sadoldgit

I’m going to go all MLG on you but I think he cost us a massive £60,000. Also he was top scorer in Division 1 3 years running, one of them jointly with George Best. Matt Busby said he was possibly the best centre forward in Europe at the time.

Starmer got flak for spending too much time concentrating on Partygate and Johnson’s personal failings and not commenting on the “major” issues of the day but the minute he turns attention onto a current “major” issue, the mess of the NHS, he gets criticised for that. Damned whatever he does. Fortunately the next election won’t be decided on one PM Questions session and the longer the greased piglet clings on to power, the more seats the Tories will lose in two years time. Starmer may not have the charisma of the piglet, but he is a decent human being who wants to deal with the problems that most of us normal people are facing right now. Why anyone would still vote for the inept, self serving, bloated shagger God only knows but it proves one thing, there are plenty of turkeys out there still prepared to vote for Christmas.

He could have chosen to stay as there was an offer on the table but he chose to go which is fair enough and doesn’t make Ralph’s statement wrong. The days when managers controlled who came and went are long gone and it is little surprise that he is not fully in the loop.The situation with Ings is a case in point where Ralph clearly thought he might be staying but Ings couldn’t wait to hit foot it to Villa. I wonder how much say he had in the retention of Stephens, McCarthy and if he stays, Long? He is hardly going to come out and say they are not good enough and I don’t want them here but I am stuck with them.

Not saying you are wrong, but didn’t Ralph recently say that Armstrong was still very much part of a long term project here?

Manchester United are full or technically gifted players but many of them have a poor attitude and look how their season went. Yes, you need ability but teams like ours need to make up for lack of quality with a positive attitude. When we displayed those qualities we actually sat on the top of the EPL. How many comments did you read on here about players being on the beach in the final games of the season. Technical ability without a good attitude gets you Pogba.

Two words. Calum. Davenport. Not sure which his worst game was but you can probably chose any of the 7 he played for us.

It isn’t the least unusual is it? Every time there is some high profile “blasphemy” there is pushback from the more militant Muslims (as well you know because you always highlight it). There has been plenty of measured criticism about the film on the media over the last few days, it is a shame, but not surprising, that you have chosen this particular clip and not one of those. So why is this particularly “weird” when people in Paris were murdered because someone drew a cartoon of the prophet? You make it sound like it is unusual when you know perfectly well that it is anything but.It is what you do Alex. You used to do it as Delldays. You used to do it as Batman. You are doing it again now and will do it as your next persona.

What is weird about it exactly? You know full well that there are people like this here in this country and you know full well that these people take blasphemy seriously just like much of the Christian world used to do. What is weird is that a grown man has spent so many years of his life trawling the internet for little snippets that reenforce his world view that foreigners/Muslims are dodgy and posting them on a football forum. If you are that concerned about these people why not go and work for Priti Patel? You can then spend your day productively sending Johnny Foreigner back overseas where he/she belongs rather than pretending that finding an interview with a Muslim with a hard line view is something “weird.”

The dragon guy who let in 6 goals last night? Should fit right in 😉

I think he misheard. They weren’t asking how big was his cock, they were calling him a big cock 😉

I remember the time that decimalisation was announced and we were all moaning about it to our Physics teacher. He said it was the best thing to happen to us and of course he was right. It is so much easier to work things out in decimals rather than fractions. As for the systems nowadays, I think most of us use a bit of both. It seems to work pretty well so why change it? I fill my car up with litres of petrol. I but my jeans with a 36” waist. The speed sign are still in miles per hour. A bottle of wine is 75cls. When I use a recipe to cook my electronic scales are calibrated in both metric and imperial so whatever the measurements it doesn’t matter. I can’t even tell you the last time I heard someone say I wish we went back to imperial measurements. We were told that there are a lot more important things to worry about than Partygate. I would argue that there are a lot more important things to worry about than bringing back an archaic measuring system.

Common we all know that this is pandering to the “take back control” crowd and has nothing to do with practicality. Yet another ploy along with a conveyor belt of ploys to distract the great unwashed from the Tory Party’s lack of vision and real policies to take us forward post Brexit.I wonder what the next stunt will be? Bringing back £.S.D?

It is possible to thank departing staff and still adhere to socially distancing rules. Unless we have all missed something and the small print said that the PM is exempt and all staff leaving his service need a party and plenty to drink?

