BigJim

52 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think "we" (peaceful people of whatever faith or none) have a problem in that we keep getting attacked by twisted muslimist barm-pots. The us and them isn't west and Islamic world, it's peaceful people and wackos. 

 

Agree with the sentiment, I just worry slightly about the terminology. Barm-pots and wackos just make it seem like the problem is down to a miniscule minority. And while they clearly are such in the western target countries, they are driven/inspired by very large numbers. Their lifespan is short, but it seems every one that falls is replaced by two or three. 

2 minutes ago, HeyAnty said:

What happened when Arsenal bid a quid above Suarez release clause and plop told them to do one?

I assume it's all to do with what the player wants, once the figure in the release clause is met?

53 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Can't agree, had a little affection for NRC but he was more like an athletic Bambi on ice. Passing was his kryptonite. Gana is at worst average in every department, a black Westwood if you will.

i don't think he's anything like Westwood. Gana's a great ball winner but pretty poor passer. So yes, a lot in common with NRC, whoever said that. Westwood, on the other hand is like, er, nobody else i can think of.

18 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

How many times a day do I need to say that then? And who do I need to say it to? Is it alright if I just say it to my wife, or do I need to sign up for a Twitter account to write it on there? 

It's self-evidently obvious that people waiting for a fraction of a second to find out just a little bit about the incident before giving an opinion is not remotely the same as approving of the action. 

It's self-evidently obvious that no-one suggested it was. I was responding to a comment that we should examine "everything that has happened and all that can be found out " before reacting. Sorry if it has hit a nerve with you..

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I don't really know what that has to do with my post.

I draw a worrying inference from your post about a lack of swift public condemnation implying some sort of sympathy with the perpetrators. I think this thread has been down that road all too often.

Your post implied that people should wait until all the facts are discovered before reacting to such things. I maintain that it is important to condemn quickly, but without making wild accusations. And the condemnation needs to come from every quarter. Don't worry - it's a simple concept: Evil will triumph if good men remain silent, etc.

9 minutes ago, snowychap said:

One would hope that responses from western governments, agencies et al. would be formulated after looking at everything that has happened and all that can be found out rather than merely 'a fairly good indication of the thought process' of a couple of murderers.

Quite so, but at the same time it is important to move swiftly to condemn atrocities wherever and by whoever they are committed. We don't need to know the who or why to proclaim the foulness of the deed, without pointing fingers, and it needs to be proclaimed by all quarters of society to ensure that everybody knows the perpetrators have no sympathisers.

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

Can't see him starting at Sheffield Wednesday then, brace yourself for Cissokho....

True, quite a few games for the reserves on the cards before they risk him in the first team. Cissokho did surprisingly well against Nantes though, so perhaps we shouldn't fret too much, plus we've also got newly found dead ball specialist Joe B. to fall back on.

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

To be honest, I don't think it's fair to give one of our hardest working players with one of the best attitudes stick for maybe being deflated towards the end just like the rest of the team, especially after how he fought his way back. I would rather judge him for the majority as a pose to the hiccups. (Strictly attitude and character speaking, not ability)

Agreed, plus anyone who saw the Nantes game will surely have noticed how most of our approach play, in the first half anyway, was down the right involving Hutton. I suspect he's in the plan for the season.

45 minutes ago, kurtsimonw said:

My dad went to school with Pete Colley and he saw him at a friends 50th tonight. Says Pete told him to expect "big news" regarding a striker tomorrow, or possibly Monday. 

No ITK or anything. Just passing on what has been said to me. 

Striker yesterday, striker tomorrow ...

19 minutes ago, VillanousOne said:

when i broke both legs my parents made me drag myself 26 miles to school, only the school had burnt down 10 years ago and I say parents....well

Try telling that to the kids today...

Winning is clearly not the MAIN aim in pre-season.

But I wouldn't say the result is of no importance. Winning always builds confidence.

Either way it's going to be RDM's toughest call so far, unless Stan himself decides he can't make it.

1 hour ago, ferguson1 said:

Think you'll find Terry is left footed in the main.  Like I said earlier, be interesting to see how RDM sets us up. 

Right footed when he missed that penalty in the CL final. Be understandable if he'd switched feet since then though :)

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What I want to know is, why aren't we in for Pogba?

Coz we got Tish.

18 hours ago, snowychap said:

It doesn't take a genius to guess what people are trying to convey when they use the term so it didn't need explaining.

I asked, "What utter cock came up with the term ['generation snowflake']?" I'm going to take a punt that it wasn't Fiona Meredith in the Belfast Telegraph.

Has whoever it is stopped patting themselves on the back yet so that they can take the applause that they think they deserve?

Fiona Meredith is wildly off the mark anyway if she thinks this phenomenon is something new to today's "younger generation."   I clearly remember a faction of students at Birmingham University going into revolt to ban Enoch Powell from speaking there around 1970.

