Rayvin

Screamed the 'very sober' man in the corner. Did I miss something?

So what we're saying here is that Alan Pardew thinks that football club owners have looked at his track record and chosen not to hire him because they saw a 4 second gif of him dancing once. Stuff like failing to make the cut with a microscopic dutch team, losing 6-0 at home to Liverpool with us, headbutting a player, sleeping with players wives... all that stuff is a total non-issue. What's really holding him back is that gif. He's a fucking weapon. And I expect Clarko will be along shortly to explain in great numerical detail, why he was de facto the best manager we ever had.

Fair.

France have uninvited Patel to a meeting to work out how to solve the issue because that useless fuckhead tweeted an open letter of his thoughts about how we sort the problem instead of writing to Macron directly as you would expect any serious leader to do. Courting cheap votes at home > being a serious leader. So once again, our relationship with France is in the pits because Johnson doesn't understand diplomacy on any level.

The title. 10/10

I'm just going to add, to further complicate the choice, that you can buy refurbished laptops on ebay that will very probably outperform what you can buy new.

I agree that this is a pretty tolerant country. However, the only reason we're a more tolerant country than many of the ones you mention is because this country has a sizeable number of left leaning, compassionate people like the ones you're arguing with - not because our right wingers are better than anyone else's. So when you or anyone else goes on about how tolerant this country is, you're really saying how much good the left has done here, and how fortunate it is that we're able to make our presence felt. Our method for doing this, and ensuring that the country is held to account on being tolerant and compassionate, is kicking off at the government day in day out about its relentless bullshit. That is the only reason anyone can even begin to consider this a tolerant country. If we left it to the right we'd be nowhere fucking near it, because our right don't really care anymore than anyone else's right. They look 'better' than those places you mention because we have lifted them up. We educated and shamed them into moving forward. If we ever want to get anywhere, we have to constantly hold their feet to the fire. How do you think we became more tolerant than those places you mentioned ffs. By refusing to let intolerant and despicable actions be acceptable. The moment we say "ah well, we're still better than the Middle East" is the moment we give the government and the bigots permission to start backsliding.

I don't think Sandra (was it Sandra?) would be very impressed with the stance of Villa's CEO on our takeover...

Was under the impression crime was still 'down' compared to 20 years ago?

It's France rather than the EU though. Nations are actually sovereign within the EU, despite what Farage thinks.

Who said the EU was particularly progressive..? It's more progressive than Tory Britain but I wouldn't say it's anything other than centrist in a more general sense. Seems like a pretty routine choice for a centrist administration. I don't think this is the gotcha moment you want it to be.

It's a fair comment but these are the consequences of shit diplomacy. You can't expect to be a total cunt to your neighbours and have them continue doing you favours.

This is broadly why I think blocs like the EU are so important too, but it is a utopian vision. The sad thing about where we are IMO is that there are plenty of us who would be ready to step into this vision - we're just held back by people who are too fearful to embrace it. And realistically, as you say, we'll likely lose hundreds of years of time to these people.

Is it possible to have functioning economic systems under such rules though? How would we sustain ourselves if half the world's population moved to the UK? These are genuine questions rather than challenges.

In this instance I didn't so much mean they're at fault for existing, I meant that they're at fault for trying to traverse the channel in what sounds like a jumbo sized child's inflatable raft.

Tbh I'm not particularly convinced, if we limit this to just a migration issue, that it's anyone's fault other than the people who are organising for these shipments of people to happen. If we move into geopolitics then fair enough, plenty of blame to go around - but beyond that point this really comes down to the people organising it. France have no more a responsibility to police who enters our country than we do to police who leaves there's. It's just a very difficult problem.

If anything, greater transparency would have been more likely to result in the takeover going through - less straightforward to hide the cartel driven bullshit that was preventing it.

Well I see normality has been restored on here. Shaved Cow Monsters are an upgrade on what was going on previously, I suppose...

Why is it the French and not both sides? I don't really understand why it's happened other than the fact that they had a crappy boat. Is the contention that the French are now not trying so hard in terms of controlling for immigrants attempting to cross the channel, and therefore could have prevented this by dealing with the general issue more robustly?

: lol : without the spaces

True but the stats themselves can help develop the conversation between the people who do. I don't think they're a fundamental, but I do think they can add something.

Totally understand your view, as much as I enjoy data myself.

I think having someone in the discussion who has ready access to loads of stats and a willingness to dig them up could genuinely be a real asset on here tbf, it's a shame it's gone sideways. I'm tempted to make a final try at explaining to Clarko why this is so objectionable to the rest of us, but I can already imagine his reply and I've lost the will.

Yeah I think I'll agree with that one actually. Not sure one life should ever be put above another in terms of value (and moreover the guy who did it got 16 years for manslaughter - which doesn't seem like a light sentence to me?) Feels like the government just doing a bit of easy pointscoring. Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe it'll save lives of emergency workers.

Doesn't let you click the article anyway EU says no.