Rayvin

I remember going to Durham a few years back with a friend I invited up from London - born and bred southern lad, fairly sheltered from the realities of life north of Watford Anyway I told him Durham was a really nice little city, nice walk around etc. We got there over a bank holiday weekend and it felt like all of Sunderland had emptied itself into the place. Arrived at 1pm to absolute chaos in the main town areas, drunken fistfights, screaming mackem spawn, it was breathtaking in its depravity. I could tell my mate was reeling from this a bit so I said we'd get some money and head into the quieter bits around the Cathedral - stood in line behind a bloke in a Sunderland top. Waited for about 60 seconds before I realised he was pissing on/into the ATM in a drunken haze. The whole scene was like Mordor had emptied and successfully conquered Minas Tirith. We just got back on the train in the end, and I felt incredibly ashamed of the north for a good few hours... thanks for that Sunderland.

Have any of them acknowledged that as it stands, they are the worst team in the league based on previous league position? Or that they've sold at least one (two?) of their first team players since then, without replacing them? They may spend a fortune and be competent, but I'm not sure where any confidence in that outcome is at present.

I feel like the business culture of Saudi must be really, really cautious. It's been 18 months now in theory, right?

He didn't get signed by City yet so doesn't qualify for inclusion.

I thought this comment was facetious but I've just seen it. There are no words.

Probably just trying to drive up the price for us.

Likewise, impossible to dislike Brighton apart from when you're beating us

The UK is sending the RAF so that we too might entangle ourselves in this chaos. Some little quisling in the Labour cabinet called John Healey has claimed we're moving planes over there to 'protect our assets in Cyprus from Iran' but then added 'we may also support our allies'. There is going to be no persuading me to vote for Labour if they get us mixed up in regime change in Iran, mind.

Why on earth are the US getting involved in this... I thought they were meant to be all about non intervention now ffs.

Is that because of the training ground incident or just in general? Thanks for stopping by with the views btw.

If they want to go after the people complicit in negligence around this then fair enough, though that's not what I've interpreted the purpose of this to be. The recommendations it has cited for improving the situation are the same ones we've had the past 3 times, and it's deeply frustrating to see all these right wingers now running around as if they've scored some sort of huge victory here by compelling the government to look at collecting ethnicity data and consider cultural factors. We had that 'victory' a decade ago in the 2015 one. Having said that, if the point of all of this is to go after people who were previously being protected, then fair enough - I've not seen that written anywhere except in your post so forgive my ignorance on it. If that is the big difference between this one and the others, then fine.

I am sincerely sorry you experienced this. Sounds like it must have been devastating to see as a child... not sure I could have handled it personally. You've got to wonder at the shit people go through sometimes.

This audit they've just done has stipulated that we need a new inquiry to address a few different things that, with the exception of one around the definition of rape, were already in the previous inquiries. Even the one 10 years ago - and yes, including the ethnicity tracking stuff and whatever. If we need an inquiry into anything, it's why the Tories did fuck all about this for the entire time they were in power.

Tosin is on 120k a week at Chelsea. I think stuff like that is probably a factor too tbh.

Fair tbh, I kinda feel bad for them but I suppose they enjoyed it.

What a statement this is from FIFA, well worth everyone's time so far...

I was on it for a while for anxiety but the side effects were intolerable. I'm not sure if I thought it helped or not, maybe it did. It's really hard to say with some of these sorts of things. I just use Beta Blockers now for days when I'm particularly bad and beyond that call it quits. Hope you're well anyway Andrew, but sounds like the right decision to get off them given the side effects. I'm told different drugs can have wildly varying responses from different people, another type may be better for you.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7872pngj2qo We are now going to have yet another inquiry into grooming gangs...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43902372 Just worth remembering whose fault this ultimately is. Trump binned the previous deal with Iran because: 1 - Obama had agreed it. 2 - He wanted to buddy up to Netanyahu who didn't like the Obama deal. 3 - He was listening to hawks in his cabinet who never would have been in office in any respectable administration. Had we not binned that, maybe now we wouldn't be here.

You know, this looks like it might be a proper war. Israel seems very committed to this.

Israel has just announced an order to close all their embassies worldwide, and told Jewish communities to be vigilant and remove anything that would identify them as Jewish. How has what they have done made any Jewish people safer, I will never understand this. At every single turn, they've made them more at risk. As for Trump - this chaos is directly on him IMO, it's the direct cost of the US pulling itself back from the global stage. Israel don't seem to give a fuck what he thinks, in fact it sounds almost like he's been steamrollered here and is just catching up after the fact to save face. The cost of having weak fucking leaders man...

I would once have agreed with you but what the era of Trump is showing us is that the only way a sovereign state can guarantee its safety is ownership of nukes. Ukraine is the other example. Even India and Pakistan de-escalated pretty quickly out of fear of where that whole thing could lead. There is no chance Iran would ever use a nuke, even via a proxy, without fully expecting to get nuked back - it would never happen. And indeed I would argue that they look quite cautious in a lot of their responses most of the time.

How much do we reckon he's actually worth of that figure?

Maybe so but I think we can also backdate some of this to Trump's first term and the scuppering of whatever nuclear arrangement was in place back then. I honestly do wonder if the whole region is safer if everyone has nukes. The only positive here I suppose is that Iran can do fuck all about this really, hard to see how they escalate.

If I was the Iranian government, I'd be doing everything I could to get hold of nukes.