CHAPEL END CHARLIE

Yep - RK has drawn the proverbial 'line in the sand' on that matter and VW leaving in this window would now be a very public humiliation for him. For that reason, if for no other, I expect to see VW stay here until January at the very least - whether he likes it or not.

How about this pair of 'jokers' on the A31? http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/13626741.VIDEO__Drivers_cause_huge_tailback_on_A31 _by_driving_at_less_than_half_speed_limit/ I am Captain Slow, but even I would be ready to kill after 20 miles of that

I've admittedly only seen the MOTD2 highlights of this game - if 'highlights' be the right word - but was that Romeu really as poor a midfielder as that brief glimpse made him look? It's very tempting to put our current poor form down to the distraction of the 'Ropey' league - something tells me however that this competition won't start to properly hurt us until we are further on into the season. That's something else to worry about ...

With suitable safeguards in place to ensure that this momentous decision has been arrived at without coercion, then this reform would I feel be a most welcome (and long overdue) one. The hard truth is that for all the claims about how wonderful modern medicine can be, in fact the last year or 6 months of a life can sometimes be a truly miserable experience that many people would prefer to forgo frankly - and I can quite see why. No responsible pet owner would allow their dog to suffer unduly, but we Humans are expected to drag our lives out to the bitter end for some reason. Time for change Parliament.

Signs that a virtual civil war might break out within the Labour Party should Jeremy Corbyn become their next leader - well according to the Telegraph anyway: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11812608/Corbyn-faces-post-election-vote-of-no-confidence-from-fellow-Labour-MPs.html This one could run and run ...

I understand Doris has been secretly dreaming of a move to Liverpool for years now and will stop at nothing to get her way. Forum members are naturally invited to immediately forget her many years of faithful service and display a utterly unreasonable degree of hatred towards her - treacherous old cow that she is. Should she slip on a wayward cupcake and break her hip, that is to be considered a acceptable cause for celebration.

Hay! a forthcoming sci-fi film that isn't some kind of sequel

la donna e mobile. M3 or A31 ?

Wouldn't it be good. Cavalier or Cortina?

Even if I agreed with his various economic and domestic polices, which I most certainly do not, a politician who is on the record as saying quote ''I'd rather we weren't in it'' in respect of our NATO membership - IE the cornerstone of this nation defence - is simply not fit to represent the United Kingdom on the international stage. As a potential Prime Minister this man is utterly unacceptable as far as I'm concerned.

Losing your first home game to Everton 3-0 is pretty poor I think however you choose to dress it up. But yes, you cannot keep selling off your best players every summer and expect to 'get away with it' like we did last season. It is still of course far too early to sensibly predict where we will finish this season - however I don't see why another top ten finish should not be the target.

The problem with this type of argument is that the next election won't be decided by committed ''labour voters'' but rather by swing voters in what are now Tory marginals. Standing on a hard-left platform of mass renationalisation, closer ties with Putin's Russia and support for Hamas I can't see Jeremy Corbyn winning many/any of these key voters around frankly. More importantly I don't hear any independent observer of the British political scene saying he's likely to either. The Labour Party is facing the political abyss. Now as a 'old school' socialist you may well share his values and therefore support him. You may even be quite prepared to see the Labour Party reduced to a powerless 'talking shop' for decades to come as long as the party remains faithful to its founding principles. Ok then. Please accept however that others on here want to see the British people given a real choice at the next general election as to who they want to govern them. Indeed, the health of our democracy depends upon this.

Lennon - less bloodthirsty. Supermarine Spitfire or Messerschmitt Bf 109?

The Chinese port of Tianjin has been rocked by a huge explosion tonight: Edit - sorry didn't spot other thread

Beware of young men who can still have a full head of hair if they wanted to, but choose to shave it all off so that they can look *hard*. Trouble in store I tells ye ... or is he ginger?

That is true, but even more crucially - can the pearly gates open wide enough to get a XJ6 through?

