Straggler

And what happened to the goalkeepers? They are awful.

I'm not sure this is a very good game at the moment. Played last night for a short time. My first game ended 5-5. Scoring goals is stupidly easy for the user and for the AI. I'm not feeling a simulation here, it is very arcade game IMO. Will put some more time in it to get a better feel, but not impressed with gameplay so far.

The first time I ever sold a home, I had one of these landlords introduced to me by my agent. They offered about £20k under the asking price (I was asking for £180k) and the agent strongly recommended that I accept the deal. At that point they had not shown my home to anyone. I fired the agent that same day, the whole arrangement stunk and I ended up selling only a few weeks later at over £200k (£212k I think) with a different agent. I hate to think how many people get taken advantage of in this way. A £50k swing to me was simply 25% of all of my assets in the world, it made a huge difference in the house I could afford to move to and the area I lived in, even the school my kids ended up going to was in the balance. To the landlord and the agent it was small change, to me it was a life changing amount of money. If I had trusted them my life could have been very different.

Bet she thought local radio presenters were all smashy and nicey so would have an easy time of it. What she came up against were a bunch of people who don't rely on access to politicians for their careers so are happy enough to ask the awkward question and call out the BS. In part this morning is further exposing how pathetic mainstream media is at holding politicians to account.

Have you heard Truss this morning? She has no clue. She cannot answer any questions sensibly. Has no recognition that what she has done has made things worse. An absolute nightmare.

The bubbles can absolutely do one. Would disable it in a heartbeat if the option was there

I don't mind that so much. I just imagine that Ellis is the chairman

Yeah the amount of time that has gone into minor things that make no difference is silly with basic bugs still littering the game. That Champions League glitch forced me to forfeit a League One game that I would otherwise have played. It hasn't ruined the save, but had it been a more crucial game I would have been properly pissed off.

Any bugs spotted in career mode yet?

Crazy isn't it. I've read what the IMF have to say and funnily enough, they don't mention Starmer once.

If they do ditch Truss a GE has to be the next step. This cannot go on

The tax cuts help almost no one. The amount saved in tax is dwarfed by the negative impact on the economy. The tanking of the pound plus all the already known problems of Brexit, inflation, fuel prices etc make this tax savings evaporate even as they are implemented. The only people who are doing well out of this are the people who bet against us on the markets. For the maths to work out in your favour you already have to have so much money that you wouldn't notice the difference anyway.

I watched reruns of game of thrones last night. I say that as someone who turned into forest green Vs Exeter today just because it was on.

Yep, they totally f'd us in every conceivable way. I'm looking at leaving too, and our choices have gone from very many easily available destinations to points systems, most of which I don't qualify for. I could get into the USA, but not interested in jumping from pan into fire.

Saw the first 3 episodes of Andor last night. Really enjoyed it. They are spending time building story, it is well acted, writing is good and it looks great. Not flashy great, but lived in great. It looks real enough to not jar you out of the story. Fan service BS is at a minimum too, which is a good thing.

It's the deal the NHS is being softened up for. US private healthcare is positively tumescent with the idea of getting its hands on our NHS. Loosing the NHS into private hands would be even worse than Brexit IMO and it is happening Infront of our eyes.

So true. This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game. At release it was a really good FIFA. The patches absolutely made the gameplay worse.

I enjoy the fallacy that the Royal family stay out of politics, or that the power they have is only ceremonial. Sure they don't do much out loud, but on the quiet in the background on matters of real estate, taxes etc they have a very powerful and direct route into policy makers that they are only too happy to use. Also breaking the law as a Royal is pretty much ok. Just imagine what would happen to you if you drove into a bus stop full of waiting passengers. They don't care much for politics it's true, but when it comes to cold hard cash they are happy to dip a toe in the water. One example

For the work they will be doing in Ukraine they are already overqualified.

Speaking of America and Trump, if Putin can hold out until the next general election in the states, the whole global outlook could change remarkably for him. A Republican win could really put the brakes on aid into Ukraine. If Trump is the President again (which is a real possibility) then the needle will shift remarkably. Remember Trump was always Putin's little bitch, he described the invasion of Ukraine as "very savvy" and "genius". Whilst Trump would contradict himself and shift opinions on almost everything, often in the same day, he was 100% consistent in his praise of Russia and his absolute obsequiousness towards Putin (it may be the only thing he was 100% consistent on). Even if Trump is not the candidate, his influence still runs deep in the Republican Party. The unwavering support and enormous financial / military aid heading towards Ukraine may only be there for as long as the Democrats are. It puts a further time pressure on kicking the Russians out.

Yeah, I very nearly name checked Nori as the only bright spark in the whole thing.

Sorry but I just can't get over how clunky it all feels. There are no conversations in this show, there are just actors waiting for their turn to deliver a line. The chemistry is zero. It is dead, inert, lifeless. I don't give a stuff about sticking to the lore and all that, all I wanted was a fun show with orks and wizards and elves and dwarfs. It is not fun.

Episode 3 was so bad I couldn't finish it. The dialogue problems if anything have got worse. It's so stiff and lifeless which is compounded by the clanking wooden delivery. Lots of new characters this time and almost all of them jar you out of the world because you can see the acting. The direction didn't help either. So many strange decisions, from the perfume ad half way through, to the unnatural positioning of the actors as they delivered lines. So often they face away from each other during conversation. Functionally they would not be able to hear the other and it's just not what people do. In a serious conversation eye contact is important. It all starts to scream "stand on mark X to deliver line 1 then move to mark y to deliver line 2" which may give them too much credit as most lines seem delivered with the actor frozen in place stiffly reading words they don't really understand the meaning of. The one noteness of the show remains too. In the human and elf world the the emotional range goes all the way from serious to stoic. Anger, is almost always demonstrated by the actor going from serious deadpan to more serious in a slightly lower voice and they ALL do it in the same way. The only exception to the rule is the harfoot crew who now seem imported from a primary school harvest festival. For a community that have been together for a thousand years they sure do have a spread of accents going on. Its just all so flat. I was about 50 minutes in when I started checking to see how long there was left. I was checking because I was bored. When I realized how bored I turned it off. I'm sure the episode ended with some cliff hanger or big reveal, but my big reveal was that I just don't care to find out

It's not just really those reasons. It's more that the vote to the left of the Tories is split. The country doesn't vote Conservative we are a majority to the left of them, but our form of democracy keeps on spitting out Tory majorities despite this. It is literally harder for labour to get into power.