Rayvin

He now seems to be about to "clarify" that it wasn't a political decision.

What the fuck crawled onto and then died upon his face...

It's an unverified Twitter user so always worth a bit of skepticism. Obviously I would never trust the government, they've got form, I get that, but still.. This is a huge accusation.

Well it looks like it's not the government based on the way this is snowballing. Utterly disgusting. Actually using pictures of NHS staff without their permission as well. It is indeed out of control.

Who do we trust on this?

I didn't say anything about dictatorships mate, after the last few years in the UK I'm quite confident that the morality slider for democracy versus dictatorships isn't as clear cut as it used to be. We're talking about specific countries/regimes. I assume you could just go on to name whatever it is you're referring to there, but I urge to consider my following point: I am completely defeated on this. My political worldview is shot, I have no hope for the future, I have given up completely. You don't need to spar with me on this, your side won in absolute entirety, and as far as I can tell will not be deposed for a generation at least, by which point I will have entirely disengaged. Facts don't matter, evidence doesn't matter, reality doesn't matter. I will not reply to a further post on this point, but I wish to convey that I respect your opinion. I just don't care what it is anymore

The government certainly didn't.

I'm not even really saying an earlier lockdown would have been an improvement, I'm saying an earlier response to the whole situation, buying equipment, not sending the limited equipment that we had out to China, using proper suppliers instead of Brexit backing manufacturers - all of that would have helped. Listening to the report in 2016 that revealed that the NHS was woefully underprepared instead of burying it because "it was too terrifying for the public to see". There are many failures that span many Tory governments. I'm not saying it's all Johnson's fault, although he failed in his role here, by not acting quickly enough or taking the threat seriously. It's not hindsight if you run a risk assessment in 2016 that highlights everything that would go wrong in a pandemic, ignore it, and then have everything that the risk assessment flagged up, actually go wrong in real life. That's not hindsight. It's incompetence. It's actually dereliction of duty if you ask me.

I'm also curious what a 'losing battle' is, for you - it was never going to kill everyone. This whole thing was about stopping the NHS being overwhelmed. To do that, they've had to decimate the country's economy - had they not brought the health service to its knees, maybe your job and our collective future prospects would have been a lot safer. Maybe this wouldn't have been necessary, or at least not as severe.

You shouldn't subscribe to the polar political arguments at all. I said a few weeks back that once the government realised that this was actually something they had to deal with, their response, especially that of the chancellor, was pretty solid. Unfortunately it's not that period that has cost us. It's the weeks of dithering and then the overall lack of readiness in the system following years of austerity. I am totally open to someone telling me how that is not a factor in this because x,y,z but so far no one has. Austerity has been the bane of everything in recent years and this is just another example of it. Roll on Brexit.

Seriously read that Times article. However "not so bad" you might feel it is, it's still worse than it had to be.

Thanks man. I knew he was generally pretty strong on them so it's nice to be reminded that my vote was indeed anti-Saudi when it actually mattered.

Gonna casually throw Magic the Gathering in there since it's the best devised cardgame ever made. Online now as well, free to play Glad you're enjoying yourself with a new hobby anyway Gem

Howay lads, you've made your point Poor guy is probably terrified.

We don't want the club to be owned by the Saudi Royal Family specifically, which is what it sounds like you're trying to imply. We just want the money. So it's kind of like how with Amazon, you want a product. You're not thinking about who owns it, you're just glad that Amazon can supply you with it. I'm glad that Newcastle United can supply me with some enjoyment finally. So, does it help to think about us actively supporting getting money, in the way that you actively support buying shit for yourself on Amazon or actively wanting to watch boxing? We don't care who is providing it, you don't care who is providing it, we're all just consumers. If the Premier League fit and proper person test passes them, then they meet the requisite standards. That's not our fault, or their's.

I would contend that we do not in fact have a universal understanding of human rights, given that several countries including both the US and Saudi Arabia refuse to sign up to the charter on them. Despite that, I still think they're generally a shameful, despotic and ultimately hypocritical bunch. But I see so much of that particular flavour of things around me in my own country that it's beyond me to complain that they're legally investing funds in a legally owned business through a legal channel, all carried out with the blessing of the government of the UK, and therefore it's people (otherwise, surely, it would be stopped by some kind of legal measure we put in place, as a population, to ensure that this kind of thing couldn't happen? And if we don't have such a measure, surely that would imply that as a collective, we, the great people of the UK, do not give a fuck except when it's useful as a tool for beating people we disagree with). Your problem is with British free market capitalism, not NUFC fans. I won't stop criticising Saudi Arabia. I won't stop enjoying Newcastle United having the money to be competitive once again.

Thank you for this, my moral purity will now be saved I'll be living in a tent in the Scottish wilderness somewhere, but at least I'll be holding myself up to an ethical standard only previously achieved by football journalists and lost mackems.

My opinion of the Saudis hasn't changed. They are immoral based on western cultural norms. As is the USA, as is the UK, as is Mike Ashley. Now what? I just keep finding reasons to be miserable? I didn't make this a race to the bottom, society did. This is a football club, not a political movement.

My responsibility to affect this stuff happening is at the voting booth. That's where my responsibility ends. My conscience is clear on that front. Beyond that, I can't control this so I'm going to find the positives in it. You do you.

I think it's fair to say that the journalists aren't winning hearts and minds from our lot on this. We're going to have a club-wide siege mentality at this rate. As Strawb says, thick skins from here on out. The fact that they're going for the fans is what gets me in particular. We live in a country where the government won't stand up to Saudi Arabia, where the voters don't care about it enough to change that, and where a series of businesses fall over themselves to absorb Saudi money left and right anyway. But no, it's a bunch of long suffering football fans who have to take the moral stand and who will be pilloried for not doing so. Fuck off. Have the balls to change the whole fucking system or just fuck off. As far as I'm concerned, this is our late stage capitalism dividend.

Daily Mail running that Times story too.. Not just our side of the fence anymore. Turns out this is actually enough for some Tories to open their eyes. Gove incoming as PM?

Yes. I have a real feeling of dread that I know which way that's going to go though.

It's also this anti-expert thing coming home to roost. The government is truly representative of the people who voted for it in the sense that as a grouping they are united by rejection of people who actually know what they're talking about. As if all of these complex scientific concepts can just be dealt with through 'common sense'. COVID has exposed the utter insanity of that position immediately.

That Times article is creating a bit of a storm on our side of the political fence. And it is Indeed interesting coming from the Times. What I find particularly interesting about it is that there's very little in it that we didn't technically know more or less as it was happening. People on here had a more serious and well informed grasp of the risks posed by COVID than the government. And we weren't alone. Millions of people could see it for what it was. How are we supposed to trust a government that failed where so many ordinary people succeeded? They actually, genuinely, are incompetent. In the extreme.

I never check this thread but tbh I can quite believe what Renton is saying. If you need any support self publishing anything CT, just give me a shout.