Renton

I find it staggering this is only now the case. Just walking through town before, and fuck me it's like a set from the Last of Us. All the restaurants, cafes, shops, are deserted. Everything looks so run down. Shuttered retail space everywhere. Northumberland street, once the second busiest retail street in England after Oxford street, is a fucking dive. Cracked paving everywhere, interspersed with bare tarmac where they couldn't afford to replace it. Beggars and tramps on every corner. At my local Co-op in Tynemouth yesterday there's this homeless person who was drinking vodka neat out a bottle in fornt of the school kids, at 8.30 in the morning (and no, it wasnt me!). I mean, when I think back to the New Labour years, did I just imagine things were so much better? The town was busy, thriving, people had money to spend? Not saying it was perfect but my God, I reckon if you could do a side by side comparison it would be striking. And all the time we're paying more and more taxes for worse and worse services. And only NOW are people waking up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the tories are fucking SHITE at running the economy.

I know a lot of people aren't supportive of HS2, but what a farce this is turning out ot be. They're delaying building it, even though this will cost more, even before you factor in the delayed benefits, presumably to hand the costs to Labour. London to Manchester, if it ever gets built, will be complete some time in the 2040s. More than 30 years to build a railway. London Leeds and the NE, permanently scrappped, so we get no benefit at all. Yet it was the Eastern leg which made the most sense financially. As a country, we just can't handle infrastructure developments any more. We even need the French and Chinese to build our power stations. Fucking pathetic.

Ahh, the good old days. He used to terrify me as a kid, even more than Mr Baxter or Miss McCluskey.

All this is nonsense. The truth is the cafe had a spotless full length mirror.

One of life's greatest mysteries right there Why the fuck were the hedgerows of England in the 1980s chocker full of jazz mags? Nearly every lad, and most lassses, got their first glimpse of a hairy pie through the serindipitous discovery of a Fiesta or Razzle magazine in some old garden bush. Along with white dog shit, it's a conundrum that will never be solved.

"World leading". Dubious ethics aside, there's often a good reason other countries haven't introduced policies like this. Iirc Denmark have dabbled but have given up on grounds of practicality. So far the Rwanda policy has cost us £160 million. As nobody has been sent there, and realistically that can't happen until 2024, that's an infinite amount of money per person deported. Using economic terms I use in my day job, that doesn't appear to be cost-effective. But let's say they succeed in their aims. The capacity of the program is currently 200. So that's £800,000 per person, with the deportaion of less than 5% of the current backlog. I don't know what the government's willingness to pay threshold is for this policy, but we could fund a fuck ton of life-saving treatments with that amount of money, literally save childrens' lives. Meanwhile Braverman claims this is a deterrent, whilst at the same time painting Rwanda as as some kind of African utopia. Pure cognitive dissonance from the cunts again. Come on Labour, this is ludicrous. If you're not willing to tackle this head on, you may as well give up. Just campaign againstit stating the tories are more interested in sending asylum seekers to paradise than saving the lives of sick children. 👍

Will Joe public be happy spending a million quid a person on this policy I wonder?

The BBC are more subtle in their gaslighting than yhe government, but removal of even the smallest words can change the tone and meaning of a sentence. And of course, Stanley Johnson is set to receive a knighthood from his son while we're at it. Nothing remotely wrong about this, is there? I've just come to the conclusion all Bruces are cunts (not you ozzies).

Aye, and Liverpool losing against Bournemouth too. And Casemiro being suspended. Tbh I'm just exhausted finally being invested in it again. Bring back the FCB and the cabbage.

That was actually a bit odd. I mean, we're 2-1 up in a nervy match with seconds to go, and we send up our best CB who can't score to save his life (except against us) to receive a corner? NOt complaining like, I prefer keeping the pressure on.

I did, but tbf you were absolutely categoric that we were out of the race. I've never thought we were (still don't), but new information comes available with each game. And despite us playing some good stuff and winning yesterday, my own personal estimates of the probability of us finishing top 4 have actually declined after yesterday, cos the problem are still there and I am doubting we manage a sustained run.

On a related note, is ChatGPT really this good?

I fucking love that tweet. It will fucking incense the lunatics in the tory party, but what can they say?

Apollogies for this apalling post. This was only ever going to end one way. Although part of me does think, if your plan is simply to destroy the BBC, then you may have lost the battle but gained a strategic advantage in the war. It's working cos I'm so fucked off with the BBC being part of Project Gaslighting I can countenance scrapping it, something I would never have considered a few years back.

ARe you calling Botman a bottler?

Agreed but the bolded bit isn't really resolved, and add to that Bruno's form is a bit suspect. Also we have started conceding goals (not many, but still). On the positive ASM and Murphy are looking good, and I've liked what I 've so far seen from Gordon. We absolutely deserve to be in contention for the CL place but at the same time I feel we have impostor syndrome after so many years in the wildnerness as well as this really happening because Chelsea, Liverpool, and SPurs have all been unexpectedly shit. Got to fight for every point now but that is one thing we've always done under Howe.

Yeah, that's about it. Another thing the commentator said in the second half after a possible penalty incident in our box (a push I think, honestly my memory for this type of thing is poor) is that the ref can't give us a penalty after the first half "mistake"! Whilst this is undoubtedly true, because that's how human psychology works, it's just fucking wrong, surely every incident needs to be considered on its own merits. But overall I think the shit decisions evened out and the result was fair. Going gforward I can't say that performance fills me with hope for a top 4 finish. When we were good we were very good, but we struggled for a fair bit of the second half and we're still finding it difficult to convert our chances. Forest away is a banana skin (they're good at home) and then the test will be ManU at home. Get 4 points out of these two games and we're back on, fail and I am losing hope for the CL, but Europe may still be possible.

So the Pope incident, looked like he made contact and was a penalty for me, purely because it was in the box. I don't get why it would be a red card for Pope though? I don't think Jiminez had the ball under control or would have scored. But the commentator (not sure who) was saying not only should it have been a red, he should have got a 4 match ban!? How does that work?

Terrible day for the mackems, tempered only slightly by their team winning.

Hurrah. Rumours of tbd's demise in the smoke are unfounded!

Their Goalie was wearing lilac tights. Nowt said by the G man I noticed.

Yeah, the best and worst of us this game, stressed out to fuck watching it. Think it's because our defence no longer looks impregnable. Was nice while that lasted...

Thank fuck has to be the prevailing feeling here.

Botman man.