bovril

2 hours ago, The Bear said:

My mate is maintenance manager at Derby hospital and he said they are not allowed to hang any St George flags outside. Union Jack is ok apparently but not StG. 

The Anglo Saxons continue to toil under the Norman yoke

3 hours ago, HighPeakFox said:

Cannot believe that thread yesterday got canned. Game's gone.

 

This might be sarcasm.

I think the "it's all the fault of the Jews" was probably the final straw

8 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Laughing emoji shouldn't even be a thing on here. People laugh at posts but then never offer their opinion to counter it.

Happened to me once where I didn't watch a game but wanted to make it sound like I had so wrote "Perez was shit as per" and it was the one time he was actually good. Got a right pile on of laughing emojis. 

24 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Honestly Burnham isn’t ever going to change the world, or even the country, but the one thing he is is authentic. If he could get a good cabinet behind him we might actually see something. Starmer has also been the worst for London centric leadership especially with his ‘pavement pint’ tripe yesterday that literally only happens in London. 

Funny how perceptions can differ so much - Burnham strikes me as completely inauthentic and self-absorbed. 

44 minutes ago, Jimothy said:

My girlfriends daughter lives in Belfast. I'm genuinely more concerned for her safety after all this violence and rioting than I ever was after the stabbing incident. Unfortunately isolated incidents of people physically attacking people happen every day, the perpetrators being of all different colours and from UK and abroad. If we live our lives in fear of those things we'd never leave the house. But widespread violence, disorder, rioting, and disruption are different and create a horrible environment in any town or city. Is that what the people who did this wanted to achieve? To scare people and worry families?

 

I understand if people are upset, but there is never an excuse for large scale disorder. You can take to streets in numbers and make your voices heard without causing massive damage and fear.

There is often an excuse for large scale disorder, it is one of the best ways of affecting change. Although they might not be able to articulate it very well, I think people are tired of living in a country that has given up trying to improve people's living standards and instead seems to focus mostly on managing relations between Britain's now pretty disparate 'communities'. Throw in to the mix an alarmingly high rate of young men not in work or education, increasing cost of living, wage compression, plus social media, and obviously it's not going to end well. It never does, I don't know why the Brits think they'll be any different.

Having said all that, loyalists do be loyalists. 

Cooked tomatoes are obviously the basis of some of the world's great cuisine. Raw tomatoes are good if they are good, ripe tomatoes i.e. from a warm place, and they are room temperature and served with some bread and feta type cheese. Anglo-Saxons have a habit of serving thinly sliced, ice cold, hard tomato, which is barbaric. 

Ward

Canero

Laursen

Carey

McGivern

Sylla

Lewis

Hellings

Ajdaveric

Ayew

Musa

10 minutes ago, South Shire Fox said:

Probably not in Ireland as they have far deeper issues that will never be resolved. For the rest of the UK. Sort the economy out, get young people into work with prospects. Sort the criminal justice system out that sees high re offending rates. Stop mass migration and the reliance on foreign workers. Those four would be a good start. Easier said then done obviously

Nah UK is more boned than Republic of Ireland. They have one of the lowest NEET rates in Europe, ours is now second worse after Romania. There are anti immigrant riots seemingly every summer here now, will only increase I'm sure. 

48 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

Some of the stories coming out of Belfast following last night's riots are horrendous.

 

People have every right to be angry and scared after what happened but burning and looting the property of foreign nationals is a disgrace.

Real collapse of Ottoman Empire vibes to the UK at the moment. An embattled elite trying to keep it all together with talk of shared values that nobody seems to want to believe in anymore. 

Slightly nuts to think there have been 6 world cups between this one and France 98, the same as between France 98 and Mexico 1970.

tbh loyalists don't really need much encouragement to riot

On 08/06/2026 at 18:49, whoareyaaa said:

 

Italy-Germany semi final was an all time game. But there were lots of disappointing games as well.

Perhaps the 2 most purely entertaining of my lifetime were in places you wouldn't expect - USA and Japan/Korea. Russia 2018 was also a very entertaining tournament.

If I had to pick just 1 tournament to relive, it'd be France 98. A combination of great players, some great games, and the atmosphere of a major sporting event in France. But probably just because I was 13. An iconic tournament. 

5 minutes ago, Raj said:

Quicker the football starts the better...

Feel like this is said every summer now. Who knows maybe it isn't just boredom... 

4 minutes ago, foxfanazer said:

As somebody with a young family my fear is the immediate danger. Of course there's also a bigger picture but if any of these violent crimes were inflicted on my kids or partner my first thought certainly isn't going to be about Ronald Reagan

 

I think people are quite justified in feeling threatened and protective. How that's manifested is a different matter 

I don't really want my daughter growing up in Britain. There is crime including violent crime in other countries but there's an increasing feeling here that we are constantly on the verge of an extremely violent event and even if that's somewhat magnified by social media, it's no way to live life. That's before you even get to violence towards women. 

