Hereward

Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. To be fair, the Russians are really working on this, so, fingers crossed.

That was a shocking and embarrassing performance. Time to go, Jones, the Mourinho of international rugby.

It occurs to me that I’m surely the only person on this board that has seen all of those actually play!

Curse you, pax! A good day today. Delighted for Joe, who played superbly. He looks back in the big 4/5 now. Gutted for Sibley. But if he’d been playing positively, or as positively as he ever gets, he might well have turned that Yorker into a low full toss.

I’ve always liked Spurs, despite being a West Ham fan, mainly because the other half of my family and friends support them, but Christ, the new Spurs are so pathetic and boring, I just want to see them lose every game until that twat gets sacked. How long can this dinosaur get given talented squads and lots of money and shit the bed while playing like they’re in a relegation battle and need a point to survive?

Not symbolic at all.

I have been waiting for Deutschland 89 for years. So excited to see it’s on More 4 at the end of this month.

Fulham actually play some good, well-organised football. They’ll still go down, but they’re no WBA shitshow. I think Parker knows what he’s doing and will hopefully have a good managerial career.

I haven’t been out other than to walk my dogs for 10 months. Still not doing it.

A crememative plate sounds like something you get after a devastating fire.

Tywin, I don’t know how to quote from a previous thread. Sue me, I’m old. But yes, you are right to say that the comment should apply to urban areas, outside the cities. However, that does not mean that they do not encounter immigrants. Northern urban communities often tend to live segregated lives, rather than not encountering anyone from an immigrant community. This problem is exacerbated by cultural differences, though I know I’m going to get in trouble for this. The old communitarian ethos of the areas that went Conservative was centred around the chapel, the unions and the pub. Immigrants were overwhelmingly from Muslim communities from the sub-continent. Two of the three connection points were never going to happen, and the unions were also largely hostile to immigrants perceived as willing to work for less and not joining unions. But that’s not the whole story. Half of My own family comes from unusually poor agricultural areas in the east of the country. They voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, and are culturally concerned. That’s not because they are worried particularly about darker skinned immigrants they don’t meet, but rather a massive change in the population in their areas, almost all of whom are white Eastern Europeans. They are used to a situation where they know everyone, and all their relatives and dubious histories. They find having 40% of their local population totally alien to them distressing. You have to remember that, unlike the US, the UK was 98% white in living memory. But that’s not the whole story. On the other side of my family, in the east end of London and south Essex, and even in the far right groups some of them associate with, there’s no real hostility towards black people, especially with the large number of mixed race people in these communities. They have lots in common, culturally, but there is massive resentment of other immigrant communities, sparked by the closure of what they regard as community hubs that have closed because the newer communities do not frequent them, though of course in some cases that’s understandable. The “white flight” is not really just about fear of the other, after all east London has been a melting pot for centuries, it’s about an influx of people who, perfectly understandably, cannot integrate into or evolve the existing culture, which makes these places economically unviable.

That too.

What’s a gold medal, or a World Cup, or a Nobel prize good for? Humans like recognition. This human is a proud patriot and monarchist. I’d be terrified of meeting the Queen, but being knighted would make me, and my family and friends, so proud we’d burst.

Not really. Johnson won the white working class vote from Labour in the post-industrial north, where there are large immigrant communities. Rural seats are moving from the Conservatives towards Labour or the Liberals, though slowly. In fact, the whitest English seats are rural, wealthy and, according to The Economist, the most socially liberal in the country.

Or that everyone though Labour was going to get massacred in 2017, so Labour got votes from people who voted for them in spite of their misgivings about Corbyn. They were then worried Corbyn might actually win and left in their droves.