pap

People were specifically asking about the myth that map 28 on btf's link of maps undid. Social media and here. Britain First and groups like it are built on this stuff. Agree though, Islamic stuff wasn't mentioned on this thread, but it crops up often enough for the observation to be worthwhile.

Might not be you personally hypo, but it's a constant refrain I see on social media and here. That's never the way it's bigged up. Sharia law is persistently presented as a potential usurper to our present system, which is very different from what you're suggesting. Even when the argument is narrowed, it's still not that realistic. How would the likes of Tower Hamlets and Hounslow enforce Sharia law on everyone else, or even all of their own citizens?

I've been roped into a viewing of the Liverpool game by the youngest daughter. Relatively ambivalent about it, really. They win, and everyone but the dog is happy or indifferent, so it's a sort of win. If they get mullered, that'll be fun too.

Well, the idea that we're over-run with Muslims, for starters. How'd you go about implementing say, Sharia law, with such a small percentage of the population?

Bringing ms pap and Juvenile Unit #2 to this one to join the International Itchen North Collective. They've typically been good omens for matches. ms pap was with me during our '97/98 Anfield triumph against Liverpool. Last time I brought the pair of them to a game was Walsall, all the way back in League One. Fairly sure we're going to have the same outdated opinions about Stoke as most fans looking in at other teams. I'm reasonably indifferent about them, but they've proved difficult to beat in their Premier League incarnation. Adkins and Poch could never get the win with their sides. The real question is how good this Southampton side is under Koeman's leadership.

Really? I thought the Lib Dems were busy being human shields for the Conservatives' "bandit government" agenda.

Ah, you can fúcking curse on here too. You've just got to do it with an outrageous French accent.

Nige in hot water over EU grouping. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-does-deal-with-far-right-to-save-european-grouping

As I said before, much respect for the way you've handled yourself in this thread in the face of some fairly co-ordinated attacks. I'm in agreement with yourself and Minty for the time being though.

It puts people in a quandary. There are some very decent reasons to not want to be part of an EU super-state, which in many ways we now are. Unfortunately KRG, most people are not interested in whether they're part of someone elses empire or not. They care about immigration. Now I'm sure that a tiny fraction of UKIP voters are irredeemable racists, and have joined up to boot Johnny Foreigner off our shores. Most people just realise the reality of the situation. We're a small island with some large problems that aren't solved by adding more people. Some will legitimately question the value of having Polish cleaners sparkling up the local bogs when Brits are languishing on the dole. I can't blame EU citizens for wanting to migrate here. They have much better long-term prospects by doing so. Five years of slumming it in overpopulated accommodation here and working your arse off gives you a huge start back home. I do wonder whether unskilled migrants are a net gain to the economy though, because if I were them, there's no f**king way I'd be paying British prices on our most heavily taxed items, especially if I had a steady stream of mates going back to Gdansk or wherever. Once you figure in the long-term objectives of many, how much money is staying in the British economy?

Courtesy of @GeorgeAylett on Twitter.

Makes no difference, really. I went to a meeting the other day featuring a speaker from Podemos, a newly formed Spanish party that grew out of the "indignados" movement, Spanish people hanging about in squares talking politics. One of their big revelations, which I agree with both here and there, is that we've moved away from a duopoly of power into a neo-liberal monopoly of power which has the ability to swap board members every election. Now I'm not sure whether anyone else has caught the recurring theme of the last thirty years, but the observant will have noted that much of it has been about a transfer of ownership from public to private hands. That is effectively a transfer of power. Sure, we've got regulators that are supposed to keep the newly formed private companies in check, but in practice, is that happening? We were told that competition would lower prices for all, and perhaps for a time that was true. These days, you've the likes of Ed Miliband promising price freezes for energy, rail companies that have virtual monopolies in their core areas and a wholly uncertain future for the NHS. It's a sad state of affairs when UKIP is the only party that has a chance of breaking the two party system , especially as they're just as on-board with the neo-liberal gangbang and supporters of controversial supra-national initiatives like TTIP.

Indeed he does. Could be a canny move. I don't think it'll necessarily deter the wider British public either. It's misjudged, sure - but how many potential UKIP voters did this really turn off?

I'm going. It'll be the first time I've gone to Stoke on purpose.

