hypochondriac

If we play five at the back in the championship then I'll be calling for the manager's head from the first game. I fear his risk averse steady football isn't going to translate well to a league where we need to take the game to our opponents and dominate. Secondly what long term contracts for poor players are you thinking of? We are in a much better position on that front than the last time we went down.

Positives? The likes of Bednarek and Adam Armstrong will look reasonable to decent in the league below.

I'm still annoyed at Guly for ducking out the way for the equaliser at their dump. Players have the chance to be fondly remembered which would make a change because the vast majority of players I don't give a fuck about.

You'd think potential politicians wouldn't give the likelihood of the getting found out if they get a top job.

Although all three will most likely leave, Fernandes, Ramsdale and Dibling are the only three players I'd be keen to try to keep hold of for a season next year. Everyone else including THB have bkotted their copybooks for me and I'm unconvinced that any of them can play in theprem.

Well individual countries like Iran have religious leaders and that hasn't done much but disregarding that, loads of Christians aren't led by the Archbishop or the Pope and there are very few (maybe no) suicide bombers or people who think it's acceptable to kill others if you rip a page out of the Bible. There's a ton of violent passages in Islam and so unfortunately it doesn't take much of a leap to find justification for violent acts. Christianity has managed to modernise to a great extent but Islam doesn't really do that.

QED

Their argument would be why do you get to decide who the nutters are. Many of them are expert scholars and can justify their actions with reference to the text. It's a problem you don't get to the same extent in other world religions. Only Islam has this problem to this degree and that's before you discuss bigoted and backwards views towards for example gays or women's rights amongst a majority of even moderate followers.

I'd increase military spending, push pro family policies to try to increase the birth rate, have much stricter policies around people coming here and adapting to the existing culture, I'd look to reduce the burden of immigration both legal and illegal and part of that would involve spending on immigration control. I'd reduce spending in other areas I consider to be less important in order to fund it.

It's a political choice what we spend our money on. We could if we chose to spend more on defence and immigration defence and make spending in other areas less of a priority than it is at present if we wanted to.

I didn't actually mention anything about Russia in my post I was responding to the question about how free speech is threatened in the UK. I would say it probably depends what you mean by threat. I don't feel particularly threatened by Russia on a personal level but certainly on the international stage they are undoubtedly a larger threat. The individual intimidated by the police or subject to arrest for a social media post probably feels a personal threat from the UK. I'd also say that the levels of immigration is a fairly large immediate threat to my way of life and the request by a majority to have that reduced has been ignored for years.

I can imagine he knew exactly how the speech would be received. That was most likely the point.

Off the top of my head: sending police around to social media users for content that is not illegal, non crime hate incidents, arresting someone for standing and silently praying, a man last week arrested for burning a quaran, labour supposedly adopting a definition of Islamophobia containing 'perceived Muslimness' which many people believe amounts to a blasphemy law, the online safety act that propose the removal of content deemed 'legal but harmful'. I'm sure there's more but that will do for starters.

I'm sure it's not all about the latter but enough of it is that it's a problem. Even where it's the former, that could very well be misguided anger at innocent victims. I think of things like Charlie Hebdo, the Swedish bloke killed for burning a quaran recently, Salman Rushdie and I can't see how any of that can be attributed to frustration about the treatment of 'their people'. Nonetheless whatever the motive, the effect is the same.

If its so staggeringly obvious, I'm surprised by the opposition and inventive thrown at those who have previously pointed that out.

Russia definitely have a problem with free speech. So do we. I'd say it's more important for the West to keep the values that make them the best places to live in the world rather than Russia who has never had freedom.

Precisely this. It's never ever been about all Muslims. I have Muslims in my family who are wonderful people. The problem is that the Islamic faith for whatever reason has a comparatively high number of nutters who follow it and it has some backwards views that some of its followers slavishly follow.

@sadoldgitI

Anyone else listen to the speech by JD Vance? His general points about clamping down on freedom of speech, paying more for defence and leaders not listening to the public about immigration were well made I thought and very difficult to dispute.

When it turns out that it was a terrorist act, will you return on this thread and apologise?

#bekind

Wow she got sacked by hbos. She may cling on but this has got to be difficult to survive.

You could say it for another three years. It doesn't make it less true as by far the most likely scenario.

The method of killing is also a fact. Probably best not responding to me then about "what the issue was previously" when that wasn't what the issue was previously at all. Method of criminality can in some cases be as much of an indicator as nationality that's just a fact and you can't view an assumption drawn from one as reasonable yet see an assumption drawn from the other as bigoted. As usual you make little logical sense.

In many cases, the actions of the perpetrator and how the offence is committed is as much a decent indicator of the motives as their nationality. You've previously stated that when the facts are known they can be discussed. So have you changed your stance on when a reasonable assumption can be made? You've also accused me of being too quick to blame Muslims. Is it now acceptable to state that this is more likely than not to have been a radical Islamist attack?