sadoldgit

Quiet afternoon so I have been reading old articles about the Gang of Four and the formation of the Social Democrats what seems like a lifetime ago. As we know they merged with the Liberals and morphed into the LibDems. Perhaps it is time for Labour and the LibDems to look at finding enough common ground to forge a new socially motivated centrist party. With the Tories shifting to the right and trading on introspective memories of resurrecting old nationalistic glories, the way is open for a modern outward looking party made up of the best of the Labour, LibDem and disaffected Tories to come in and sort out the mess that Johnson will make of leaving the EU.

I would disagree Nick. I think he takes a wider view that national interests should not supersede international interests. You can’t have an island mentality when you live in a global village with all of the complexities that entails. He very clearly wanted to do something about the inequity and injustices in our current system.

One guy sounded promising. He started out by saying that he was falling out of love with the club and I thought here we go! He then critiqued the deal with Under Armour because of there support for hunting. This could be interesting! Then he started going on about brands and passion. I think he meant the opposite and that football clubs are all about passion and are not brands, but he seemed to lose his way and ended up waffling on off mic which was a let down. It all passed off amicably and our execs are doing their best in a very difficult and competitive world. There was no pretence or attempts to whitewash the errors. They accept that mistakes have been made and they are all working to get back on track. There was a lack of Cortese like bravado but more of a quiet determination to sort things out and give us the best chances of winning football matches both on and off the field. For us that means getting more quality out of the academy because we won’t have much more money to spend unless we are much more successful on the pitch. Anyway, the good news is that there was no attempt to doctor questions or suppress negativity. In fact they asked for non scripted questions quiet frequently. I wonder if the laid back feeling of the meeting would have been the same if we were still at the foot of the table?

Given that there are over 60m people in this country the chance of meeting people with a similar opinion isn’t exactly slim is it? The point is not everybody hated Corbyn and he did win people over. Not enough sadly but for the sake of this country we can only hope the next person does better.

He did say he wasn’t going to sell Ingsy.

I said that Labour leaders have to struggle against a largely right wing press and any new Labour leader will have the same problem. Corbyn hadit from day 1 and always faced an uphill battle. If Keir Starmer becomes leader the snarky comments have already started with him. That is the issue. You might disagree, but it is a fact.

I don’t think he lost the election because of media bias but it certainly did not help. Both characters seem to turn off voters yet you only aim your barbs at Corbyn. At least he has principles even if you don’t agree with them. Does Johnson have any principles? I am not trying to rerun the election. Labour made a poor job of it as we all know but let’s not pretend that Johnson was wonderful. He bottled out of interviews, his in a fridge to avoid an interviewer and pinched a reporters phone. If Corbyn has done that can you imagine the response? Take out Get Brexit Done and what did Johnson have to offer. Luckily for him a great deal of the media was on his side so he got away with it.

The thing is you say that he isn’t the type of person who people don’t want as Pm but he got 10m votes against Johnson’s 13m. Remove Get Brexit Done and those figures could well have been reversed. I really don’t think it is that clear cut. I know a lot of people who voted for Corbyn who have never voted Labour before. I am one of those.

Ok so it wasn’t earth shattering stuff. The first two people forgot their questions. Ralph spoke very well and isn’t planning on leaving any time soon. The person(s) we want for recruitment are with other clubs so nothing will happen until the summer on that front. Ralph wants cover at LB and maybe right back depending on Valerys recovery. No mention of another CH. Gao sees his ownership as a long term project. His aim is for us to win every game. We will continue to be self sustainable. Ralph is very happy with his support from the club and knew exactly what he was in for when he joined. This is the best job as he is in the Premiership. Better than being in the Champions League. It will take us two windows to get where we want to be squad wise. That’s it in a nutshell.

Just started to swatch it and that very subject was brooches straight away. Not attempting to duck difficult questions and there will be opportunities to ask non scripted questions too.

On the one hand you could suspect that they wanted to chose easy questions, on the other perhaps they wanted a broad range of questions so that they could cover a broad range of subjects and were properly prepared. If we ever get to hear what some of the questions were perhaps we will find out which it was.

He wasn’t the only politician with IRA links. We have done this before and it was done in an effort to get a peace treaty, which we now have. In previous threads we have discussed politicians sitting down and talking to “terrorists” ( remember one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter). What is interesting is the way you roll of the negative points about Corbyn with ease. There are just as many with Johnson but you don’t mention those. It’s a bit like the days with Cortese. He might be a c*** but he is our c***. It proves the point about the Tory press and the camaign to smear Labour leaders (which has already started with the prospective candidates). It is a double edged sword. Not only do the smears lessen the chance of people voting for them, they also distract from the negativity of their own preferred PM.

He did handle it badly. But he did handle it. Johnson handled Islamophobia badly in his party and still doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it. Corbyn gets wrongly labelled as an anti-Semite. Johnson gets away Scot free. There are also claims of anti-semitismin the Tory party but non of it stick because the media have spent their time slinging the mud at Corbyn. People will come to their views come what may, but when you get a constant drip feed of negativity that negativity builds and becomes “truth” not an opinion. I Sm sure I don’t have to tell you about Nazis and the Big Lie. Trump uses it daily to great effect.

Saints-til-I-die, your on!

