HanoiVillan

The USA is a big country, so it's kind of inevitable that mistakes will be made somewhere. There clearly has been a significant number (too many, much too many, of course) of mistakes, especially in New York where the Board of Elections is considered a chaotic mess. Some of these mistakes will be clerical errors, some unknown percentage will be fraud. But Clinton is currently more than 3 million votes ahead in the popular vote, to believe Bernie would be winning otherwise (and I appreciate you're not saying that) somewhere between 5 and 10% of all ballots cast would be fraudulent. I think there's a mistaken impulse on the part of Sanders supporters to blame 'the system' when that's missing the real story. Clinton is a very strong candidate. She enjoys approval ratings of around about 75-80% among registered Democrats, which is high historically. She also has massively more money, elite support and name recognition. Sanders was considered a no-hoper, but he's run her moderately close (without ever being that close, it has to be said). It's a triumph in other words, not a scandal. It gives me hope for the future of Democrat party politics, more than I think I've had in my lifetime.

I deeply dislike Hilary, and I'd much rather Bernie had won. That being said, the idea that Hilary has won through foul play has absolutely no basis in fact.

I quite like it.

I've got to admit you've lost me. I wasn't trying to make a point about the ethics or otherwise of Eddie the Eagle's wealth.

Probably the same way, I was just teasing. Or maybe 'Why'd you say that?'

The point I'm trying to make, obviously not very well, is that we love underdogs.

But the 'media fawning' is entirely correct. A 5,000-1 outsider came home. Now, to an extent that reflects stupid pricing on the part of bookies (they wouldn't even give a horse with three legs those kind of odds, and I can't really see any justification for odds in a sporting event of more than a few hundred to one, but this is by the by) but it genuinely is astonishing. And the media scrum over the story isn't 'because it's Leicester', it's 'because it's amazing'. If a political party won election with those odds, if a sprinter with those odds won in the Olympics, if a mother was about to give birth to octuplets, there would be a media scrum. 'Jamie Vardy: The Movie' sounds pretty painful, but also pretty well pitched in this country. 'Eddie The Eagle' is currently towards the top of the box office.

?

Probably it's because you write things like 'may I ask why you thought that?'

Such a deeply average movie.

Isn't it possible to think Leicester winning the league is great, and also agree with all the other stuff at the same time? They don't look mutually exclusive to me.

Yeah, it was a pretty good movie, but it wasn't scary in the slightest. I didn't even watch it 'as a horror movie', I found it more interesting as a drama.

Can you imagine the public health risks from cider brewed in wooden vats on straw-strewn floors? Make a H&S inspector's eyes bleed, that would.

Well, for what it's worth, Blair and Brown aren't around any more. Nor is the Labour leadership today particularly similar to the Labour leadership of 2010 (for better or for worse).

Isn't the knock on him that he isn't very good at organising a defence? IE, exactly the same criticism as Martinez?

Looking at the Chelsea squad in his first season reveals some other long-forgotten names: Jesper Gronkjaer Tore Andre Flo Ed De Goey

I think I just liked his name. Though he did play for SHA, so that's a mark against him obvs. However, he also mostly sucked for them as I recall, so maybe not such a mark against him after all.

ONE WEIRD TRICK TO PISS OFF SPOONY

I surely can't be the only person who would be livid if we didn't sign 'Fred Friday'!

Before, I didn't care if we appointed Steve Bruce. Now I realise Eric Black was formerly his assistant, that immediately puts me off him, as he's not going to do what I want (put Eric Black in a cannon and fire him over the roof of the Trinity Road Stand).

Not over here he isn't!

"Shot" in the net, and you're to blame, Lescott you give football a bad name.

Somebody mentioned Mario Melchiot in another thread.

(I looked this up, I can't pretend I actually knew this) It comes down to the history of linguistics. Once upon a time, there was a language known as PIE (Proto-Indo-European). This language is the ultimate forefather of some Indian and all European languages with the exceptions of Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. From the link: 'PIE language seemingly had a masculing-feminine construct for nouns, where an ‘aa’ sound added to the end of a male noun makes the noun a female. This rule appears to have passed down to almost every language descended from PIE. European names like John and Johann become female when appended with long ‘a’ – Joanna, Johanna. There are very few male names that end with a vowel, though – Nikolai, for example. Even with some of the recently derived Romance languages – Spanish, Italian, Portuguese – female names still typically end with an ‘a’ sound, while male names end with an ‘o’ or ‘i’ sound. (Isabella, Donatella, Teresa, Olga, Sofia, Elena, Natalia; Paolo, Antonio, Leonardo, Diego, Giovanni, Rossini)' Languages that aren't derived from PIE don't have the same pattern, so this rule isn't true of eg. native American languages, east and south east Asian languages, those European languages mentioned above etc.