Starmer does not need to look “jazzy.” He just needs to be competent and be a half decent, functional PM who does the right things for the majority of the country. We have seen what all charisma and no substance has done. We have seen what Tory values have done over the last decade plus. I couldn’t give a stuff about image. It is time for substance. There is zero substance in the Tory party. They have long been a spent force. The fact that not one of the cabinet members is any better than Johnson and that Hunt was a standing joke before tells you all you need to know about them. Johnson has not only been useless for the country, he has shafted his own party too. We desperately need change. We do not need another dose of an empty, self important puppet who thinks it’s all a game and something he can use as vessel for his own vanity. All Starmer has to do is not be a twat and get the country back on its feet.

It is not a hard concept to grasp, but clearly he is having problems with it. She did not claim she was raped. The CPS did. Both Evans and his mate admitted performing sexual acts with her. The argument was about consent. Under the law you cannot consent to sex if you are incapacitated by drunk or drugs. The fact that she had no recollection of what happened to her that night should a pointer for the hard of thinking. There is CCTV footage of her earlier staggering around and clearly out of it. She lost her bag on the kebab shop. The decent thing to do when Evans mate found her would have been to make sure she got home safely, not take her to a prebooked hotel room, shag her, get your mate round to have a go to and have other mates film it from outside the window. He was convicted originally. His various appeals were turned down but eventually his fiancées Dad bought some dodgy evidence which probably should not have been allowed in the eventual appeal and his was acquitted in the appeal trial. Once again, she did not lie. Her claim through is that she had zero recollection of what happened to her that night, including have “consensual” sex with two complete strangers. Anyway, back to the subject of this thread. So a Hollywood superstar is accused of beating up his ex wife and sexually assaulting her with the thick end of a whiskey bottle and his ex wife is accused of taking a dump in his bed. Hmmmm, why would anyone be remotely interested in a court case like that? 🤔 Personally, I followed the case because my ex wife has similar personality traits to Amber Heard and also involved me in a DV court case so I was interested to see how it played out. Like Heard, my ex wife produced fake evidence and was caught out providing conflicting evidence. There are big issues about how differently men and women are treated in DV cases. There is pressure to believe the women even if the evidence is weak. I think most of us would think that it shouldn’t be about gender, it should be about the evidence presented in court. There was massive interest in the case, not just because it featured two Hollywood actors, but for what it means in the DV “me too” movement. Depp’s victory was seen as a victory for men who are abused in domestic relationships. Heard’s defeat is being spun as another reason to believe that men hold all the power still and that women are not heard (no pun intended). It was a big case. I would have been more surprised if there had been no media interest in it.

As usual he has got it wrong. She didn’t bring the case. The CPS decided to prosecute after her friend said she should go to the police. They looked into it and took their evidence to the CPS who took the decision on her behalf to prosecute. It is a particularly unpleasant case. Evans’s mate found her in a kebab shop ( She claims her drink had been spiked earlier) in a very inebriated state. Instead of putting her in a taxi and making sure she got home ok he took her to a hotel room that Evans had on the standby for such opportunities and had sex with her. He texted Evans to say that he had found a girl. Evans turned up ((via the fire escape so as not to be recognised) and performed a sex act with her then left without uttering a single word to her. Their mates were outside the window and filmed the whole thing on camera phones. Somehow Duckie thinks this is ok and that Evans was “stitched up.” Perhaps the stitching up was done when Evans’s fiancée’s dad offered cash for people to come forward to discredit the victim which is what happened and why he was acquitted upon an eventual appeal (which was turned down on several occasions previously). If he bothered to read up about the case he would see that the “new evidence” that the fiancée’s dad effectively bought should not have been allowed according to the CPS because previous sexual history should not been considered in rape cases, but the judge ruled otherwise. So no she did not lie and for those who think it is perfectly ok to sexually assault incapacitated women, justice was served.

She didn’t lie in the Ched Evans case. Just to remind you she was totally incapacitated through drink/drugs and had no recollection of what happened that night. In this country you cannot consent to sex if you are incapacitated by drink or drugs. It is rape. He wasn’t “stitched up.” He performed a sex act on a woman who was proven to be incapacitated. Whatever you think of either verdict, the CPS decided that there was a case to answer. The fact that he was originally found guilty should be a hint to you that there was clearly a case to answer. For someone who gets all high and mighty about drink driving it is a shame your moral compass doesn’t also include sexual assault on near comatose women. Still, it is only a “chick” isn’t it Duckie. You must miss the good old days when it was perfectly acceptable to get women drunk in order to have sex with them.

