pap

Was at this yesterday. Mixed feelings about it. Performance from the team was pretty crap - Blackpool could have scored more, whereas we just didn't look like scoring. Didn't actually get to see much of the game due to the pillars / being a short-arse and everyone standing throughout. As others have remarked, our support was immense. Last 20 minutes or so was non-stop singing, with some particularly funny crap about when the Blackpool Early Leavers Brigade started their march out of Bloomfield Road and when the attendance was announced. Awesome.

About to leave now. Let's do this sh*t

No mate - your point was so good it deserved repeating! Hey, look at that interesting thing on the wall up there! /scarpers

I read a Telegraph piece by Charles Moore yesterday, entitled Even I'm Starting to Wonder: what do this lot know about anything? He continues:- So, shrewd move, or could this come back to bite them? Especially since we're now saying it is temporarily safe to let fuel hauliers drive for 11 hours a day to deal with the mess created by this week's debacle.

A few things here. First, there is no 'Muslim vote' per se. Muslims vote and stand for different parties. To suggest otherwise is akin to saying all Muslims are the same. Second, it's very easy to say that anything has failed when you don't have anything to measure success by, or indeed, not interested in something being a success at all. There are plenty of success stories that have been born through our current melting pot. A lot of my Asian friends at school have married White European partners. I'm the second generation product of one of these relationships myself. So let's not pretend that all Muslims are the same, or that all choose to live away from the rest of the population. I understand that a lot do choose to live in areas surrounded with people from the same ethnic background, and I can understand why. If you're getting abuse from people based on the colour of your skin or your cultural differences, then I can see why you would move to an area where these problems are more or less eliminated. Fortunately, some people, like my Pakistani grandfather, stick it out. He's lived in the same house for over 30 years now and I don't think anyone would even think about giving him racist abuse now. Why? Because people know him, know how he has behaved for 30 years and know that in pretty much all senses, he has exactly the same worries and issues in life as them. And that's the thing that many people forget when looking at multiculturalism - that people are essentially the same. Ignorance has warped the vision of many so that they only see the differences and they want to talk about the bad stuff. In a sense, it's just like all our other news. Hundreds of thousands of schoolkids get home safely every day after school, yet its never reported on the news. Similarly, we see innumerable benefits of multiculturalism every day, but the news is never going to report them. You want to see failed multiculturalism? Zoom off to Sudan or Israel. Here, we've simply got problems. Surely the best approach that we can take is to attempt to solve them, rather than bleat "It's all f**ked - can never be fixed".

See, that's what I'm talking about. Great for a quip! Serious? Nah.

Yup, thanks Ollie. Any fears I might have had concerning the team's motivation have disappeared!

Completely agree about all parties being variations on a theme. Sorry to ardent supporters of mainstream political parties, but you're like bald men arguing over a comb. The reality is that we've seen all three of them in action recently. None of them have been that impressive, and history will remember this current crop as opportunistic out-of-touch chancers. What it'll say about those unable to critically evaluate them, I don't know.

I agree. Check the results of elections since 1970. Definitely not a 'stronghold' and Labour will have a hard time shifting Galloway. Anyone else? I mean, are you not prepared to concede that Galloway was an amazing fit for that constituency? That he's one of the most famous politicians in the country? Do you think that this by-election is in any way representative of what would happen in a General Election? It's cheap political point-scoring, and the fact that you have to employ a deeply-flawed electoral process to back up the argument speaks volumes as to the strength of your argument. What you're actually saying is that these votes don't matter. I'd agree that they don't count in our archaic electoral system, but irrespective of victor, they do give some indication to public satisfaction with the major parties. I'd say that matters considerably, and I expect the mandarins of mainstream parties will think so too. As you yourself point out, Miliband is going to Bradford to find out wtf went wrong. You're presenting this as a massive victory for the Conservatives, constructing a picture of an indefatigible Labour citadel. It is the 182nd safest Labour seat in the country and was contested by someone uniquely qualified to win it. Don't agree. When Labour lose Liverpool Walton, we'll talk. Plus your grand theory of political capital only really works if the Conservatives manage to sort out the country's problems. So far, they seem hellbent on achieving the complete opposite, and with very few exceptions - the ministers they've got now are the "A Team".

Ha ha Nice one, centurion!

Shipping 10K votes in two years?

I'm sorry, but that is 'bear-ly' (arf) enough information to operate with. Let's start with "do you know this person"?

For all these claims of it being a Labour stronghold, it hasn't been a particularly 'safe' seat. The difference between the Conservative and Labour vote varies from 10K to 2K. It's hardly as if the Conservatives have no representation here. However, I think you're right dune. Galloway will go out and be Galloway, and his constituents will love him for it. Unless he makes a colossal gaffe, I think Labour will have a hard time getting him out.

The Tory percentage swing was actually down to first-time voters, so hands-up - I was talking crap in that first paragraph to Lord D. EDIT: Or maybe the article I'm reading from is talking crap. They claim this, yet also state the Tory MP lost 10,000 votes. SECOND EDIT: 2010 Tory Votes: 12,638 2012 Tory Votes: 2,746 Ouch!

This Guardian piece enumerates the reasons they think Galloway won. It amounts to slightly more than "The Labour Party - they iz sh/t, innit".

Granted the Tories were never going to win the seat, but almost a quarter of people who voted Tory last time didn't do so this time. You're once again bashing the Labour Party and handily ignoring the fact that in percentage terms, the Tories actually did worse. This is not a typical by-election. Not every constituency will have a former Celebrity Big Brother housemate in the running, nor will they have the demographic characteristics that Bradford has. Not only did Galloway have name recognition, but his uncompromising views will resonate with constituents who support his anti-war stance. If you are suggesting that this sort of result is some reflection on the national popularity of the Labour Party, I'm not really sure you've considered the factors at play in the specific constituency.

Have you looked at the percentage swings? Tories lost a greater percentage of their (admittedly pathetic) vote than Labour. The Lib Dems didn't even get their deposit back. Completely agree that this is a disaster for the Labour Party.

I note that you haven't addressed the points in my post. Who lived in Newtown prior to the diverse ethnic mix that live there now? Why did they move out?

I take SuperMikey's posts more seriously than yours. HTH.

A view from the Blackpool Gazette. Quite complimentary about Saints.

The really scary thing is that apart from a few ministerial casualties, this is pretty much the Tory "first team"

Woman in Yorkshire seriously burned trying to decant petrol in her kitchen. Beeb article People now calling for Francis Maude's job.

If anyone is still wondering why Galloway won, you might want to check out his opposition. Eviscerated. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=okKxC4ZNIqw#!

For most MPs in Government, the commitment to representation public pretty much ends when the returning officer announces the results. Everyone else is pretty much irrelevant when a Government has a working enforceable majority.

It's clear that you have no historical context here, dune, or at least - a very warped one. How welcome do you think our 50s counterparts made the new immigrants? Do you think they wanted them living in the same street? Sorry mucker, but the establishment of geographical areas largely comprised of a particular ethnic minority simply couldn't have happened without the complicity of the white population. My nan used to tell me that Newtown used to be regarded as 'gentry'. Now, in order for that area of Southampton to have transformed so much, a lot of white people would have had to move out, which they did.