Posts by John Palethorpe
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Since Sky decided to double the monthly FanPass cost and treat its modern customer base like dicks I've not watched a game.
Fortunately I've reacquainted myself with live sport on the radio; leaning in towards the speaker as it gets close and enduring some of the terrible banter that gets thrown about during the less interesting parts.
Cleaver's piece highlights the overbearing role the ABs play in rugby, sucking up all the sponsorship and providing the game as a consumable product which replaces the grassroots involvement in the game.
That's affecting SR teams too, almost none of which fill their AB test designed caverns of stadia, meaning its hard to get an atmosphere going.
That's before you get to the inconvenient point that if 2011 was 'knocking the bastard off' for NZR, the subsequent dominance, and packaging and promotion of that dominance, has turned the All Blacks into the bastard that others try to knock off. The narrative of an uber dominant team that keeps winning isn't exactly a traditional sporting story. I wonder about that.
I've got two Test tickets for the Lions and one for the Blues v Lions game, but that's down to having watched every tour since '97. It's once every 12 years, so its worth the expense this time out. I can save up for the next tour.
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The 2005 victory was reliant on the Liberal Democrats polling their highest ever, around 20% or so. They won't do that this time round.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Brent Jackson,
I was trying to soften the blow. That said Winnie and Brash are more Farage and UKIP than anything else.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Dennis Frank,
So, have you always been a racist twerp or did you take evening classes?
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It is rather amusing to see Marc put it on the liberal class for not intervening.
ISIS wouldn't have existed without Blair's delightful little Iraq adventure with his mate George. Blair, in particular, is that urban liberal class you now criticise for not intervening. I suppose there's a 'you break it, you fix it' here, but nailing to the liberal classes is pretty damn ironic given there's been a Conservative Govt in the UK for the last six years now, National in NZ and Liberals in Aussie - those damn liberals not letting them go and intervene.
And intervene how exactly? What's the plan to beat ISIS and extremists on the ground, Marc? Or is this one of those 'we should tell them to do it and they should work out how' sort of ideas - like, perhaps, Brexit?
You put an awful lot of faith in the political class to be able to work out a way to solve the problems in the middle east, problems they couldn't solve when everything was reasonably stable there.
But it's quite clear that what was relatively simple and contained about thirteen years ago has now become a lot more complex, chaotic and much harder to intervene in.
You're right, in a perverse way. This is the fault of urban liberals, like Blair. But for getting in there in the first place without any idea about what to do next. That's why there's no appetite for it from politicians or voters - they've had thirteen years of repercussions from that ever so traditional lie from a politician, 'Don't worry, this will be a short war and it'll not come back to haunt us at all'.
Does 'something' need to be done in the Middle East? Yes. Are western democracies the right people for the job? History, recent and further back, indicates no. Not just no. Hell no. We've only made it worse.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to simon g,
I doubt that Corbyn's lost the support of 80,000 Labour members in ten months. That's how big his majority is - not against his nearest rival, but the total of all three rivals he beat in 2015.
He was 80,000 ahead twelve months ago, when the membership resoundingly rejected the PLP-friendly candidates. Now the PLP have plunged the party into this mess, how amenable do you think the members will be to them?
There's a reason Angela Eagle didn't announce her challenge yesterday - she's hoping Corbyn goes. There's also the uncomfortable fact of her vote for Iraq, which will hamstring her come the Chilcot Report next week. They're looking at Owen Smith as a replacement, but nobody can agree on who it should be.
They can't have both because of that 80,000 majority. The PLP, trying to get Corbyn to stand down for the sake of party unity, can't decide on a candidate to challenge him. The irony is, well, delicious.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Arron Banks, a big funder of UKIP, is apparently working on the next party - the one to either replace, or for UKIP to morph into.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Rob Stowell,
May benefits from Labour's turmoil as well. She's already working the line that her lack of visibility in the Referendum was because she was Getting Shit Done as Home Secretary - really going for the 'The boys have had their fun, let's get on with it' persona.
The Tory voters will warm up to anyone who is electable, particularly if Labour's problems continue. A snap election and an even bigger majority for the Tories? Labour busted down as UKIP surge ? There's opportunity here for a May led Tory party.
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Tory reckons here - https://shinbonestar.org/2016/07/01/subtle-vicious/
The Tories haven't had a eurosceptic PM, but it's likely they will now. Hague, IDS and Howard were - but they were also failures.
Boris? Well, a decade of edging towards the job he wanted and he gets ankle tapped by Michael Fucking Gove in the last few hours. Hahahha.
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Realistically it's between Michael Gove and Theresa May then. Both of them will be invoking Article 50, given their statements.
Gove is a pure idealogue on this sort of thing, I have experience running up against him during his tenure as Education Secretary.
May is the arch-pragmatist. She's posed as the less extreme candidate, but she's pretty bloody awful all by herself.
Any hope that another candidate like Boris could evade the Brexit button being pushed, is gone.
This has to be the most remarkable period of internel British politics since the coalition negotiations of 2010, perhaps the most important crisis moment since Suez.