sadoldgit

Is there no escaping you Wes? As for the One Nation claptrap, sounds like you have swallowed that hook, line and sinker.

I can see why the club might want to put out misinformation about a transfer target whilst pursuing others in order to put other clubs off the scent. I can see no benefit for the club to say they are trying to sign players when they are not. All that does is wind up the fan base even more.

We hear that the next Labour leader should be a woman and/or a northerner. Surely the next Labour leader should be the person most likely to get them elected? Out of the current candidates, for me the front runner is Starmer. What he lacks in charisma he makes up for with gravitas and is a polar opposite of Johnson. As a former QC he will give Johnson a hard time at the dispatch box. Having sat in a couple of meetings with him when he was the DPP I was impressed with the way he asked questions and actually listened to the answers. Other DPPs just turned up and spoke at you. Starmer has the clout and intelligence to turn Labour around. Whether he gets the chance remains to be seen. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a watered down version of Corbyn end up in the hot seat but more of the same will do them no favours. This country has always been conservative (with a small c) and the new leader will not only have to win over middle England, they will also have to win back the disaffected long standing Labour voters who have defected to Johnson. No easy task. The new leader will have to be flexible, dogma will not cut it. Get it right and they have a reasonable chance of turning the last nightmare around at the next election. Make the wrong choice and it is hard to see Labour forming a government for years to come.

I think the mistake we made was thinking that the next level would be higher.

Sport is about competing and ideally winning, entertainment is a side product that comes as a bonus. Yes the standard of football wasn’t great, but who wouldn’t take that to get through to the next round?

It looked like an under 23 match for the most part and we rarely bothered to get out of second gear. Through to the next round. Clean sheet. Two youngsters get on the score sheet with well taken goals. Happy with that.

Did they used to break into song every 10 minutes in the original Oliver Twist? If Dickens was in his prime and writing now I expect he would use the language we use now although I am sure that the criminal classes swore just as much then as they do now.What were considered profanities have now passed into common use. Given the darkness of many of his works I suspect he would have preferred the Knight version of Christmas Carol over the Muppet version. Still, there are plenty to chose from that cater for all tastes. It would be a pointless exercise to copy the original verbatim for every remake.

Lady boy

I thought Knight’s version of A Christmas Carol was excellent. There are plenty of soft versions so we really don’t need another. This has a real bite to it. I think that Dickens would have approved. The final episode of Dracula lost its sense of humour and didn’t live up to the quality of the previous two, but overall another decent retailing of an old classic.

Not much of a spoiler now as it has been all over some of the newspapers. Van Helsing is a woman in this adaptation. I thought it was the first time the character had been female but is seems not as it was done before in a SkyFi series. As you were. Having said that, she is the best thing in it as a wisecracking nun.

I suppose at least your terminology in this post is in context. I agree that it is a good watch and it makes a change for the story to be told from Keeler’s perspective. I was 9 when it all kicked off and remember the media kicking off big time. Interesting to see the story fleshed out. I wonder if Boris Johnson has been recording it whilst away sunning himself?

Nothing to do with Dracula himself but I won’t spoil it for those who have yet to watch it. Don’t get too excited though as it is no big deal. Second episode tonight took a different turn, more of a who dun it, and the preview of the finale tomorrow was a real curve ball.

Perhaps you should watch it before you form an opinion?

The Moffat/Gatiss version of Dracula started last night and very good it is too. A nice mixture of horror and comedy and a twist in casting too for the”woke” generation.

Happy holidays!

They are based around Pagan ceremonies that have been hijacked by Christian doctrine. I have been to several wedding in the last 12 months, only one was in a church and neither the bride nor groom were believers. Most were in barns. I got married on a beach the first time and in a barn the lady time. I haven’t been to a burial for ages. Mostly they are cremations with the ashes spread elsewhere. Most of the services attended have been humanist. Television used to feature church programmes but you would be hard pressed to find anything remotely religious on tv now. I can take to to a number of homes that used to be chapels. Our local church shares its vicar with 6 others and the services are done on a rota basis as the congregations are so small. It may technically be a Christian country but let’s not pretend that the church plays an important part in our lives anymore. When it does it is just a community thing rather than a religious thing.