I was referring to their reporting of the verdict, not the opinion piece you have quoted. And yes, I completely agree that social media is often toxic. And regarding misogyny, the saddest thing on social media (and in general) is how misogynistic women can be towards their own gender.

No it doesn’t. But in our case and in the case of my colleagues in the police, probation and court service, we were all told to reduce our wage bills. There was no work done on the numbers needed to provide a satisfactory service what so ever. If the workload doesn’t decrease in line with staff numbers ( or if it goes up) any department will struggle after year after year of cuts. We were expected to hit the budget and were told specifically that we couldn’t use lack of staff as an excuse if we didn’t hit our performance targets. In order to hit our annual budget targets we had to hope that the more experienced staff on higher wages would volunteer to go, which many of them did as they were fed up with the increasing workload, which left us with the more inexperienced staff members, many of whom were poor performers. If this is happening throughout the civil service and other government agencies, no wonder that our infrastructure is going downhill rapidly. I should add that the number of people off sick with mental health and or mental health related issues climbed dramatically over the period too. If you have an ever shrinking team and people on long term sick leave and are unable to recruit cover it puts an even higher burden of the workforce giving you a vicious circle. To label all civil servants as lazy workers in cushy jobs is absolute nonsense. There will always be people who take the piss but the problems that I see locally in the hospitals, at the doctors, in the local services etc is too few people with too high a workload.

I used to be on “flexi time” in the CPS. You were allowed to carry over 2 hours every month. I used to lose time every month because my flexi clock would be well over the 2 hours. I never got to use the 2 hours either. When I worked in the private sector I earned a lot more money and there were more opportunities to take the piss. I am sure we all have different experiences but the usual nonsense of tarring everyone or everything with the same brush just because you know of one or two examples doesn’t prove an argument. I currently know many manual (private sector) workers who earn over £200 “a day” but their “day” often finishes at 2pm or 3pm after a 9 am start, plenty of tea breaks and a lunch hour. My wife works in the private sector from 9am to 5:30pm with half an hour for lunch and earns well below the national average wage. She has a few days off so didn’t get home until 7:30pm last night because she was getting her work sorted for the person covering - no overtime. It used to be the same when she worked in the public sector (only she was a higher grade and was on a higher salary). My point is that you cannot compare the private sector with the public sector unless you research the vast majority of jobs in both sectors. Throwing in the odd anecdotal reference when there are hundreds of thousands of different working practices across both sectors means nothing. The public sector has been squeezed massively in the austerity years. The infrastructure of this country is crumbling, not because civil servants are in cushy jobs, but because their are not enough of them to get the work done. This has absolutely nothing to do with working from home or flexi hours. In both public and private sectors, if you do not employ enough people to do the job properly, you are going to struggle.

The article in The Guardian regarding the verdict is well balanced. The separate article that you are referring to was written by an American columnist and is not a “Guardian opinion”. It is her opinion. I am no supporter of Amber Heard but I have been following the trial on another social media site and the abuse aimed at her has been horrendous, and mostly from women too.

Jeremy Hunt currently favourite at 6/1 and Liz Truss second favourite at 33/5. Good grief!

The Mail on Sunday making a big deal about the Crown having to be removed from pint glasses after an edict from the EU 18 years ago and now being brought back as part of a benefit of Brexit. Only there was no edict to remove the crown from pint glasses. But never mind, it makes for a brilliant jingoistic front page when you are trying to save Johnson’s job for him.

You think that is funny?

At least I have never been banned from an Internet forum or come on pretending to be someone I am not. Little wonder you side with Johnson. You share many of his traits. As for “very angry,” no, just deeply frustrated that there are still people in this country who think that it is perfectly ok that Johnson remains as PM and that we are being governed by a bunch of total incompetents. I am not sure about using “very old” as a pejorative term. If you are fortunate enough one day you will be “very old.” Probably best to hope that there is no WW3 and you are called up to feed a submarine crew though. At least I will just be sat in an underground bunker regaling all those bored enough to listen with tales about strange characters on an Internet forum.