Sheaf Saint

Doesn't matter because the ref would have had to stop the game for the head injury anyway.

A BACK FOUR!!!

What would be really funny is if Wilder told them to get to fuck because he's no doubt still being paid off by them anyway.

And right now he's got Rangers sitting tenth in a two horse race.

A couple of suspiciously familiar comments here: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/ceq2rnxx72no

I can't PM you so can you share your email address please?

But remember we're not allowed to compare them to the Nazis because, apparently, that's anti-Semitic.

I believe it already was before today.

And Selles to Rangers?

0-2, but at least Rangers have 67% possession.

Is this still available?

Anybody know what the ticket sales have been like? It won't even let me through to the sales screen because I'm not currently eligible to buy one. And do you have to have a £30 membership to buy any away tickets this season?

And now we've gone full circle. Stockport's opponents this week, Cardiff, are captained today by Callum Chambers - an OG member of the 2014 defectors that this thread was dedicated to in the first place.

I just hope they don't sack him before we play them.

This is already the case where I work. Applications are blind sifted and scored, and if they achieve the benchmark they will be put forward to the interview stage. It's only at this point that recruiting managers get to see the applicant's personal details. Interview panels will then have at least one person from one of our minority group networks (having undergone all relevant training), to try and avoid any unconscious bias influencing the final outcome. It works. We have a diverse workforce with people from all kinds of backgrounds, and nobody who is unqualified or incapable ever gets appointed purely because of their ethnicity or other protected characteristic. Nobody is "stealing a white person's slot" as Kirk so crudely put it.

All of which is at odds with his public persona (see my previous post). Which might perhaps suggest that he didn't actually hold many of the views he famously expressed and was only voicing them to be deliberately provocative. Just a thought.

When speaking about Michelle Obama and a number of other prominent black women in US politics he said they "don't have the brain processing power to be successful on their own and needed to steal a white person's slot to be taken seriously". He tweeted that "Democrat women want to die alone". He openly told Taylor Swift (who, like her or not, is one of the world's most successful people) that she should reject feminism and submit to her husband. Generally his entire 'debating' style when it came to women was to talk louder and talk over them, and insist that his rigid Christian beliefs meant he knew better than them what was good for them. His disdain for any woman who wanted to be anything other than a good housewife was very clear and obvious. He may not have personally used the words 'gays should be stoned to death', the accusation of which Stephen King apologised for. But he did describe the bible passage that sentiment originates from as "God's perfect law".

Oof. I get up with a bit of insomnia and check my phone to find two more pages on this since I went to bed. I started typing out a lengthy reply, but just can't be arsed so I'm gonna summarise it like this... Is it wrong to hire an unqualified person into a particular role purely because they tick a diversity box? Yes. (I think we are all in agreement with that). Is it stupid and potentially racist to question whether a black airline pilot is actually qualified to fly a plane purely because of objections to the use of EDI principles in recruitment? Also yes. Some clearly believe that Kirk's original quote was just a clumsy choice of words used to make a perfectly valid point. I, however, disagree and am of the opinion that it is indicative of his inherent sense of bigotry, further examples of which are widespread in his speeches and podcasts.

I know, and I never claimed that's what he said. But what he did say was that he could look at a black pilot and believe that he/she might not actually be qualified and therefore hasn't passed the extremely rigorous testing process that all airline pilots must go through in order to obtain their licence. That's a special kind of stupid.

Oh I agree she's not a great pundit, and her playing the race card doesn't go down well with many people, it's true. But she is at least well spoken and I would still rather listen to her than Paul Merson or Wayne Rooney.

It doesn't make negative assumptions about people based on their ethnic background, as Kirk did in his podcast.

But the original quote demonstrates that he could look at someone and, based on the colour of their skin, question whether they are even qualified at all, not whether they were the most qualified person at the selection stage. At best, that's just extremely ignorant of how DEI practices work. At worst, it's outright racist.

I can think of plenty of white, male pundits worse than she is. It's odd that you would single her out as being particularly bad.

What qualifications do you need to be a football pundit?

The original quote from his podcast he was being challenged on was... “I'm sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified". Whichever way you look at it, that's racial profiling.