1 hour ago, El-Reacho said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/11366206/Gary-Neville-The-era-of-the-gaffer-is-over.html

This is a good article - it doesn't mention Stone by name but shows how the analysts work. I don't think they have anything to do with scouting players.

Excellent article, makes you wonder at Koeman a bit, moving away from what sounds like as good a set up as he would find anywhere.

I think Gueye's a terrific player and all other things being equal would love to keep him. However, iirc he hasn't shown a particular interest in playing for the club, on the contrary seems keen to get away. If that is the case I certainly hope he goes.

5 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

You may be right.

However, German car manufacturers are not the government. There are countervailing considerations for the German government too. If they give us free trade and no free movement, and then if many of the Leavers on here are right and European governments decide they want to follow our example, that would damage the German economy far more than tariffs on car imports. 

But would the EU be obliged or inclined to make exactly the same concessions to other leavers that they make to us?

24 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

They are not going to refuse customers but you will end up with a similar deal to what we have in Australia where all your exports are subject to tariffs, you won't get free access any more. 

Basically it comes down to this:

Why would they offer a county who leaves better terms than a country who stays? 

The implications of that are obvious. 

Indeed, it looks very straightforward, but is it really? Tariffs work both ways: German manufacturers won't want to see their exports penalised, or so the argument goes. And Britain may be in a much better bargaining position in this respect than other potential deserters, so the point about setting precedents doesn't necessarily apply.

3 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

The U.K. needs to get a unanimous agreement from all 27 nations.

If just one nation decides they don't like the terms the UK is offering they have the right to veto. 

How likely do you actually think it will be that all 27 countries decide it is fine for the UK to keep free access to the market whilst also restricting the free movement of people?

I think you might find that some of the smaller nations may tend to vote the same way as one or two of the bigger nations. They would never agree on anything otherwise.

18 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There's certainly an argument that the result also legitimises it.

The same person that voted Leave because of the grim racist elements of the campaign and/or their already established racism could look at the result as confirming their position as correct (or having won, or whatever).

There's also the rejection of Europe that is implied by the Leave vote itself also legitimises xenophobia.

Can't really agree, I'm afraid.

But, as usual, we're straying from the point which was that the action of voting Leave absolutely did not legitimise, condone, enable or otherwise provoke racist action, and to suggest that it did is both wrong and dangerous. The Leave voters (of which I was not one, fwiw) are not actually to blame for this, much as some would like to make it appear so.

8 minutes ago, Chindie said:

When you have a bizarrely popular political party producing a poster campaign stealing Nazi imagery, and a campaign for a referendum that essentially became a running discussion on Othering on nationalist lines, it's hard not to conclude that the referendum legitimised racism. The Leave campaign and the discussion that came from it tied into discourse and language that is familiar to racists and xenophobes, and showed them authority figures openly using and espousing views they normally wouldn't hear in public. That legitimises those viewpoints and lo and behold, Poles have cards telling them to go home, Newcastle town centre had a banner openly advocating repatriation and many people of non white descent have morons telling them to get out we voted to get rid of you. Including kids .

No doubt the campaign had many extremely distasteful elements. But the VOTE did not legitimise anything, except possibly withdrawing from the EU. I'm sure you can see the difference between the campaign and the vote.

Just now, RimmyJimmer said:

 

Is that like muslims accepting the cost of their religious views because a mindless few terrorists act in the name of Islam?

Pathetic comment

Not just pathetic.

Or course it is everyone’s responsibility to speak out against all manifestations of racism everywhere, especially of the vile type that have been reported following the result of the referendum.

But it is wrong and dangerous to state that the Leave vote has legitimized and enabled racist actions.

2 hours ago, Zatman said:

he got 6 goals last season and 5 of them came in one week vs Notts County and a woeful Sunderland team

Should have sold him there and then.

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

They're eminently deniable. The entire project is founded on using business to secure a peaceful Europe. Business isn't federalist. Everything it does aims to make trade easier. It's never particularly approached it from a federalist standpoint.

And as said, even if it wanted to, it'd run into a car crash of national sovereignty debacles it couldn't overcome. So it hasn't even attempted it.

I don't need to reread the history of the European Union. I've a well thumbed selection of books on my shelf that are testament to that. Would you like to borrow them? You might need them more than me.

I think your well thumbed books may need updating. Do you remember Giscard D'Estaing? Or perhaps he was before your time. When he was involved in drawing up the first constitution, he disguised his intentions:

"I knew the word 'federal' was ill-perceived by the British and a few others. I thought that it wasn't worth creating a negative commotion, which could prevent them supporting something that otherwise they would have supported," he told the Wall Street Journal. "So I rewrote my text, replacing intentionally the word 'federal' with the word communautaire, which means exactly the same thing."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1435550/Giscards-federal-ruse-to-protect-Blair.html

No, no federalist pretensions there. 

I don't know why I'm bothering. I never once said the EU was a federation, I said it was increasingly federalist compared with what we joined in the 70's. Why you saw fit to launch into a lengthy denial is beyond me.