Lighthouse

I doubt their fans have ever not been worried, since the moment they got promoted. It’s going to be a long season for that bottom four.

Sam Harris basically puts the situation across as I see it.

I wouldn't say that so much as the fact that there's only so much a slogan and a logo can really achieve. Their place and purpose is to raise awareness of an issue; for someone in the 21st century to say they're unaware of the issue of racism is laughable.

The media and the various football pundits are clearly well out of touch with the view of a lot of the public. You only have to look at the news stories on social media and a lot of the comments are against either the BLM organisation or the compulsory virtue signalling of kneeling. Yet every live game I watch starts with whichever commentator solemnly telling the viewers, "as ever we take the knee to send out such a powerful statement of unity." The problem people like Dublin have is that they seem to have suspended critical thinking. We’ve got to a point in society where a lot of people think they can’t be wrong and that if someone disagrees with them, they must be the victim of an -ism or a -phobia. There’s no willingness to listen to the other side anymore, just the Maginot Line of, "I’m offended," for egos to hide behind. If Dion assumes racism and stops there then this won’t be the last time and he will go to his grave thinking the world is an awful, racist place. Having said that, I’ve no doubt that a large number of Millwall fans are absolute helmets.

If BLM kneeling was an optional choice once a season, I doubt anyone would be too upset about it. Likewise if we had a poppy and a minutes silence for every game, fans would soon get fed up.

Our players are perfectly capable of that without our help.

We all know Millwall fans aren't exactly the type to leave a game early to get to the ballet. Yes, most of them are probably obnoxious bell ends and booing isn't pleasant or helpful but that doesn't necessarily dictate their motives.

All this incident signifies to me is that BLM's strategy has been wrong all along and is having the opposite effect to what they were rather naively hoping for. You can't simply patronise people into agreeing with you, on any subject. It wont change any attitudes, you will just bore the average Joes with tedium to the point that they actually start to resent you. What I find doubly irritating is how easy and quick it is to do. If a player was volunteering his spare time at a local youth centre, to help kids from different ethnic backgrounds get involved in their community, stay out of gangs and in schools etc. THEN I could tolerate him talking to me in condescending tones. Short of actual liking that kind of attitude, I could at least appreciate that he had done something worthwhile and put his money where his mouth is. What I can't stand is people who put a black fist on their Twitter handle, kneel down from time to time, then lecture the rest of us as if they've made some seismic social impact that Dr King would be in awe of.

Hallerious.

As he said, the gesture. Some people don't like compulsory virtue signalling. C*ntish though many 'wall fans doubtless are, this doesn't make them racist in itself.

You’re just pissed off that it’s not a suppository.

Three people have just explained to you and you ignore them. This doesn’t require an hour long consult with a vascular oncologist. Retired doctors, nurses, radiographers, army medics, vets, student medics, heroin addicts... What do you think is a bigger drain on the NHS - Gav from the paratroop regiment sticking a syringe in someone’s tricep for 10 seconds or three weeks hooked up to an iron lung in ICU, being pumped full of steroids by doctors and nurses, who have to run out and change their PPE every 20 minutes?

F**k it, give me one of these and I’ll do 975 a week by myself.

Why this defeatist attitude? I can understand people having doubts over what they’re being injected with, even if it’s by far the lesser of the two evils but this is clinging at logistical straws. The best medical brains in the world have been working flat out to develop, test and approve a vaccine with a near miraculous success rate and you’re complaining about fridge space and volunteer nurses. For the record, my mother is a retired radiographer and was recently asked by the NHS to be re-admitted to their register, in case extra staff were needed short term. These are exactly the kinds of people who can be readily asked and trained to administer a simple jab in a school sports hall, community hall or similar.

Why this self-imposed criteria of needing one canister for one GP surgery? Personally I'm hoping for and expecting large, temporary vaccination centres with dozens of retired doctors, nurses and other volunteers administering literally hundreds of vaccines per day. IF they are being administered at a GP surgery, which seems an unnecessary drain on their resources, there’s no reason a van with a few dozen doses can’t be dispatched from from a nearby vaccination or distribution centre. When I had my school booster jabs, they got the whole of year 9 done in the same morning.

Not sure exactly what humour he’s supposed to be adding to the situation. Seems like just an excuse to wear a wig, some makeup and act a bit feminine to me.

That is the choice. If the vaccine is available, that’s the choice you are making every day until you get vaccinated. Why your imposing this arbitrary four month guinea-pig period on the rest of the population I don’t know. It’s passed all the trials the best medical brains in the world can throw at it. What you’re proposing is a some-what cowardly view of waiting for a whole bunch of other people to take it first and seeing if they get sick. It’s passed all the trials it needs to in order to be approved; you haven’t even hypothesised what might be wrong with it,

If a trial of 40,000 volunteers resulted in 200 fatalities and we had proven medical reason as to how and why, there’s no way on Earth you be trying to rationalise it as ‘mostly the over-70 volunteers died’. if I had a 50-50 choice - Pfizer or Covid - even over the next month, I’d take the vaccine any time.

It’s more the principle than a literal comparison of the actual chances and those figures are assuming the whole country been infected already, which is obviously wrong. Also, people are bizarrely sticking with the ‘if you don’t die it’s fine’ line of thinking. I’m far more concerned with the long term side effects of Covid than this vaccine; ongoing fatigue or even permanent lung damage. To each their own but I’d take my chances with the Pfizer vaccine over actually getting Covid, any day of the week.

Playing devils advocate, let’s say you lived in ISIS controlled Syria and the options were to try and leave immediately in the hyper loop or to stay there another month, then take the Mondeo?

More to the point, the government have finally let slip who their priority targets are for this technology. 85 year olds with Alzheimer’s and Polish nurses on minimum wage, that’s who the global Illuminati are really afraid of.

Does anyone know of any recruitment for the blowgun/drive-by method of vaccination? I can’t think of any job which would give me greater satisfaction.

But players are dying in their 30s and 40s and not just in football but rugby and especially in NFL.

They are up until the age of around 35 or whenever they retire, after that some of them properly let themselves go. When you’re younger, you tend to be at much lower risk from a lot of health problems anyway. I doubt a 45 year old, obese ex footballer is much better off than a 45 year old, obese lorry driver. There’s also a rather sad impact on mental health when players are forced to give up the thrill of the game. The likes of Speed, Shipperly, Maradona, Gazza, Merson and others have gone on to live post-retirement lives which were far from healthy.

If an argument falls apart in the face of an admittedly flippant remark like mine, then it wasn’t a very good argument. We have a massive say in when we die and it’s in no way reasonable to claim otherwise. Diet, exercise, smoking, alcohol, drug use and risk taking are all massive factors.