Mao Cap

Woah woah woah woah woah, back up...you what??? Even with Merkel and the CDU in charge Germany is far to the left of the UK.

Any influence fans have depends largely on their proximity to the pitch at a particular ground, and usually has more effect on the away team. The Dell was a factor in our top-division survival throughout the 90s (more from being a place away teams hated to go than anything else). The way our lot shat it at Fratton Park in recent seasons (both times) also shows the influence a crowd can have in a rusty old ground with the spectators right on top of the players. However, it's almost impossible to replicate that at a new ground like St. Mary's, with the crowd a civilised distance from the pitch.

Your so-called "slob class" (which includes the vast majority of the forebears of people on here, by the way) was a vastly larger proportion of the populace before the liberal and socialist reforms of the 20th Century. Pitiful wages and the lack of any kind of pension, unemployment or disability benefits gave this class of people and their children no choice but to turn to crime. The workhouses, as well as being cruel, were inefficient and pretty useless as a means of making the unemployed work, which is why they were done away with (and mostly done away with by both conservatives and liberals decades before the 1906 Liberal reforms, so the Tories of the Victorian era obviously agreed). But there's really no point in talking to you, Mr. I-don't-need-academic-evidence-to-prove-historical-fact

Well, it makes sense. As an ultra-conservative, Dune does value tradition and continuity above all things.

Turnmills for me too. The Suicide Circus in Berlin runs it close though, absolutely nutty place.

No, it's always a big let-down. Not doing any parties this year - just seeing some mates for a quick drink, going round the girlfriend's to meet her parents, having something at my parents, going round the bro's and his girlfriend's to see the new year in and swear at the TV.

This was a real peach. Proper LOL.

I do as well. As a Marxist, I find his hit-and-miss routines about everyday activities, along with his odd accent and and appearance (his slitty eyes are reminiscent of our Chinese comrades) appeals to my subversive un-British instincts.

Making free porn sites (that anyone can access as long as they say they're 18) into ones that have to be paid for with a credit card would be a step that I'd agree with. Once you're 18 you should be able to do what you like, but there's some fairly hardcore stuff on Youporn and similar sites (just people ****ging seems to cut less and less ice) and I don't like the idea of kids and adolescents just being able to access it, at a time when their sexuality's still developing and all. Sorry to come over all Daily Mail hypocrite, and I've no idea how enforceable such a law would be, but there you are.

Just discovered the overture to Tannhauser by Wagner (did a bit of digging round Youtube after that Stephen Fry documentary about him). Epic doesn't begin to describe it. [video=youtube;GwhP-wY1ROY]

^^^ very true. At the moment though I think the main thing for those enthusiastic about this issue is to raise its profile. The arguments in favour of safe standing areas are so valid that it's not winning the debate that's the problem, it's enough people banging on about it until the powers that be start to take notice. If it got through to the government that this could be an essentially free way of gaining the goodwill of a few voters and enhancing their libertarian anti-nanny state credentials then they'd quickly get on board. This particular socialist dinosaur might even acquire a grudging respect for them TBH, if they just permitted a varying proportion of seated stands to stand (if you follow me) and enforced the current rules in the front half then I and most people would be perfectly happy. It's just the whole weekly, uppy-downy charade with stewards (in my experience mostly sound people who have to take a lot of unnecessary grief when they could be concentrating their efforts on far more worthwhile aspects of crowd control) that bugs me the most. Ooh, third post and I'm out.

Also this poll is also the number of people that would simply like to watch games from standing areas themselves. If the question was, say "Would you be concerned if 20% of grounds were standing areas?" I think the proportion in favour of standing areas would be near to 90-100%. I can't think of any earthly reason why fans who prefer to sit would object to other people standing in their own area; if anything, these folk should be the fiercest advocates of standing areas. I can't remember the last time I couldn't get up the back and stand at any home or away match, but the up-down nonsense in many places would have been a constant irritation if I wanted to sit. Also, good man Bungle. I assume you had some part in this?