I caught about ten minutes of Jennifer Ellison's new reality dance show Dance Mums before leaving the room in a state of near-madness. Two of my family were watching it. I could not. Essentially, it's a show presented by a gobby scouse woman and populated by pushy scouse dance mums. I am interested whether people who do not have a scouse missus enjoy it, but for me, it was too much. Much too much. [video=youtube;-DBG4T0HFeo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DBG4T0HFeo

I liked the "you can't do a calypso with a Surrey accent" defence. Then don't do a f**king calypso!

I expect he got a crash course in race relations over the last few days. Gotta love the ol' "I didn't know it was racist!" generation. UKIP were silly to endorse it.

Oh, I see. Would be nice to allocate some of our budget to non-fiction though, wouldn't you say?

This government has been an economic shambles. They've demonised the poor, introduced all kinds of means testing (which looks to have failed on many occasions) and taken low paid work out of the economy with their slave labour work schemes. All pain for no gain. As has been pointed out, they've borrowed more than Labour did in thirteen years, during a period of f**king austerity! Where has the money gone?

Immigration is what UKIP are trading on, but it's the smaller of my concerns. I'd actually be more worried about the indifference of unelected supra-national bodies, and the sort of trouble that can cause. The recent crisis in Greece left many of the locals wondering if the EU was deliberately trying to kill them. They certainly don't feel like proud equals in a union of nations; they feel like a German colony. The centrist parties are on their way out, voters scattering left with Syriza and (far) right with Golden Dawn. EU-imposed austerity drove all of this. Syriza are already the biggest party in Greece; the only reason it isn't in government is because it refused to join a coalition supporting austerity. Then there's eastward expansion, and the way we've riled a dormant superpower by chucking bases and missile defence systems into former Soviet satellite countries signed into the West via the medium of the EU. Whether we think that is provocative or not, Putin and his pals certainly think so. He's trying to put together his own supra-national bloc to counter the EU. Recent events in Ukraine have shown that Russia's days on the international sidelines are over. We talk about the effects of immigration as perceived in our communities. Wage pressure, increased demand for housing and services. Largely pragmatic stuff. People tend to forget the ethnic Russians in the Baltic Soviet countries, many of whom moved there during Stalin's resettlement programs, all of whom now have the run of the EU. Possibly not a problem now, but I wonder if the older crowd could have imagined the reaction if this had happened in 1985 instead of 2014. Now I'm not saying that this is a particular risk, more a startling indicator of how much the EU has changed Europe in the last 30 years. Britain is in an odd place right now. We're tied to the EU on domestic and economic policy, legally bound to implement their directives and admit any citizen. We're militarily tied to the US, almost without exception, mindlessly bounding along to any ill-advised plans they may have. Neither arrangement really suits what I perceive to be our place in the world, which is an independent mature island nation and a bridge between the Old World and the New.

Super writing, bletch.

Going off those words, what does that make your endless participation in these discussions? I think everyone has seen what your words are worth, mucker. They've seen you "stand by" them.

Sticking the knife in after everyone else has had a go is one of yours, isn't it? I say fair play to SOG. This regular pack of bullies that arrives to defend the official narrative of any disputed event isn't easy to deal with the first time around. He has conducted himself with infinitely more dignity than these would-be anonymous trolls have done. Their input has been frequently abusive, accusatory and amateur. A fine demonstration of their works, in other words.

SOG - both CB Fry and Tim have confirmed they are parents.

Are you saying all three of those officers deliberately falsified evidence and statements to get a quicker clear-up? Of course, you're not, so I think we can safely stow that line of reasoning. Everybody knows that the McCanns never went to trial in Portugal; the final report for the investigation is here:- http://www.mccannfiles.com/id136.html Inconclusive. In conclusion, it results from everything that has been done, despite the efforts that were made and all investigation lines being explored, that it is not possible to obtain a solid and objective conclusion about what really happened that night, and about the present location of the missing minor. On the other hand, it should be referred that this investigation moved itself under conditions of exceptional media exposure, with the publication of many "news" of imprecise, inexact or even false contents, which did not help, in the least, the discovery of the truth and created, many times, a climate of unusual commotion and of lack of serenity. Therefore, as we do not envision, at the present moment, the execution of any other diligence within the process that might produce any useful result for the process, I submit it to your consideration, for you to determine whatever you may see as convenient. That's the problem.