CHAPEL END CHARLIE

This game was - as you might expect - typical preseason fare mostly, disjointed, mildly disappointing and of little significance. Like others I thought that Steven Caulker was perfectly OK and Juanmi looked busy enough - it will be certainly interesting to see how he settles into the PL. Martina too seemed to fit in nicely. Some of our home grown youngsters however did little to further their cause - Targett was 'missing in action' for their goal and he seldom worked himself into good crossing positions. JWP was pretty anonymous and Harrison Reed distinctly unimpressive I thought. Great to see JRod back after such a serious injury and THAT goal was easily the best moment of a dull (if inexpensive) match. I must add here that at times it was obvious that JRod currently lacks that exceptional pace that was such a key element of his game. Now, it is of course to be expected that a player in his situation will be somewhat 'rusty', but I do worry that he's 'lost a yard' as they say ... we can only hope this is a temporary problem.

Are you suggesting Jonny that a man who consistently advocates extreme violence as a appropriate response to almost any problem; a man who refuses to accept criticism or indeed see another's point of view; and one who also exhibits clear signs of mental illness may well be prone to 'domestic abuse' behaviour too? The only response I can offer to such an UTTERLY OUTRAGEOUS suggestion is that ....

The sun is shining, we have won a game and the football fan's sense of 'early season optimism' is in full flow. This however is a question that would be more usefully asked I think when the (inevitable?) 'bill' for all these additional games we may face this season arrives - IE if our Premier League form starts to suffer. Ask the question then and see whether this competition is still seen to a blessing or a burden.

Okay, say we let those ''few thousand'' currently besieging Calais to enter the UK illegally today - the next question is what happens tomorrow? To answer that question, surely seeing this group's success will almost certainly encourage many more to follow them with the inevitable result that we have a escalating problem on our hands rather than a solved one. The supply of unfortunate people in this world who are both equipped and motivated to better themselves knows no limit while this small island of ours is obviously very much a finite resource. A nation state that can no longer maintain any control of its borders is not worthy of the name.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33707445

The rich are bloody marvellous, they waste so much money on buying stupidly expensive cars and adding pointless ''cinema rooms'' to their overpriced mansions that you have to wonder just how many working people would be on the dole if they did not exist. So I say God bless all those Bentley drivers and 85'' UHD TV owners out there - for the rich are leaving we poor a much more desirable world to inherit one day.

Book > Well when I first read 'Empire of the Sun' by J.G.Ballard I thought it was the best novel that I'd ever read. Two decades (and a great many good books) later I see little reason to change my mind - although having said that 'The Deathbird Stories' by Harlan Ellison runs it pretty damn close. Film > An impossible question as there are so many great films out there that I love. So how about 'Blade Runner' then, or 'Aliens' maybe. Sidney Lumet's 'Failsafe' sure leaves a mark on you while 'Das Boot' is a magnificent achievement by any standard. 'Wages of Fear' blew my mind and 'Psycho' is a masterpiece from the best film-maker who ever lived ... but there again is 'Vertigo' a even better Hitchcock film perhaps? How on earth can I omit 'Terminator II Judgement Day' from the list as I adore it so? No, I think I'll just say 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is my final answer to both questions and leave it there ..... for now

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11769764/Jeremy-Corbyn-takes-20-point-lead-in-Labour-poll-with-Andy-Burnham-in-third-place.html

Could it possibly be .... that anyone on here .... would be so laughably insecure .... that they would waste .... 9 months of their life .... posting 999 cretinous replies .... all in a increasing desperate effort .... to have the last word .... with a bunch of people .... they claim not to like anyway .... lolzzzz .....

A comforting thought for the liberal minded maybe, but the evidence does not support this claimed 'left of centre' bias among the British electorate. The record shows quite conclusively that since 1945 (under our FPTP system) we elect the Conservative Party into power significantly more often than Labour. Therefore the evidence suggests that the British people are rather more inclined to what we might call a 'right of centre' viewpoint - or at least they tend to trust the Tory party more with the management of our economy perhaps.

Well being poor is nothing to be ashamed (or proud) of, but for what it's worth my working class credentials are I can assure you quite impeccable. But for all the talk on here of the *evil* rich who do nothing for their fellow man, the fact is that official statistics show that the top 1% of earners will pay almost 30% of income tax in 2013-14. Furthermore, a great many low earners are now for the first time exempt from the income tax system entirely - thanks by the way in large part to the influence of the (hated) Lib Dem party in the coalition government. Now if you don't feel that 1% paying 30% is enough for your tastes then we could I suppose go back to the punitive tax regimes we last saw back in the 1970's. But there again I understand the evidence is that this policy would be counter-productive as many of these wealthy tax payers would just move themselves - or their money - abroad. The aim here is to increase the amount of wealth in society rather than decrease it is it not? So I'm struggling to see this issue in as straight forward, black and white, terms as you seem to.

Another post I struggle to find much I can agree with. To depict Blair's success as nothing more than a negative reaction to Conservative rule, rather than having anything to do with him personally, is to spectacularly misunderstand British politics of that era. I'm in my fifties now, and during that lifetime I've not seen another politician - not even Thatcher - with HALF the instinctive feel for what makes modern Britain 'tick' as Blair had in his (pre Iraq war) prime. Sorry, but no British Labour leader is going to persuade a middle class country to vote for a working class party three times in a row without having something special about them our people would - and did - vote for. When Blair warns the party that they are heading for disaster, then instead of 'blaming the electorate' for what happened and lurching to the left - IE away from the mass of our people - they would do well I think to listen to him because he knows what he's talking about. As for the ''alternative'' Corbyn would offer - well I suppose a rampant growth of our (already huge) national debt, a larger state and renationalising the railway/gas/electricity industries would certainly be an alternative from anything the Conservatives are likely to put in their next manifesto. Ironically for a party founded to be progressive, that sounds just about as regressive a set of polices for 21st century Britain as I can possibly imagine.

I could hardly disagree more with the above. Surely the ''somewhere'' Jeremy Corbyn would take the Labour Party would be back to the opposition benches. Love him or hate him, but Tony Blair won a unprecedented 3 General Elections because he (quite brilliantly) steered the Labour Party away from its Socialist roots and the outdated 'class warfare' ideology of the hard left, and instead took it towards the so called 'centre ground' of British politics where our elections are won and lost. Before Blair Labour had NEVER won two successive elections. Between 1951 and Blair's remarkable landslide 'New Labour' victory in 1997, the record shows that the Conservative Party had been in power for 35 out of those 46 years. This fact led many 20th Century political theorists to conclude that the Tory Party had in effect become what was refereed to as the 'Natural Party of Government' here in the UK. That was true back then, it is even more true today I think. The core problem for Labour - the problem that Tony Blair understood so well - is that it is historically a 'Working Class' party in what is an increasingly 'Middle Class' nation. Middle Class people are by nature more inclined toward conservative attitudes because they - unlike poorer segments of society - have something to lose of course. So if Labour is still really interested in regaining power one day (rather than becoming the leftist debating society some seem to favour) then it has again to give that aspirational Middle Class a strong reason to vote for it, or they will surely lose the next election even more heavily than they lost the last one.

If it chooses to Labour can indeed 'stand on its principles' and no doubt congratulate itself from now until kingdom come on the unadulterated purity of its leftist ideology. I put it to you that all this 'standing' will be done from the opposition benches ...