Given many people still think he is an anti-Semite and a friend of terrorists I am not sure. It was a major failing (which is being recognised in this “period of reflection” that more wasn’t done to combat these negative misconceptions. If you through enough mud it sticks. Johnson had his issues but he overcame them by ramping up the nationalistic fervour. You can’t go wrong in the country by waving the Union Jack, even if you are hanging from a wire and looking a right **** whilst doing so. Sadly for Corbyn, he couldn’t even pretend suck up to the Queen and country crap and that is why people didn’t trust him with the top job. You can care about the people you represent without waving a bit of cloth and miming to God Save The Queen, but you aren’t going to get Little Englanders to support you.

There have been plenty of articles about BBC bias towards the Tories in the last election. You might not believe it, but it is out there. As for the Guardian, being aligned to a party (as the Telegraph is to the Tories) is a different thing to having a bias. The Guardian clearly has a bias towards social issues which is why it is an easier read for socialists. So much so that the belief was that it was only read by social workers and teachers. Unfortunately for The Telegraphs advertising department, the young professional readership started to take off in the 80s to the point when a young lady in our ad department, Caroline Marland (wife of a Tory MP no less) virtually took their jobs advertising revenue overnight. I was lucky enough to work for the paper when it virtually doubled it sales and left behind the old Manchester Guardian legacy behind for good. The growth would have continued had The Independent not launched. It too around 100k sales from us thanks to its title. In truth it wasn’t really Independent because it raised its money in the City and was always mindful of not biting the hand that fed it. If you think that the Guardian is pro Labour read the parliamentary sketches by John Crace. Had Corbyn won it would have been as tough on his government as it will be on Johnson’s.

I really don’t know if that is the case. The press were on him from day 1 so it is impossible to say how much damage they did to him personally. Certainly his policies were more popular, and should that be the main thing?

No. There have been many claims by Labour supporters that the BBC was biased towards the Tories. Especially Laura Kuenssberg. You must have read about it surely? As for The Guardian, if it was pro Labour there were several columnists who didn’t get the memo. I worked there for 22 years. I sat in many editorial meetings with old editor Peter Preston and then later with AlanRusbridger. I can tell you categorically that it is not allied to any political party. It is often thought that it was tied to the newly formed LibDems but it wasn’t, as a centrist (in general) paper it was always going to be linked with a new centrist party. Don’t confuse the columnists it employs with its politics. It used to give Julie Burchill a column, the later day Katie Hopkins.

How do we know that he did it on purpose? It was the assumption of the person who leaked the story. How was Corbyn to know that she hadn’t got up and got fully dressed? It is hardly world shattering stuff is it and know where near on the level of Boris Johnsons ****ging exploits. If a young testosterone fuelled Corbyn wanted to show off his latest flame, fair play. When you are young who doesn’t want to show off their latest “bird” to their mates?

Still no news? All I have seen is that we are after a LB and RB. Not mention of a CH which is a bit worrying!

Funny you should mention the BBC because it got royally slated for being biased towards the Tories! As for the print media, yes more people read it online but there is still a significant hard copy readership along with online feeds. You might not read a newspaper but you will still walk past the bold front pages in shops and supermarkets. It they were insignificant they wouldn’t publish and the rest of the media wouldn’t refer to them so much. The Guardian is the only truly independent newspaper in this country. It is owned by the Scott Trust whose sole aim is to ensure the editor remains unbiased. The paper has liberal traditions but is not tied to any one party. Many of its columnists gave Corbyn a hard ride and you will find that many hard line Labour supporters don’t see it as their paper. Well spotted! I missed the i. I haven’t read a The Independent for years so I couldn’t tell you anything about its political stance. My neighbour gets the i which I pinch now and again and that seems quiet even handed, albeit there isn’t a lot in it. I used to get daily doses of the Express and Mail on my newsfeed. Thankfully I have worked out how to stop that now. I still get a feed of all the front pages though. I don’t think that any paper should be tied to any political party. Print facts and let us make up our own minds. The trouble is that facts have become subjective and we just get fed more and more guff. If you are going to have a columnist with a right wing agenda at least give the same amount of space every day to a columnist with a different viewpoint to provide some balance. An image that still sticks with me years later is from the front page of The Sun before the election involving Kinnick (the Welsh Windbag they called him). Will the last one to leave Britain turn out the light went the headline. No newspaper should be so partisan (for either side).

I just hope they both don’t end up trying to claim Universal Credit!

My first Saints game was in 1966 and I think that George has not long left the club. I never saw him play but Terry Paine said that he was a goal scorer on par with Jimmy Greaves. Praise indeed! RIP to both former players.

Some in the Royal echelon was supposed to have remarked that she was “frightfully common” apparently. He never looked comfortable in his role so good luck to him for bailing out. Why he didn’t go through the normal Buck House protocol though is odd and a kick in the teeth for Grannie after all she has been through with Chuck and Di, Andy and Fergie and then Andy again. Still it helps to trim down The Firm which is no bad thing.

Daily Telegraph - Tory house paper The Times - Tory The Mail - Tory The Express - Tory The Sun - Tory The Star - Tits, soaps and sport The Mirror - Labour The Guardian - apart from a few left wing columnists, not party aligned. Liberal with a small L. On a daily basis the print media print stories in support of their own agendas and it is not difficult to see why they do when you see some of the comments on here. It clearly works. Is this serving democracy well? The majority of our press support a party who polled less than their combined opposition. Hardly a level playing field.