MessiWillSignForVilla

No need to read the story online when Phil's face was plastered on every screen in the country.

To be fair, if Sanson is injured, there isn't anyone else except the U23s, and they played yesterday, so probably better to have the senior players.

This is going to sound weird, but at the end of the day, racism is good for these platforms, which is why they barely deal with it. Whereas say the financial implications of people uploading football highlights mean they will create ways to take them down much more easily or even automatically. They can bloviate all they like about equality and fairness, and how they're committed to stamping out this vile abuse, but they're multi-billions companies, all they care about is making money. And just to explain my thinking on this, when a player gets racially abused and it's reported on, what's right there in the headline and throughout the article? It's their company name. When players get the racial abuse, what do they do with it? They post it to Instagram/Twitter. When people are outraged about the abuse, what do they do? They take to Twitter or Instagram, they like, share and comment on the original post, do the same to other posts on the subject and post their own thoughts on how wrong it is, and demand that something is done about it. Or, if they're a clearing in the woods, throw more abuse hoping that their's will be the next one shared and seen by the world. What don't people do? Stop using the platforms that enable this abuse. All anyone does when this happens is give these companies loads of national/international advertising and drive engagement on their platforms, all for free! You'd think this negative press would affect their stock price at least, but Facebook hit it's all time high this week, and the only two times Twitter had a higher share price was a couple months after going public before it halved in 2014, and a couple months ago when they hit their all time high. If it's not hurting them financially, they don't care. Then a couple of months ago, Facebook announced tougher measures would be taken, why? Because a week earlier the government mentioned the posiiblity of bringing in fines that could amount to billions of pounds and possibly even criminal sanctions for the higher ups. Suddenly there was a financial threat to it, and they started to take it seriously. It's why I personally find the solution of requiring an ID to sign up so annoying, because it lets these companies off the hook and allows them to pretend that there just wasn't anything they could do about it, but then want everyone to ignore that you can get banned from Twitter for calling someone a word removed, because calling someone a word removed doesn't generate news headlines or cause an outpouring of support on their platforms. And if anyone's thinking why would these companies that often express socially liberal views possbily accept something like racism on their platform, just remember that Facebook allowed unhinged conspiracy theories to be purposefully targeted at sections of it's user base for years, purely because it drove engagement and made them money. I hope the government weren't bluffing with those fines, though I'm not holding out much hope, as it's the only real way to deal with this, to hit these companies financially until they take it seriously. *takes tin foil hat off*

That's awful refereeing. Something vaguely similar happened in our game when a Fulham player just fell over before Watkins was played through, why not just play on and then ask VAR to check it?

Pretty damning poll for Labour. Also, super weird that there's loads of support for policies proposed under Corbyn, maybe more flag waving isn't the answer?

Even if he's not injured it doesn't look good, as it doesn't look like he fully trusts his knee yet.

England remind me of Villa under Bruce. Flat-track bullies who will beat worse teams purely because they have a superior squad, but they have no identity, no plan and no clue how to break down a tough opposition., then when they come up against a team that has these things they crumble. Southgate will get us to the QF in the summer, maybe even SF if the draw is kind, but the moment we get drawn against anyone decent, we'll be out.

Brilliant cross from Shaw.

Yeah, well, I'm not Scottish so it's fine

It's quite funny that the party has a Gaellic name, but Salmond is already mispronouncing it, which isn't a great look. It should be closer to A-Luh-Ba apparently, not Al-Ba. It would be like Plaid Cymru leaders pronouncing it Cim-Ru.

I think it's based off of this map, with the yellow constituencies being "the North", which itself is based off the historial boundaries for the Kingdom of Northumbria, hence bits of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire which are more typically in the Midlands. Although the actual Government report (Thinktank report, not the Governments) I referred to is more specifically about the UK regions of North West, North East and Yorkshire & the Humber.

That's my take away from them too. There's seems to be an assumption that the North is actually right wing because of Brexit, when I think in reality, many Northern voters just despise Westminster and just want their voices to be heard, so will support anyone willing to help their voices be heard.