2 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Proper tooorrrrrry that laaaaaaa as they would say nowadays.

Everton fans were infamous for racist chanting iirc

On 02/06/2026 at 13:22, bovril said:

Ahhhh the English summer - beer gardens, Wimbledon, and community tensions after a brutal stabbing 

Our Irish friends about to get in on the action, must be a world cup year.

18 minutes ago, kushiro said:

Interesting that he skirts over the downside of that World Cup. In his book, he opened up about how miserable he was:

 

I would walk the streets of South Korea, later Japan, and go into shops and buy DVDs. I was lonely, isolated. Most days the squad would get together and go to a local mosque. Most of the team are Muslim. I’m not a Muslim. My memories of that World Cup are me in a hotel room by myself, curtains closed, lying on my bed, watching another film. My biggest regret was that I never learned Turkish.

Meanwhile he was booed by Everton fans in 2000 for being half Turkish. Typical story for dual nationals - too foreign for here, doesn't fit in back there...

1 hour ago, davieG said:

It didn’t ask everyone to agree. It trusted audiences to understand the joke.

Admit it, after all this time, it's still bloody funny!!

Nearly 50 years later and Life of Brian is still doing exactly what great comedy is supposed to do… making people laugh, argue and think.

It’s hard to imagine many films creating the same kind of reaction today. It was fearless satire that poked fun at human behaviour, authority, politics and the strange things people do when they stop questioning the world around them.

For many fans, it represents an era when comedy was prepared to take risks, push boundaries and step into uncomfortable territory.

Love it or hate it, very few films are still being talked about decades later… and maybe that’s the biggest sign of just how brilliant it was.

Would Life of Brian get made today?

 

 

I don't think it would.

Life of Brian was censored and banned in numerous places when it was released.

1 minute ago, MC Prussian said:

I agree, Serie A is getting a bit more diverse with Ascoli. The region of Marche has already suffered enough in recent decades, economically.

 

For a town of 45000 people with such a small club, that's quite an accomplishment. Well done.

I have a lot of friends in Marche and it's a lovely region that goes under the radar. Ascoli is a very pretty town. Lombardy has enough in serie a and b.

Ascoli have played around half their seasons in the top 2 divisions which as you say is an accomplishment in a country where it's tough to be a provincial club from a less urban region. 

2 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

There is historical naming, and then there is pissing off your neighbour, who happens to be one of the strongest NATO forces in Europe at a time when you need all the help you can get.  It is very very weird.

yeah it's bizarre

On 31/05/2026 at 21:26, MC Prussian said:

It‘s Brescia vs. Ascoli for the last Serie B spot.

And finally it's Ascoli that does it!

Beautiful town in an underrated region and, to borrow an English football fan cliche, a 'proper' football club that has often punched above its weight.

20 minutes ago, Lionator said:

There’s one thing winding them up, there’s another thing naming your prized special forces battalion after a group that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Poles. But yes it’s all a bit weird, Ukranian nationalism is a bit weird but I suppose it’s not worse than the alternative.  
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

Kind of hard in Europe to name something after a historical figure and not gravely offend your neighbours, I'm just thinking about being Irish and walking round any British town centre...

15 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Its a confused concept for sure.  The counter is often made that if you or I as white English born people moved to almost any other part of the world, we would still be seen as English, as would our kids if they were bron to two White English parents.  Its quite a western concept, and to our credit that we largely welcome people from all over the world as being able to become English (or American, or Australian, or New Zealander) in the way that I am not sure you would find in China or India or Japan say.  Would you claim to be Indian if you lived in India, if your kids were born and raised in India?  I think the locals would laugh at you.  Britishness or Englishness (or American, or Australian) is in the main not seen as ethnicity but a belonging.  Which makes it hard to define and easy to pick apart.

America and Australia are settler colonies though. Neither England nor Britain are. I think one of the reasons Englishness is more contentious these days is that we associate ourselves more with those countries than European nations to the extent that some people actually start to think we're the same - the whole 'nation of immigrants' stuff that has popped up recently and doesn't really fit England at all. But I think the main reason is that we globalized our language and culture to the extent that it stopped belonging to us. And the things that define us as a nation are now so nebulous. And we never got to grips with the end of our empire, we still want to be global, connected to the Commonwealth etc. The Scots and Welsh seem a lot more comfortable being simply a European nation, the English not so much. 

Also what you say about the kids of immigrants is not just about vibes. In most countries including the UK a child born to immigrants in that country is not necessarily a citizen. To go back to the first point, we're not America.

On 29/05/2026 at 10:32, Lionator said:

Tulsi Gabbard 💨💨💨💨

Everytime I click on this thread I brace myself and yet somehow it's even worse than I fear

Connections
Puzzle #1091
🟪🟪🟪🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