I believe that official statistics show no more incidents at lower-league grounds with terracing than all-seater grounds. In Germany they head off any potential trouble in any case by placing the away terracing up the other end of the ground from the home end. The makeup of fans over there is not much different to that of England, but anyone after grief goes looking for it outside before or after the game. Terracing makes no difference on that score. The controls on the number of fans allowed onto standing areas in the lower leagues is also much stricter than it was even ten years ago, let alone in 1989. Ironically, the nearest thing you see to a surge these days are during more intense goal celebrations (last-minute winners etc.) in seated stands, when people come into the aisles to get down to the front (mind you I like them and all, but that's not the point). Safety, crowd trouble, convenience - none of the arguments against this hold any weight whatsoever.

What form is this Express crusade going to take? In fact, what form do any of them take? The term's always made me giggle, I keep envisaging the entire Express readership - a mighty army of a few thousand portly middle-aged insurance men with high blood pressure, armed with broomhandles and with colanders on their heads - embarking on the nearest Sea France at Dover to sort out the immigrant-wog-commie-dago-kraut-EU-Diana killers. With their elderly mums giving them Thermos flasks of really, really milky tea and nice woolly scarves that they knitted specially

29th April is a cracking date, will set everyone up nicely for seeing us seal promotion at Brentford away Still, to return to an earlier issue a bank holiday would probably cost the economy quite a bit more than the (estimated £620m) it would gain from tourism and selling mugs and that. About £6bn a mate who works for Fidelity says (though I'm sceptical as I've no idea how accurate that figure is...us lefties leave taking pub anecdotes as gospel to our conservative brothers ) That said I'm not knocking it, we get a sh*te amount of bank holidays in Britain anyway so let the good times roll.

Like it!

Kevin Davies, James Beattie, Kevin Philips. Any of the gutless w*nks who lay down and died on a weekly basis in 05, Davenport, Redknapp, Crouch etc.

Mate, it's a tactic that's been used to good effect ever since there was rulers and ruled! Bread and circuses, Juvenal called it. The main non-photographer one was 3,000 coppers in Manchester getting laid off, which is around a quarter of the workforce I believe (frontline services and that). Results came out saying inflation is unexpectedly high at 3.2%, and MI5 and MI6 are in some sort of grief about Guantanamo Bay and torture which is quite embarrassing and likely to cost them a fair bit. And it's also stifled existing coverage of the appalling scrapping of legal aid (worst act of class war they've carried out yet, along with the housing benefit thing) for a few days. Oh and the worrying Ireland/general eurozone crisis has been forgotten, although to be fair that's got a lot of coverage because it's good for an anti-Europe pop, hopefully everyone will have forgotten Osborne's high praise of the Irish government's methods not very long ago. Fair bit for a quiet Tuesday in November, anyway.

Page 3 is Page 8 today because of the wedding stuff...disgusting affront to our time-honoured English traditions if you ask me. Damn Germans, DID WE FIGHT A WAR FOR THIS???

I got out of work half an hour early because at least half of all the newspapers are taken up by frenzied sycophancy instead of news, which was pretty cool and I must admit I do like the thought of having a hot Queen...never rated Diana in that department really, she had that hideous fluffy 80s hair. On the negative side, I had to wade through a lot of said sycophancy (as well as the Grauniad's sniping, which was equally tedious TBH - Indy had a single neutral article about it and led with a report about Ireland, which showed a lot of class) including a cartoon in the Daily Star showing the happy couple with Di as an angel in the background giving a thumbs-up, EUUURRRRGHHH! And the Tories got to bury a large amount of bad news today...the U-turn about Cameron's photographer chap was announced 20 minutes after the wedding announcement. Well played, it has to be said.

My attitude is the same as it is to those blokes in Luton - i.e. if a couple of dozen pitiful losers want to draw attention to themselves, isn't shrugging and ignoring them the best way to beat them? It seems hard to believe now, but in the years following the Second World War the Union Movement (a tiny but active pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic remnant of Mosleyite old boys from the 30s) held rallies in Jewish areas of London. A march in Camden was attended by about 1500, much more than 30 I'm sure you'll agree. Needless to say their activities resulted in confrontations; but the interesting thing is that they attracted hardly any media coverage whatsoever, because the fascists were seen for the insignificant bunch of weirdos they were. Would be nice if people had a similar attitude to this kind of ****** these days IMO.

F*ckin Jambos!

Cracking result, hard to believe considering how crap Hibs were in the Edinburgh derby last week!

Was at the Homelands watching Maidstone going down 4-2 to Cray last night the place is pretty bland and uninspired, but would be OK if only it wasn't in the middle of nowhere. Better than Sittingbourne, but!