blandy

YOu might be right. But then again "they" (Guvmints) do new coins for all kinds of tedious crap - Royal wossnames, general changes to make stuff more forgery resistant...yadda yadda. They're not always (primarily, if at all) for that Government's advantage, perhaps?

No. I mean I didn't vote at all. But if I had (been able to) I'd have voted for (probably) the Greens. Where I live, is and was a safe Tory seat . Who I vote for makes absolutely no impact or difference. That applies to many many constituenceis - as you said, the system is broken. My vote is utterly meaningless. The only ones that matter are where there's a chance of the seat changing hands. That only happens when the incumbent party in that seat (or occasionally the individual MP) completely loses the plot and/or the opponent is seen as a better option. Labour wasn't a better option than the tories, not only in already held tory seats, but even in seats where Labour was the incumbent and long held choice. And that after a 9 year long clusterpork of Tory mismanagement, cruelty and incompetence. Labour under Corbyn was so bad, so unelectable, that the worst Government in history absolutely trounced them. But to put it as a binary choice between preferring baby-eaters or Chairman Mao's anti-semitic disciple is to miss that people chose SNP, Plaid, Lib, Green etc because the choice was so abject between the other two.

Not many people will change their minds about Brexit, whatever the depth or breadth of discussion. So laughing at porky tubes like Mark Francois and his gammon themed tea-towel or Jacob Mogg-Rees with his 50p with a jobby on it is at least some solace.

If there are any jokes about Brexit 50ps I bet they're either wrong-headed, far fetched tails of complete fancy or much edgier than other coin jokes - though jokes about coins are often made by to$$ers....oh!

Aye. Though the whole lot is laughable

They're really not. Blaming the voters for being (part of) the problem is a surefire way to oblivion.

If they don't deliver on time they're gonna be hung out to dry.

They will, I agree. To get elected any party has to look credible as the next Government, and Labour isn't and wasn't. And that wasn't because a testicle-headed Aussie told his papers to write nasty things about Catweazle. I mean the tories were and are an utter shambles too, but until or unless a credible alternative comes along, they stay the Government. It's all very well saying "we won the argument" - no, they didn't. They lost it. Look in Parliament and the result is there for all to see. On top of that they were a disorganised, in-fighting, divided pro-cultist/anti-cultist, mess with a non-credible leader and a non-credible overall manifesto and a ludicrous Brexit position, promising to negotiate a deal to leave, which made retainers consider them to be a "leave party" and then a promise of yet another referendum, which made Leavers think they were a remain party...while every time anyone challenged Saint Jez on some aspect of his party he just got all pissy. They're currently filling loads of key positions with yet more Corbyn type numpties and still under the strong influence of another numpty in Len McLuskey. I mean WTAF? Change or die. Change or see another 10 years plus of the baby eaters, while claiming moral superiority and telling everyone who points out that they'd actually rather the party was electable than on some self proclaimed moral high ground to Jeff off and join the tories.

Hang on a minute!

Ah, OK. Well in that case I'll break the habit of a lifetime and vote for the lovely tories. They really are marvellous aren't they! Splendid, benevolent, fair minded, clear thinking sorts, not like those beastly Johnny foreigner types and the undeserving poor. Hip hip Hurrah for the Podgy Bullingdon Boys. They know what's best.

I am.

Yes. And also stations and lines have been being re-opened for a good while now - 20 years or so. There's nothing actually "new" really about the announcement - it's a bit of a propoganda thing that'll be forgotten in the blink of an eye. It's nothing serious. I wish the 6 billion plus was going to be available for opening lines and stations.

No help needed. Er, anyway, hope all this current viral nastiness gets contained. We don't want the nasty thing spreading, and other gravy lovers being laid low by germ like organisms.

Labour list

The gravy goes on the chips.....mostly. It’s superior surf n’turf (due to the improved moisture content provided by said gravy).

Redeemed. Despite the gravy errors of your ways.

I don’t know you and we’ve never met. Goodbye.

No. Stop with that. We can never be friends. It’s yum

It's not the first time. He was doing it when the thing first surfaced. The bloke is a disgrace.