Thought I'd drag this post up from last week, as I've been watching them on Twitter since I saw this, and it looks like they may actually be gaining some steam, although I admit it's hard to try to figure out just how much of that is translating out of the twitter bubble and also how much I may be blinded by my own bias as I would love for them to get traction. But a few interesting things that I've noticed; - They've already gained 33k followers on Twitter, 10k of which were in the past week. For comparison, Lawrence Fox's Reclaim party has 45k, with a two month headstart and multiple National TV interviews to cry about how he was being cancelled, whereas I have seen barely anything outside of this thread and twitter about the NIP, and they could reach the same total within a few weeks if their current rate doesn't slow down. Again however, it is difficult to see how much this will translate outside of the twitter bubble. (Question for the Twitter users on here, have you seen the FreeTheNorth or NorthernIndependence hashtags trending? Or is that just my algorithms?) - Andy Burnham (or at least one of his staff) retweeted a #NorthernIndepence tweet, which has since been un-retweeted, and liked a tweet from the NIP account offering to work together, which last time I checked was still there. - It looks like Thelma Walker who was Labour MP for Colne Valley from 2017-2019 will be selected to run in Hartlepool, and they have been trying to "poach" Labour councillors as well. A slight caveat here though, they haven't actually been registered yet as a party, but say they are awaiting approval from the Electoral commission. If they aren't registered in time, they say they'll back an independant and register them at a later date. - They want to stand candidates in the Liverpool local elections and have been asking for Liverpudlians who would want to be nominated. (I imagine they would stand in all Northern local elections, but they're currently hammering the council takeover pretty hard). - Rumours have been going around that 1) Labour activists have been telling people in Hartlepool that the NIP are anti-Brexit and pro-Migration, which the NIP have claimed is not true, although they say they are anti-Migrant Lies, and that Westminster is at fault for the Norths issues, not migrants, so perhaps what Labour said is only half true, albeit twisting the point, but that's just politics. And 2) that there are genuine concerns within Labour HQ that the NIP could split the vote in Hartlepool and pull in a lot of the younger voters in the area, which for me kind of begs the question, if you're worried a left wing party will split your voter base, why seemingly work so hard to ostracise them? To me, if both rumours even have a hint of truth, it suggest to me that Labour are very worried that the NIP could become a sreious contender in the North, not just a joke party. - Outside of twitter, although again a somewhat unreliable way to gauge actual support, with the bookies they are currently in the region of 20/1-50/1, with all but one site putting them above both Reform (Brexit) and the Lib Dems (BetFair are a massive outlier having the Lib Dems at 17/2). On top of that, currently 31% of all bets have been put on them, which is slightly higher than Labour's 30% and just behind the Tories 33.33%. It will be interesting to see how that changes closer to the by-election and if any of this will be reflected in the polling. - In terms of feasibility, the North has a bigger economy than Sweden and the government (Actually, this was an independent thinktank, not the government) has stated that an independent North would be the 10th largest economy in Europe. It is also bigger than Scotland, Wales and NI combined, all of which have their own independence campaigns that seem to be getting ever closer and closer to independence (or Unification with Ireland in NI's case). They would also have bigger economies than nations such as Denmark, Finland, Czechia and Romania, all of which have Universal Heathcare, Free University and Nationalised Railways. This ended up being a bit longer than I anticipated, and I wasn't sure whether to post in here or the fringe parties thread, so apologies to the mods if it's in the wrong place, but I think there's the potential they could be a serious surprise in Hartlepool, whether that be actually winning (massive longshot) or by just managing to get third place (seems plausable to me). Personally, I really like them and hope they do well, even if it's at the expense of Labour. I've always been centre-left/left wing, but it wasn't until I moved up north for Uni (first Salford, then Northumbria) that I really solidified my left wing views. I thought I knew what the poorest places in the UK were like growing up in the midlands, at most 20 minutes away from some really rough areas, but when I went to Uni, I realised just how bad this country's poverty problem was, and it was shocking to see so many of those areas left behind. For me, I still feel like the lessons from the referendum haven't been learned by either major party. Whilst the Tories are riding the Brexit wave currently, it will only last so long until people realise they are being ignored just like they have been for the past 4 decades, whereas if Labour really believe that the lesson from the past 5 years is that they need more flag waving, I can't see them ever getting back in to power, especially since it seems pretty obvious to me that the 2019 election was a vote primarily on Brexit and not policy. Saying all this, I'm fully expecting them to get about 700 votes and not even get a look in, I hope not though. Plus it's made me kind of want a Mercian Independence Party too!

That was a nice bit of link up play between Ramsey and Chukwumeka, and a decent finish too.

The only major difference I can see is that the Tories are all for Corruption...

ironically, the meaning originates from the Republican party opposing the spread of slavery in Lincoln's campaigns with the Wide Awakes movement. From there it was picked up by the black community in the early 20th century and morphed into "Stay Woke" and has a deep connection with political and societal awareness within the black community going back decades. Then as with a lot of things in America, it was picked up by White Americans and the meaning got diluted.

Apparently Sheff Utd want to hire a DoF because of this, and Wilder wasn't having it which has caused the rift with the board. Which is fair enough imo, they're best XI still has 8 (9 with O'Connell fit) of the players that were with them in the Championship, and a few that were with them in League 1 too, and as you say, spent £50m but seemingly not upgraded the team.

A couple guys on YouTube managed to get 4 royal "experts" to give interviews and comment about the interview with all of them massively condemning them both, and yet all four admitted they hadn't actually seen it yet, it's bonkers. (If anyone's seen it, it's the same two guys that flew Katie Hopkins out to Prague so they could present her with a word removed award)

"Wearing jewelry gifted by despots around the world" Could've just said it was a family heirloom...

What makes that even better is that the difference with Mexican Coke isn't even a thing in the UK, both recipes have pretty much the same ingredients, it's only US coke that uses high fructose corn syrup because it's massively subsidised over there, so he's just copied some random American opinion, presumably in an attempt to seem "cool".

Which is weird since Garde had a better ppg than Sherwood that season with the exact same squad. They were both shit, but I really hate this idea that's been creeping up in recent years that Sherwood was harshly treated or could've done better that season.

Every Leeds game there's always comments about how shit their pitch is, so why don't they just move somewhere, anywhere, for the rest of the season? It's not like there's much point in playing at Elland Road right now, and the pitch is getting to the point of being dangerous. Just move somewhere and install a new pitch.

Right on cue...

So we should have three players for every position?

About as much as saying they've been in promotion form since he joined? Just pointing out that saying that is pretty much irrelevant.