ThunderPower_14

It's also why the campaigns urging people to vote are so important. People that don't vote or vote informally are much more likely to be young people, and young people are much more likely to vote progressively. Something like 3,000,000 eligible people don't vote properly every Australian federal election. That's 3,000,000 out of 17,000,000 eligible people who either aren't enrolled, don't turn up or vote informally. The vast majority of those people are young or low on the socioeconomic scale, both groups who are more likely to vote left of centre. The youth don't have to be particularly passionate, they just have to vote. Last Australian election I spent weeks on facebook sharing things like VoteCompass and telling people if they don't care enough to pay attention, take a 5 minute quiz then vote for whoever the test tells you to vote for. Next election, don't tell people who to vote for, just tell them to vote properly for whoever they like. If everybody votes, the entire Political landscape moves significantly left.

Yep. I reckon you'd find if you held the election again a week later Labour would do even better. This is absolutely a real thing that happens. Lots of the "i'll vote informal/won't vote because my vote wont count" types would actually vote properly if they realised how much their vote might actually matter.

Minority governments are always a disaster for whoever ends up in charge because it's incredibly difficult to get anything done or keep any of your election promises. We had the same issue recently in Australia under the Gillard Labor government. Corbyn might actually be well served to not fight May particularly hard on this one, watch the Conservatives totally implode as May desparately clings to power, then set up a vote of no confidence (or whatever other mechanisms there are to force an election in the UK) and win the subsequent election in a landslide, where real change will be able to be made.

Am I right in saying that the DUP have links to actual terrorist organisations? After the Tories campaigned hard on Corbyn being a terrorist sympathiser? Not only does May not have the good decency to fall on her sword, but she wants to form a coalition with an insane terrorist party. Jesus.

I completely disagree with the notion that we should currently have a manager who we think can compete for the top honours in Europe. That just isn't realistic at all right now, and isn't relevant at all to the title of this thread, getting out of the Championship. I don't think for a second that Bruce is capable of taking us to a Premier League title, but that sort of thing is still several years and a lot of building away. What I do believe he can do is make us really difficult to beat and get us out of the Championship, which is step 1.

Again, his last 3 full seasons in the Championship ended in promotion.

Looking more closely at his record, his last 3 full seasons in the Championship have seen his side get promoted. That's an astonishing record in a difficult league. I'm not sure what more he could do at this level to prove that he's capable. He hasn't fared as well in the PL, but he hasn't exactly been managing established PL sides, and ultimately I don't care what his Premier League record is, his job at this stage is to get us promoted. He might not take us back to "where we'd like to be", but he's definitely got the runs on the board for me to be confident that he can achieve the first step in that, which is promotion to the Premier League.

This is silly. Bruce hasn't spent 20 seasons in the Championship. As I said, I don't think he's leading us to the PL top 4, but he would have a better record in our division than most and he's never had the financial support he has now. The club has been through an incredibly tumultuous few seasons with several managers and a change in ownership, as well as almost the entire squad being turned over. You can't keep going like that, you need to settle and let things gel.

As a left leaning Australian who has little not no vested interest in your election, the only 100% wrong option is to not vote. If you think one party is 51/49 ahead, vote for them.

I've always preferred Ronaldo to Messi. He might be a big fan of himself but every single champion at his level of their chosen sport is. You have to have a staggering self belief to achieve what he has. He's probably the greatest footballer of all time and he's so good to watch.

double post

We're settled. We have the right owner who has shown an overwhelming willingness to invest. We have a manager who has gotten out of this division before with less than what he has now. People might not like his style, and I certainly don't think we'll end up finishing top 6 in the Premier League under Bruce, but he can get us out of the championship. The awful culture of the Lerner era continues to dissipate. We have a good squad full of capable players who have now had some time to gel, and given how turbulent the last 3 or 4 years have been, that can't be understated.

Ugh I need this thread at the moment. I've probably put on 8kg in the last 8 months or so. My content weight range is around the 80-85kg mark, and i'm around 89.5 at the moment. Haven't weighed myself at over 90kg yet but it's not far away if I don't change something. At the moment my discipline is killing me. My missus is pregnant so she's always hungry, but fills up quickly. So she'll say she's hungry and i'll make us both a snack and she'll only have half of hers and i'll end up eating the rest, so I end up eating 150% of something I wouldn't have had any of if I were by myself. I just need to cut snacking out and I know my weight will come down, but it's difficult. I'm only really walking the dogs for exercise at the moment as well which isn't helping.

It's really good. I don't think I like it as much as last years, but that was a high bar. A good sponsor could push it ahead. It's a super clean and classy look, especially with the lion pattern. I'd like to see the hue of the claret shift slightly towards the red end of the spectrum, but it's certainly not purple.

I'm more optimistic about next season than i've been for a long time. We should go in expecting to challenge for automatic promotion. We have a good squad and they've had time to settle and gel. Bruce has done it before and that's enough for me really.

It's a bit of a Powell Motors Homer for me. I'd be happy with a striped kit, but pick either stripes or sleeves. Too many elements going on, especially in 4 colours.

We couldn't wait so we paid for one of those 3D scan things. We weren't particularly interested in the 3D scan but they told us they could tell us gender from 14 weeks so we were happy to do it. My girlfriend is 16 weeks tomorrow and has definitely popped in the last week or so, huge change in the belly since last week. It really is flying by!

