Rayvin

FFS. The man has no backbone whatsoever. No ability to take ownership of his views, what he has said in the past, anything at all. Absolute waste of space.

Until Farage comes back, anyway. This really is becoming an open goal for Labour. Problem is it won't tell us anything. If UKIP lose now, it's probably just going to be because Nuttall is a total fucknugget, not because Labour have performed well.

Has he claimed that as well? Fucking hell yeah, that'd really kill him off. The thing is, even if he was there, there's no doubt at all that he's just attempting to make political capital over it, which is disgusting in itself. I saw this in the Guardian earlier - Arron Banks is 'sick to death' of hearing about Hillsborough. 'Milking a tragedy forever is sick'. 'It was an accident, and time for people to see it for what it was' https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/15/ukip-donor-arron-banks-says-he-is-sick-to-death-of-hearing-about-hillsborough Shocking lack of awareness and reading of their voter base on this one, I would have said.

This whole thing is an absolute farce. What he should have done straight off the bat is just fucking owned up to it and apologised - it would no longer be news by now had he done that, although sure, he would have taken a popularity hit. He's made this so many times worse by attempting to weasel out of it, though. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm delighted he has. This might cost him the by-election and may chime a death knell for UKIP as a result, but watching this unfold is incredible. Only point I don't understand is how they've proven that no close friends of his were there?

That results feels about right - and if you lot are saying that we dominated anyway, then actually, that should surely allay some concerns? We (marginally) outplayed Norwich away. We can get a result against anyone really, is what that tells us.

Well exactly.

Tonight is Valentine's mate... Agree I need to get on though. Will be free quite a bit towards the end of the week, will make an effort then.

Someone has rated him down in the 10 minutes since I last looked at this thread

What a thread.

There's a difference though. Liberals are liberal. Progressives are snowflakes

I think it was an amalgamation of our two points, Fish. Naturally I was the one to get credit though.

Alternative view is that he's using it as a gambit to force Ashley back. Or maybe even as insurance if we don't get promoted, since he won't now view that as entirely his fault. There's no point in worrying about it either way. He'll leave if he means to leave, but it seems as though he's going to stay the course this year first. That should get us promoted.

That's amazing!

Aye but they developed a narrative last year during our relegation that makes that an impossible position for them. They ridiculed us for being pleased (relatively) with the outcome of last season and are still parroting their mockery of that situation now. As such, to be consistent, they have to resist relegation, and it therefore has to hurt when they go down. What I expect we'll see is that when the time comes, there'll be a bunch of posts denying that this was ever said. Or more likely, if Rafa goes, they'll totally avoid comment on their inconsistency and just mock us over that. They'd be far happier if they just treated this rivalry in the way we do, made a far smaller issue of it, and were able to look at what is in the best interests of their club. Which probably is relegation.

Oh I thought they were 4-0 down at half time... kind of agree then. With the caveat that it probably does depend on how the players were performing before the 60th minute. They need to go down though, and I think they know that they are going down. If something you love needs to be put out of its misery, you don't watch while someone else holds a shotgun to its head.

Draw IMO. It's away and Norwich will fancy it. They'll attack us. Our problem recently has been teams shutting up shop. Norwich are unlikely to do that.

I saw on rtg that a lot of them left during the game but fucking hell It's hard to even blame them though, their club is just fucking terrible.

Murdoch was always going to gravitate to him, it's entirely in keeping with his character - as much as I suspect he'd have preferred Hillary. I think I say this every time Murdoch comes up anew, but is he not too fucking old for all this?

I don't think it'll recover. But then, it'll also only be terminal if another party takes up its mantle. Don't see UKIP doing that. The longer we have Tory rule and Labour are the second biggest party, I guess the more likely it is that they'll recover. I don't think they've worked out what went wrong yet though.

Er... ok. So my original point was that we're likely comparing two different numbers if we look at rape statistics from the two countries. One of which will include marital rape, and the other of which, will not (as it is not recognised as a crime and therefore won't be reported). As a journalist, presumably you can see that these are therefore not comparable figures.

I think you're right, and fully agree that the difference this year versus previous years on such form is that there is just so much shit in the PL. One of the reasons in fact that I'm quite optimistic about our chances of midtable once we go up. But that aside, I expect Sunderland will get away with it. They've done this so many times it's borderline crazy to think they won't escape again.

Looking at it, it's hard to say. Sweden refuses to register crimes based on ethnicity so we can only say that since immigrants started entering the country in substantial numbers, incidences have increased. However, that may also be because the definition of what constitutes a rape has increased: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-and-denmark-have-highest-number-of-sexual-assaults-in-europe-a6800901.html Here's the Guardian's Cologne report: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/tensions-rise-in-germany-over-handling-of-mass-sexual-assaults-in-cologne I think it's important to be honest in all this one way or the other, not that I'm actually saying that any of this constitutes proof that the guy you were arguing with has a point.

There's a lot of talk from the 'right' about how immigrants from the ME coming into Western democracies leads to a spike in sexual assaults and so on. I don't know how true it is but it's not surprising that some people will believe it. The Cologne attacks didn't help with the spreading of this concept.

Aye but it'll be a galvanising moment nonetheless. If every second shot goes in, it'll bolster self belief.