Yeah, that's probably true. I'm old enough to remember Southgate as a player here, and he was absolutely not arrogant. But yes single minded and determined and stubborn - as you say they sort of need to be, to be good. I think if he were arrogant, he wouldn't have watched Jack play so many times this season - he'd just have been like "No, I'm not picking him and I'm therefore not going to bother going to watch Villa". But I guess we're of the same view, as you say.

It's not taking Jack to know what a poor session looks like. That's not how it is. It's brilliant that as Deano says he's asking questions - "why" was that session like that. But for example a relatively light, unchallenging session may be put on because of a sequence of games, or because of the readings from the monitors they wear - risk of over work and resulting injury. Or maybe where some players lack confidence after a bad run, then the session is made "easy" to re-build confidence. But some players, Jack included will not themselves need their personal confidence building. If Deano is answering the questions with the reasons and Jack is gaining knowledge, then that's great. It's good that he's keen to want challenging sessions and to get better. I'm pretty sure that JT and Deano are both pretty well aware of what a good session looks like through both training and experience.

This is nonsense, IMO. He's the complete opposite of arrogant. He is stubborn, though, I'll give you that. He's a properly good bloke. I think the thing with him picking (or not) Jack likely stems from when JG was with the U-21s and was a bit, er, wayward, with some of his activities. So Southgate knows this and has needed to see 3 things. 1 a change of approach from Jack - that's happened. He's a model pro now. 2. Performance in the Premier League. This too has now happened. Now they both happened by much earlier this season (and before in the case of attitude. But the third thing is 3. A gap - basically there are a number of really good midfielders who have done pretty well for England. Given a manager needs to show some loyalty to have the respect of the players and to foster good team spirit he can't really just keep picking whoever is the current hot name and jettisoning someone who has had a bad game. Me personally, like every other Villa fan, I think he more than needs to be picked for what he will bring to the national team, but I can understand why he hasn't been so far. I don't really agree with the judgement Southgate's made, but I can see why he has. Jack will get picked, because Southgate is not going to cut off his nose to spite his face, and because he's absolutely not the arrogant type. The one from Leicester - Madison, too. They'll both get in soon and both deserve to. Who will they replace? No-one's playing badly. Even Barclay has been scoring goals for England, Alli is back on form, that West Ham lad is the defensive one. Henderson's been excellent, Stirling too....it's extremely hard to get in in midfield just because of the quality of all the players. But with Kane injured there may be a chancellor a new attacking midfielder to get in the squad in place of a striker.

In addition to the other suggestions maybe Peter Oborne (various media outlets)? Trouble is there are two types - there's the sane ones and there's the mad ones. Probably best not to go near the mad, throbby, ones - either in writing or real life.

That's true. "I'd have picked a different team", or I'd have picked player A instead of player B and here's why...." is kind of a good talking point for a message-board. whereas "Either he is lying and something has happened, or deano doesn't know how to pick the best players" is kind of (without evidence or back up) accusing him of being either a liar or incompetent with no basis, which is going to lead not to discussion, but to argument.

Yes, and I'd tie it to this from one of the tweets in the thread Now from personal reading and looking and stuff, I'd say (for me) they are/were incompetent in reality, not just through perception of extremism. I've said multiple times I liked about half their policies, and thought about a quarter were quite daft, so as a net liker of their policies, a mix of incompetence (much of which is not massively reported, but has leaked out since and a bit before the election), a truly dire leader and surrounding team, and then zealotry from a significant section of their members and supporters which actively hounded people away from supporting or considering voting for them, and as you say, or at least imply, a Brexity fudge that made no sense on the biggest issue, they were doomed and have been for a good period now. If they elect another Corbynite, the same will happen next time and the effing tories will win again. They've got to get the effwits, (see @bickster's example above) completely out of the party or at least any influence on it. I see also that the leader candidates are now falling over themselves (with one exception) to 'fess up about the way the party handled anti-semitism and admit they got dealing with the problem wrong, and that there is/was a problem. That's a start. It's not me saying more left wing people couldn't win, but that you can't have a set of people setting the direction who formed their opinions in the early 70s on everything and then if challenged on them get all pissy. They need to be able to provide valid arguments, and address challenges to their orthodoxy and views and listen and adapt and persuade and engage, not get the hump and let their accolytes start with the trolling and abuse while turning a blind eye themselves.