I had a poltergeist experience back in the 90’s. My stepdaughter has just reached puberty and for several days in a row bayonet fixing bulbs popped out of a chandelier and smashed on the floor. A picture fell off of her wall and a glass fell off of a shelf in the hall and smashed. This all happened in the middle of the night. This lasted for about 4 nights in a row and didn’t happen again. Paranormal activity is nothing to do with God/religion.

As like most people of my generation I was spoon feed religion as a child. In my case it was the Protestant version of Christianity. When I started think think for myself it made no logical sense to me so I bailed out. A few years ago I dabbled in spirituality, not the God type but the universe type. It made more sense than the organised religion stuff but in the end it still makes more sense to deal with what we can sense in there here and now. Focus your engery into what is good for you and those around you and you can’t go far wrong. Over the years I have dated some religious believers including a Mormon, a lapsed Jehovah’s Witness and a Born Again Christian. We didn’t used to talk about religion much, but when we did and I asked them why they believed that all said that they “just did.” There was no hard evidence, just blind faith. At first I used to feel left out. Why could they feel God within them and I couldn’t? What was wrong with me? After a while I began wondering whether the feeling of finding God within you was more to do with a sense of relief of finding a sense of order in a world and universe where consciousness and being make no logical sense whatsoever. The way that mankind has made sense of the universe since we crawled out of the swamps is to believe is some intelligent power bigger than us. Some religions have multiple dieties and some just the one. Many have been ditched over the centuries in favour of just one, although that one often differs or has interacted with us in ways that we completely disagree with each other about. Is is very hard for a non believer to take religion seriously when it is at such odds with itself here on Earth. Believers cannot agree between themselves about what the written words mean and how they should be interpreted. People are still being persecuted and put to death because they a different perception of God and what needs to be done to serve Him/Her/It. I would argue that an all powerful diety has long since served its purpose. We don’t need a vengeful God to keep us in our place. We already have the power to destroy the planet many times over. We are destroying the planet ourselves anyway by the way we have chosen to live. Surely it is better to stop passing off responsibility for our failings by bringing in some supernatural being and just deal with what we actually know to be 100% true, which is our lives in the here and now. When I hear the words “it is Gods will” all I can think is what a kop out. A complete denial of our own responsibility as individuals and as a species. We are all God and we all stand or fall by what we do here on Earth.

Yep, all sound good!

Like most things, problems arise when people try and impose their will and ideas onto others who have a different perspective. We need to find a way to live together that revolves around acceptance of our differences, not trying to force people to accept our way as the only way. It is something we are all guilty of. The only way we will survive on this planet is by learning to live and let live. So far the evidence points to that being beyond our comprehension.

Perhaps they are hedging their bets? You have nothing to lose if you repent on your death bed. In this country I get the impression that fewer and fewer people believe in god. Churches are empty and are closing. People prefer to shop or play sport on Sunday than observe the day of rest. More people have humanist funerals. Religion served mankind for better or worse for centuries, but the more we embrace technology the less age old superstitions still hold sway. If there was one true God and one true religion don’t you think we would have sussed it out by a fifth of the way through the 21st century? We are no nearer a religious consensus than we were 2000 years ago. Mankind evolved believing in things beyond our comprehension. Thunder. Lightening. The change of the seasons etc. We know what causes them now so we no longer pray to the Gods whom we thought were responsible. Yet there is still a belief that there is a greater force at work that decides our fate. It makes no sense. A coincidence is a coincidence. If something possibly can happen then it probably will. This would be a much better world if we stopped worrying about some greater being beyond the clouds and just put more effort into getting along with each other. Religion is supposed to bring people together yet it divides us. It is supposed to bring out the best in us but often brings out the worst. We have little time on this planet. Surely it is better to focus on the here and now and not some hypothetical eternity that may or may not await us beyond the clouds?

I think I would have chosen an area where there was no indigenous population.

I am with MLG on this. Surely the state of Israel was created in accordance with where the Bible said it should be. Of course they were working towards that. If not, why did it not end up in some random part of the planet that no one else gave a damn about? I am not an expert in Jewish matters but I don’t recall them ever having a plan B?

That is probably why I don’t get Gavin and Stacey, I didn’t get the Royale Family either.

Clearly the work of the devil.