trousers

Was that Russell being smuggled away from the stadium in a wheelie bin in the background...?

Yep, agree. I've been feeling for a while now that all this whipped up hype by the club's media department could back fire on us. The best approach, in my humble opinion, would have been to treat the build up like any other game and leave all the emotion stuff until the players take to the pitch. Just feels a tad manufactured to me, but maybe that's just me being a grumpy old git 😁

Selles or Martin to win ex-Saints manager sack race...? To close to call...?

Rothwell on to save the day

Cheers - yeah, keeps cutting out it, as you say, it's in sympathy with the quality of football 😁

Anyone got a decent stream?

Oops....

Rachel (Yay! Trousers back to doing what he does best 🤭)

I was attempting to advocate fence-sitting rather than choosing sides... but, agree, I'm in somewhat uncharted territory here for me, so please cut me some slack ... 😁

I think that 'some' is perhaps the key word there? Maybe DEI is a good idea in principle, but perhaps how it's been implemented is (partially) flawed...?

That video clip clearly underlines the problem with human beings.... This unproductive desire to choose a 'side' and dogmatically argue a point on that basis, rather than consider a point on a case by case basis..... "Dad: I'm left, therefore I must look at it this way"... "Son: I'm right, therefore I must look at it this way"... blah blah blah... (FWIW, 2 days ago I'd never heard of this Charlie Kirk fella and, having now watched a few more of his videos, I can see there's probably a lot more of his philosophies that I would be less keen to defend than I have been with this DEI one. But I think that perhaps underlines my observation... People on all 'sides' have valid points to make from time to time, rather than it being an 'all or nothing' situation most of the time.) P.s. and, yes, I should probably stick to my usual inane posting style rather than get involved in this serious big boy stuff...

He also used surgeons as another example in the video I watched, hence latching onto that in my example. I do agree that he could've probably articulated his point in a less provocative way, but I do get the underlying point he was attempting to make, regardless of how he worded it. Anyway, I'm a fan of people having different viewpoints, so all good 👍🏻

I think what he's saying is: even if the qualifying standard for, say, surgeons, is fixed / unchanged at 80% and you were about to have a life saving operation, would you prefer your surgeon to have a 90% rating or an 80% rating? I know which one of those surgeons I'd prefer to be operating on me, even though they both meet the minimum standard required... If someone with an 80% rating is employed in preference to someone with a 90% rating, I would say there's something wrong with the employment process. Yes, of course, if there are two candidates for the job, both with an 80% rating then, yes, go for the one that helps meet whatever quota targets may be in place, but merit should always trump quotas IMO. That just seems like common sense to me.

His argument is that DEI can lower the qualification bar. I've no idea if he's right in that assertion but that's nothing to do with the "Is he racist?" debate. My understanding of what he's saying is that if the qualification pass mark is, say, 80%, would you rather have a pilot, surgeon, etc, who passed with a score of 95% or a score of 80%? Both "qualified" but one is better than the other... (a bit of a crude way of putting it, but that's his drift)

Are you my wife?

No, in the video I've watched he clearly says "maybe less qualified" not 'maybe unqualified'. (Caveat: I've yet to watch the original video)

Sounds like I should watch the original video to be able to come up with an informed viewpoint on your conclusion 👍🏻

Cheers @Turkish - appreciated 👍🏻

Yep, that was my take on it. One can obviously disagree with his views on DEI but his explanation convinced me he wasn't being racist. In fact, his viewpoint was that the colour of someone's skin shouldn't matter, which is the opposite of racism, isn't it?

Yeah, inclined to agree with that assessment of the capital to be fair.

Yeah, that doesn't read well to be fair, but he does qualify what he meant in the video I watched. i.e. more like: "I'm sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's didn't get the job at the expense of someone who was more qualified because of DEI measures". (Paraphrased).

Never been to a Carribbean island for some reason, despite always being on our short list. Going to Cancun in December, which is close I guess...