-d-coronavirus-wellness/index.html Vitamin D's effect on Covid may be exaggerated May 2020 I'm going to stop here because I think I've covered the unholy trinity of media sources as far as the right wing go. The Guardian, the BBC and CNN. Many articles. It took me 5 mins to find these. Actually it didn't, it took me 30 seconds. It took me 5 mins to make the post. Is it worth considering that you may just be reading the wrong media sources? The right wing ones are really unreliable tbf.

I will give it a look - I work in academic publishing so I'm always interested in this sort of stuff anyway.

Totally agree about the media, but that doesn't mean we can just run off in the other direction - it means we have a duty to understand the truth through credible evidence. For me, credible evidence at least as far as pandemics go, starts and ends in academia (and data).

Can't speak to that first point I guess, I just don't know. If you ask Gloom, there isn't much love for the MSM on here - especially from me But that tends to be because I think they make speculative, evidence free judgements about situations. I still completely trust experts and specialists though.