One game in but already I see little reason to doubt why we should not match last season's performance going forward - indeed if Casie is as good as they say and JRod fully recaptures his form then we might well improve our goal tally significantly. However, our success in 2014-5 was largely built on a solid foundation of defensive resilience. It must be questionable whether - sans Alderweireld, Schneiderlin, Clyne, Forster and (temporarily we hope) Bertrand - we can be as defensively sound again this season. Of those 3 permanently departed key players methinks that Morgan Schneiderlin will be the hardest one to replace in the long term - in his absence Victor Wanyama is now a crucial player for us and if he was to suffer a serious injury then we'd be in some trouble I think. Another quality DM addition would obviously be welcome. It also seems clear enough that Matt Targett is, at this early stage of his career, not an especially able LB in all honesty. So Ryan Bertrand's return cannot come too quickly. The 'window' is still very open of course but right now I'm thinking that we may end up in a broadly similiar league position at the end of the season as we did last May - we may however take an entirely different route to get back there this time.

Not the most demanding of parts I suppose, but George Cole was perfectly cast in the Arthur Daly role and he played it to perfection. IIRC 'Minder' was originally conceived by Thames as little more than a 'star vehicle' for Dennis Waterman, who needed a new series after 'The Sweeny' ended. But Cole was so good he soon became just as important to the series success as Waterman was - more so perhaps. Like Leonard Nimoy who also passed recently one of those actors who through their work on TV became a measurable part of your life and leave you feeling grateful that they had lived. Bless him.

Not what I've been reading this time, but rather what will Russian students NOT be reading in future because one of my favourite modern historians - Anthony Beevor - has just had his books officially banned in Putin's Russia. The reason for this drastic move? Well believe it or not Beevor's 'crime' is that in his (splendid) book 'Berlin: The Downfall' he dared record the veritable campaign of mass rape that so many Red Army soldiers committed in Soviet occupied Germany during 1945. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/05/banning-book-russia-past-holocaust-red-army-antony-beevor There is of course no serious dispute that these crimes are an historical fact, indeed so many German girls and women ''from 8 to 80'' were raped that some committed suicide and many never fully recovered from their terrible ordeal. However, as far as modern Russia is concerned they would much prefer to pretend that none of this awful business happened. An attitude that kinda stinks frankly - not to put too fine point on it.

Jeremy Corbyn may well win this vote because he seems very popular among Labour party activists and others who are also much interested in political ideology. This seems quite clear now. The problem for Labour and British democracy is that, rightly or wrongly, most of our people don't give a flying fig about ideology and instead vote pragmatically for political parties whom they consider are most likely to further their own interests and/or manage their economy most efficiently. This relative disinterest in political radicalism - an attitude sometimes described as 'reasonableness' by historians - is one of the principle reasons why we here had no violent revolution that was even nearly comparable to the one France or Imperial Russia experienced in the 18th and 20th centuries. It may be this (very British) attitude can trace its origins as far back to our Civil War of the 1640's or even the national trauma of the Reformation in Tudor times. Be that as it may, it seems to me that we are an innately moderate people, a people therefore who will almost certainly reject a ideology driven party in 2020 - quite decisively in all probability.

Perhaps if Ontario's most infamous 'care in the community' victim could explain why he is so utterly convinced that he is right about everything, and that EVERYBODY else is always wrong, then he might gain a smidgeon of respect on here, rather than the daily dose of ridicule he so richly deserves. PS - now if (as I suspect) the answer to the above question will be some puerile ''but I live in N America and you don't'' line, then that will not do because EVERY other American member on here has also called you a fool haven't they?

You're paying VM too much - I've now managed to get it down to £17.45 a month for 50 Mb Broadband and Phone. Mind you, I had to get pretty medieval with them to get that price ...

It's mid summer and there's not exactly a glut of decent TV out there at the moment. But I do rather like the new French (subtitled) crime drama 'Witnesses' - C4 Wednesday. Two 'Surete' detectives are tasked with investigating a bizarre case that involves the corpses of recently deceased people being unearthed overnight and then carefully posed into pseudo 'happy family' groups at unoccupied show houses. It soon becomes very apparent that another French detective - a rather enigmatic man with his own dark secrets - is at the centre of this disturbing mystery. A densely plotted French series that shows a clear 'Scandinavian Noir' influence I think - and all the better for it perhaps.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11775481/Even-if-Labour-recovers-from-Corbynmania-it-may-well-be-doomed.html