I found out yesterday that i'm having a little girl! Very excited. We're 15 weeks along and all is going well. As I bloke I think I thought that I wanted a boy maybe 51/49, but that completely melted away once the nurse told us it was a girl. I'm over the moon

I think we're probably due for a bit of a break from tradition kit, but i'm unsure whether Under Armour will be that bold in only their 2nd year with the club.

I thought season 2 was great In the last episode:

So you got told for sure that your baby had Down Syndrome and that advice was wrong? Bloody hell that's rough. I thought at worst they gave you a probability rating at that point. We just had the scan where they do the initial Down Syndrome test by checking the thickness of the fluid at the back of the neck, which the radiologist said was in the really low risk range. There really is a big sense of relief every time you're told that your baby appears healthy and that everything is as expected. I feel so sorry for parents who have to go through that kind of stress.

I agree totally in general. It's not an easy problem to solve. I'm a huge advocate of flexible work hours where a job allows it. That should happen everywhere. I know it's possible now but i'd love to see more stay at home dads while the mother goes off and continues her career. I think that will start to happen more and more.

I never said there wasn't any wage gap between men and women, I said that the 80% gap is as untrue as it gets. I've discussed this with a lot of both male and female economists and they put the percentile at around 98%. With all the added risks that mostly men take in hard labour I don't know if 2% is much of an issue. The pay gap issue isn't just a male vs a female doing the same job. That has been (mostly) stamped out at this point, but the real and pressing pay gap issue is that women are still expected to put their career on hold if they want to have a family, which results in men being given more promotional opportunity and therefore earning more. It's not just about pay rate, it's about opportunity. Here are some other stats that go the other way: Men are 25% less likely to graduate from our university in Winchester than women - does anyone make noise about this? The system is clearly favouring one gender since first grade where boys are put on pills if they are "boisterous" because feminine behaviour is the benchmark that all students should work to. Yes lots of noise is made and there is heaps being done about it. Western education has changed dramatically and will continue to change dramatically because we've finally realised that different kids learn differently and need to be taught differently. Men are also significantly more likely to take up tradesman type jobs that pay well but don't require a university education. Studies show that men are just as likely to experience abuse as women, by their father, brother, mother, sister, wife or partner. Men just don't speak about it. Women have charities, government funding, government boards and a minister for Women and Equality. Why is there even Women in her title? When men report abuse by their female partners they are more likely to be arrested than their partner. For the same crime a man serves 60% more time in jail than a woman. Men are 4 times more likely to be homeless than women, have you ever heard the term "man's shelter", because I've heard the term "woman's shelter". I'm a police officer and deal with domestic abuse every day. Yes, men are sometimes the victims of domestic abuse. However the vast, vast majority of genuine abuse victims are women. Women's shelters and domestic violence accomodation exists for women because there is a huge demand for it. A domestic violence offender doesn't just hit. He takes away the victim's support network, he takes away the victim's self esteem, and he takes away the financial means for the victim to look after herself. Men's rights activists can cry foul that i've used those particular pronouns but I do it because that's the reality in the vast majority of incidents. Men make up 80% of suicide victims in Western Europe and America, 92% of workplace deaths across the globe, 97% of the deaths in combat and close to 80% of homicide victims. There are countless charities, causes, events etc focused on men's health and there have been for some time. These stats are meaningless fluff. Men dominate manual labour and dangerous workplace jobs, they dominate frontline combat roles. The biggest problem with men's mental health is that men want to be considered big and tough and therefore don't talk about their problems and end up killing themselves before they get any help. The pendulum needed to be swung back in the 50's, but the sense from older feminists and people who experience these new age feminists every day is that they are arguing for points that are getting more and more obsolete. New Age Feminists don't discuss equality, they discuss women. The waters get muddled by young women that have no clue what they are protesting or arguing about, it's hard for the other students to make up their own minds when they are constantly dealing with people like below who will ban people from different viewpoints to hold talks and events. Extreme feminism isn't the norm. The vast majority of feminists are perfectly reasonable. You can't just highlight the extreme ones and try to tar everyone who holds any sort of feminist belief with the same brush. It's absolute garbage. The problem with the internet in 2017 is that everyone has a platform. The reason someone like Milo Yiannopoulos is banned is because he is a professional troll who incites hatred. He does exactly what you've done here, he takes the extreme end of the scale of things like feminists and LGTBI rights activists and then talks about them like they are representative of the entire movement, then calls the entire movement dangerous. His millions of social media followers who don't listen to anything outside of their right wing circle jerk lap up every word, and they attack people. That's what Milo wants, that's what has made him rich and famous. What he does is no different from someone talking about the Neo-Nazis that actually exist in 2017, and trying to argue that they are representative of the entire right wing.

We had our 12 week scan today and everything was apparently looking really good. It's a mixture of joy and relief. So exciting to see the baby kicking around in there. It's been great to see my missus start to feel better as well, she was never physically sick but she felt like garbage for weeks. Also just announced it on facebook with #PiratesAreWild and this image

I really don't see how they can improve on this year's kit. I know it's just simple but it's an all time classic. I'm wearing it as I type this. I have plenty of faith in Under Armour to give us something nice.