Whitey Grandad

I'm thinking similarly to you. I don't think there's much point in sacking him at the moment. This season is a write off and is an anomaly anyway. This is going to be an interesting closed season with the Euros taking up a big lump of it but usually the big footballing events are when the club officials get together and have a group haggle.

More first time passes! That should speed the game up

That ought to be the case but historically there have been some clubs where the chairman, for all sorts of reasons, handles the transfer dealings without consulting the manager/headcoach/whatever. Sometimes the chairmen agree a deal between themselves and inform the team manager afterwards.

I broadly agree with you but how many of the signings are purely down to Ralph and how many to down the chairman?

I’m not clear about how many false positives are officially reported but there must be some among the figures. Likewise false negatives aren’t reported. I can’t help thinking that this revelation about asymptomatic carriers has been invented to try to explain the failure of their modelling. A bit like Dark Matter being dreamed up to make the Universe equations work. Or, for those who are old enough, the phlogiston theory.

That doesn’t worry me. To be honest I’m rather pleased about it

My son’s stepdaughter tested positive on Wednesday evening but the follow up checking test confirmed negative.

Yes, I would suppose you would expect the suppliers of fund to have a ct in the action. It’s all a bit like those Mafia films with all the Capi di Capi sitting around the boardroom table.

Indeed. I also blame Stamp Duty as partly responsible for the high cost of moving house and indirectly increasing traffic congestion. Back in the 1970s when we were young buyers it was much easier to move. People who changed jobs would relocate rather than commute. Chatting with Godfrey Olson once upon a time he told me that estate agents saw the threshold as 40minutes of commuting. Nowadays it is quite common for people to drive an hour and a half.

Binding contracts with whom? I admit that I haven’t been interested in all the details of this fiasco but who owns this ESL? If they had any sense it would be the clubs themselves. But if they had any sense they wouldn’t have got into this situation.

Seller gains £24k to spend on the next house up the chain. And there is a surge in house prices.

They are not lost on me anything hypothetical has nothing to do with reality.

Bale was on the pitch when he scored their first goal. Their second was gifted to them. Agreed, our shape fell apart after Ings went off.

Troo dat. And other primates of course.

But it isn’t. So your point is not valid.

So not charging someone tax counts as subsidising them?

Actually it would be a pointless choice seeing as malaria is passed on by a parasite present in mosquito bites. In the Middle Ages malaria was quite common in some areas of England such as the Fens. Lock down the mosquitoes by all means. You started with an ‘if’ which does not and cannot apply. Malaria is of course one of the world’s greatest killers but thankfully work on a vaccine offers some real hope. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-04-23-malaria-vaccine-becomes-first-achieve-who-specified-75-efficacy-goal

So what? Every house? There are a lot of people in China. But this has no relevance to our lockdowns and how it’s severity compares with other countries. Length of time is an important factor too. You cannot just assume that this type of lockdown is what was needed. I repeat what I said earlier. The schools made no significant difference but their closure has done irreparable damage to a generation of youngsters.

These people have studied it in depth. A strict lockdown for a couple of weeks doesn’t count as much as a looser one for several months. This has been going on for over a year now, with a couple of breaks. I know you might not like to hear it but I know which I would prefer. Our early lockdown with its enthusiastic policing wasn’t a lot different from what you describe.

Not just my view. You might not like to hear it but an Oxford study has looked into it. Don’t forget that length of time is a factor. This is what happens when you isolate people from the world outside. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-worlds-sixth-toughest-lockdown-23554938 ”Compared to EU countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Slovenia ad the Czech Republic, the UK imposed the harshest restrictions - yet suffered the fourth highest death toll. The UK also suffered the highest fatality rate from the virus out of the 10 countries with the harshest restrictions globally - possibly due to the lockdown measures being introduced after surges in deaths.

Neither. But would you still advocate a lockdown?

Yep. Not quite as tough as Ireland but more severe than the others. Sorry it’s the Daily Mail but reported in others. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9290029/Britains-coronavirus-lockdown-one-toughest-WORLD-study-claims.html

https://youtu.be/L-l6tHeseDY

Yes indeed but I think there is a sense that they don't want to have to have another lockdown so they want this one to last as long as possible. There's also a headline from The Times this morning, "Vaccines likely to be slowing spread of Covid, scientists believe" Er, yeah, you'd bloody well hope so.

We don't know that. Schools, shops, even restaurants being open would not have made any difference. We have just had the most severe lockdown in the world and it's not over yet. How much of it was really necessary?