Rayvin

I think Ant unbanned him but he wouldn't return without a formal apology and accompanying reparations.

The Tories are going to eviscerate them through the media and through horrifying TV appearances where May pretends she knows how to smile. People simply won't care how well costed the policies are, or how much they'll help. Labour winning at this point would have to go down as one of the most improbable election victories of all time. I get that you're trying to make this more interesting but seriously, the landscape at the moment is the political equivalent of the SPL with the Tories as Celtic.

At least some in there have come out and just admitted to feeling jealous of our situation. Which is undoubtedly how most of them feel. I wonder how they'll fare next year.

Have to say I don't see this as a fundamental necessity at this point. Reduce it maybe, but it was perfectly affordable to go to Uni under the old Labour government. They should assist people from less well off backgrounds and maybe even increase the bar for that, but making it entirely free just doesn't seem like a fundamental here. And I suspect they could actually win all the same votes just by making it more affordable, rather than eliminating it entirely.

The respect of your peers. Briefly.

So Ashley has said that Rafa will get every penny the club generates. How much have we generated? We could be talking very little here... I mean, whatever it is, it sounds like Rafa is happy with it. Which is encouraging.

This is how I see it too but people are simply not discerning enough to apply critical thinking about what they're told.

Will have a look in the morning but realistically it won't make any difference because we're now a one party state and Corbyn is unpopular. The fact that his policies are attractive and supportable whilst at the same time helping the majority of people, simply isn't important. Will have a look though, thanks for the heads up.

I enjoyed that joke more than I should have.

What kind of sentence do you get for blasphemy these days anyway? I saw the nuns thing too Tbf, in the UK it'd not be spent at all so maybe giving it to nuns is better than nothing.

Not arguing that it's a disgrace, I completely agree on that. I just don't think this will be the thing that brings Trump down. I suspect it'll be out of the news in a week.

I don't think that's a material problem though. A narrative can easily be spun around the notion that the full details of what was afoot weren't revealed until Trump had the ability to look into it himself etc etc. Moreover the US seems quite content for its candidates to spew any manner of nonsense on the campaign trail and then effectively pretend that nothing even happened once it's all over with.

Ok, I've skim read the Watergate scandal. So Nixon eventually resigned rather than be impeached. I understand why we're thinking this could be a big deal now. ...I suspect we're all going to be disappointed from the fallout from this one though. There were grounds to sack Comey based on what he did within the election framework - in effect he was already discredited and can be, presumably, justifiably removed. It does suggest that there is something in the background that Trump wants to hide (and I'm sure it'll come out eventually), but I suspect that Congress isn't going to be able to say much about Comey's sacking given the fact that many people have been calling for it since the email fiasco.

If you say so. What was the fall out last time it happened? And how often are Presidents investigated by the head of the FBI at all?

Isn't Stephen Fry being pulled up on blasphemy charges in Ireland too Nice to see it making a comeback.

Is this really that big a deal? I understood that Comey was likely to be sacked if Clinton won power as well. Trump can likely point to that. And presumably the investigation will continue anyway.

We do?!

Incidentally, the other solution to the issue is what is in the ascendency - the far right.

Corbyn isn't hard left. But yes, between the two would still be better than nothing. That said, actually, as I said the other day - it's not necessarily about how left wing the government is. You could have a centrist reformer who understood and tackled these problems, and they'd be vote worthy in my book. The entire system needs steady evolution to something sustainable. Unless you think that the constant drive to maximise profits is going to pay any attention to how many people are out of work once we have a fully automated workforce.

Agreed, it probably can. That's what I feel like I'm voting for. What we have on offer at the moment though, and indeed at the previous GE, was/is something that the majority wouldn't vote for. Actually, I think our whole disagreement can be boiled down to the following: We want ultimately the same basic thing, which you think the Blairite centre left can provide, and I don't (based solely on the fact that they're culpable in bringing us to this point). That genuinely seems to be our only point of contention for all your imagining of me as some kind of communist. I have offered a solution btw, I 'suggested' a government that wasn't wedded to the Thatcherite notions of how society should be run. Granted it seems that the current iteration of this suggestion isn't sufficiently competent to make it work/get into power in the first place, but realistically there's no alternative if you believe, as I do, that the Blairites haven't actually understood what is going on. If they get back into power, the whole steady descent continues. Granted, not as quickly as under the Tories.

I genuinely don't think you read half my posts, as I feel like I have to keep re-answering the same questions. I do not want to abandon capitalism. I do not want to go from one extreme to another. I do not have an personal ideological driver behind my views. I do believe that the ideology we operate around has failed and is continuing to fail. I believe the evidence of this is apparent when looking at the number of people being left behind and how they are now voting. I believe they will continue to vote far right until meaningful change can be offered to them. I do not believe Neoliberalism has any mechanism for delivering this change, nor do those who run the world consider it important to do so. I believe that my life is going to be periodically fucked about with by extreme voting outcomes due to this issue. Otherwise, ideologically and politically, your position and my own are the same. The only difference is that I don't believe what we previously considered ideal is working. No I can't suggest another country using any improved version of the system but ffs, we didn't climb out of the primordial soup straight into the free market. If we go back to the centre left as it is now, we are going to keep re-running the past two years. I do not want this. That is the sole, single reason for my views.

Aye I think one of the reasons they're taking this hard is that almost everything they said last season is now going to bite them. They can't look for positives in going down cos they hammered us for doing so, and they now have to match our season and get promoted. Haven't seen ILDC in ages, curiously...

It is, yes. It's also the only thing holding Europe together though. And also, it's far less so than the UK is. A much lesser form of the same issue.

I can't quite believe how even it was at the first round given this result, but I suppose all three other candidates voters were unlikely to turn out for Le Pen. That's the Eu stabilized then. Good.