Sheaf Saint

FFS - every ricochet is landing at the feet of a Leicester player at the moment. We need a lucky break.

******* ell. Blatant handball there.

JWP looks a man possessed today. Getting stuck in all over the pitch.

Wanyama gets his customary unwarranted yellow card.

Those laws only apply when the lies printed directly affect the reputation of an individual or an organisation. But when a government minister stands up in parliament and tells outright lies about, say, the state of the economy and the actual scale of the promised deficit reduction, gets called out on it by the IMF, and then subsequently repeats the same lie, nobody is being defamed and under our current laws there can be no legal consequences. Given that the BBC, Sky, and the vast majority of the mainstream media failed to report on the IMF statement which contradicts Cameron's deliberately misleading comments about the deficit, how many people actually know about it? How many ordinary people, who are generally far too distracted by brainless crap like X Factor or posting pictures of their dinner on instagram, will go to the trouble of searching for such information? That's the kind of influential disinformation that buctootim is talking about. Surely there can be no rational argument from anybody, regardless of their political leanings, to support such a system that allows MPs (and the media) to say anything they like to the public without fear of prosecution for deliberately misleading the electorate.

It's interesting to note, though, that up until the crash the Tories broadly supported Labour's spending plans, because they had lost the previous 3 elections and felt that this was the best way to appeal to the centre ground, in much the same way that Milliband and Balls supported the Tories' austerity principle because they hoped it would win them the necessary votes from the centre. But as soon as the crash happened, the Tories changed tack completely. They saw an opportunity to scapegoat the Labour government for the recession and portray themselves as the saviors of the economy.... "Don't trust them - they caused the economic downturn. Trust us instead, we'll pay off the deficit in 5 years and get Britain back on track". On your final point we are in total agreement. It's pretty obvious that Blair could see the oncoming storm and jumped ship before he could take any of the blame for it.

And here was me thinking I was debating with mature adults

Point proved. Regardless of what you think of him as a journalist, the book contains transcripts of interviews with people who are/were directly involved in the propaganda machine for the right-wing elite. It's not just the opinion of someone who disagrees with them.

You are correct that the principal reason why Ed lost was because he was a weakling with bad policies. But I agree with aintforever - you clearly do overestimate the average intelligence of the average British voter. The amount of ignorant, mis-informed b*ll*cks I encounter in my daily life is truly staggering. In my experience, most working class people tend to take at face value what they read in the press when it comes to politics. Cameron and co know this full well, and have exploited it as much as possible over the last decade. Using the propaganda machine of the Murdoch press, the Tories successfully managed to implant the idea into people's minds that it was the Brown government that was responsible for the global banking crisis that crashed the economy by repeating it ad infinitum until people just accepted it as fact. It's truly astonishing the amount of people I have discussed this with who simply have no idea what actually caused it and find it much easier to just blame whoever was in government at the time. In 2010, the Tories issued a contract to the public stating clearly what they intended to achieve and asking the voters to 'kick us out in 5 years time if we fail'.... So did they remind the electorate of this in the run up to the 2015 election? Of course they didn't, you wouldn't expect them to. But they went a whole lot further than that - they tried to have every single mention of it removed from the internet as if it never existed in the first place. That's an Orwellian level of re-writing history. You ought to have a read of Owen Jones' book The Establishment, And How They Get Away With It. You probably won't, because I suspect you would think he's just a biased leftie, but during his research he spoke at length with many people outside of government, from journalists to heads of supposedly independent think-tanks (whom he describes as 'Outriders' for the right-wing elite) who openly admit to just how devious and calculated the propaganda machine has been operating since the election of Maggie Thatcher to shift the range of acceptable public opinion (the Overton Window) to the right. It is a very sobering read.

The whole reason for that was to try and take as many votes away from Labour as possible to stop 'Red Ed' getting into no 10. Either side of the border they simply sided with whoever had the best chance of beating Labour, to increase the likelihood of the Tories getting elected. Don't try and paint it out to be just pandering to the readership. It was a deliberate, calculated strategy to try to keep the Tories in power because they are the party most friendly to their interests.

And right-wingers also always have the same problem - applying blanket generalisations to anybody they perceive to be 'lefties'. See what I did there?

Not on MOTD they didn't.

Yep. The replay clearly shows Falcao deliberately going over before he made any contact with Stek. No surprise that The Special Needs One didn't see it that way. He's always been too fond of himself, but he has clearly lost the plot completely now. I don't see how he can turn this around now.

Anyone got a link/vid/gif of the goals? I missed Davis' equaliser.

Bye bye Jose!

I just need JWP to score a 3rd now and I'm quids in.

I thought the ref was going to give that, but he got it spot on. Falcao was clearly already on his way down before any contact with Stekkers.

Sheesh - this ref even looks like a nazi c*nt.

FFS - that's two penalties we should have had now.

Agreed. They look vulnerable at the back. If we could just stop floating the ball straight to the keeper every time we get forward, we might get something out of this game.

Stupid, stupid yellow for Romeu. Totally unnecessary for him to do that.

Yep, it appears that a large number of people I went to school with fall into this category. Only last week I had to delete yet another old school friend after he got upset when I pointed out to him that the image he posted about illegal immigrants receiving 5 times as much in benefits as OAPs is completely untrue. The use of the word 'illegal' should really be enough of a clue for most people to think "hang on a minute", but when people's political and social beliefs are already geared towards a particular way of thinking, I find that inconvenient things like facts are often met with anger and aggression. Whilst I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, it's fair to state that if you are going to go on a public forum such as Facebook and express an opinion that is based on outright lies, then don't be surprised when people stand up and challenge it. "Do you have the guts to share this?" is a common phrase seen on these posts. It doesn't take guts, it takes a special blend of stupidity and a pre-existing prejudice to believe everything you read on the internet and willingly pass it on. They obviously didn't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking at my old school.

Yep, I'm with you on this FC. Just because a player suffers a bad broken leg and can't play football any more, doesn't mean for a second that he can't get a proper job and still earn a living. Like you say, even the top players used to have to find another career after retiring from professional sports. About 15-16 years ago I was working for Formertons in the industrial estate down near to West Quay/Leisure World. There was an old chap working there who looked like he should have retired many years ago. As I was a cocky lad in my early 20s, I just dismissed him as a dopey old codger, much to my shame. Turns out he was Tommy Traynor!

Because she doesn't buy either of those papers. She is a creature of habit and buys the Mail because she always has done.

I do, unfortunately. My mum is one of them. She honestly believes the Mail delivers the news in a balanced, objective way. She voted Tory this time around "because Labour caused the recession in 2008 remember". She is a pristine example of how people can have their opinions manipulated by what they read in the press.