Lionator

He doesn't even need to score the tap in, as the Tories will just do a Jamie Pollock and score the own goal for him. I half shared your view but after the two conferences, there is zero chance that Labour don't win the next election, the only factor to be determined is how big their majority will be.

Yep agree with all above. There was a general concensus of Hamas bad, Israeli government bad, and massive sympathy with civilians on both sides.

Why have mods deleted the Israel/Palestine thread?

Oh I’m not writing them off, but they need to be a lot better in attack. I think everyone suspects that Rassie has something up his sleeve.

I also don’t think US and British governments have still fully understood the level of cynicism in its population with regard to Middle East foreign policy, as a result of Iraq.

What’s crazy is that we’ve had nearly 50% of the civilian deaths in 4 days as what there’s been in the Ukraine war which has been going on for 20 months.

When I was a student, I used to work the bar at F*rest (we’re talking 10 years or so ago) and at every bar/kiosk they’d have small fold up leaflets with contact details of mental health helplines and charities. Which I thought was a really good thing, and I definitely saw it trigger some casual conversations while people were queueing. Of course they’d all need the support they can get being forest fans but I can’t ever recall us doing that or anything similar.

France will be too much for the Springboks. SA scored 26 points in their two games against Scotland and Ireland, they’re probably going to need 30+ to beat France, I just can’t see it.

A rare anonymous W.

I think people are just after boring competence, and are ok with that after the lord mayor’s show. Clement Attlee was a dullard yet was probably the most effective Labour leader ever.

Given the way that recent past labour leaders have been picked apart on personal insults, Brown and Milliband (bacon sandwich and his dad is a Jew so don’t vote for him) especially, and Corbyn to a less extent, is it any wonder? He’s cultivated this image deliberately for sure and it’s worked. On the other hand I agree, he’s clearly a massive football fan and a relatively normal bloke in that aspect, I have no idea why he doesn’t use that to his advantage a bit more.

Nah they’re deratifying a non testing treaty which they’ve signed. Both the US and China never ratified it in the first place, so it puts them on the same footing. I think a lot of it is negotiation tactic to get some kind of new nuclear agreement beyond just a US-Russia one.

Has there ever been a good American owner in English football? Wherever they go, chaos always follows.

Absolutely, especially as people will have first hand experience. It also makes the whole stuff in the news at the minute tiring.

Conflict de-escalation!!

Despite this, it's probably the closest it's ever been with the recent Saudi-Iranian deal.

Fingers crossed, the Egyptian warning in particular will get downplayed but if true it's borderline treason.

They had managed to with their last government. Having read about Lapid last night, he seems genuine about wanting to find a peace solution but this just gets hampered by Hamas and internal Israeli's who see peace as not possible, and subsequently gets democratically overthrown.

Netanyahu is a facist by the way.

A lot of it is just manoeuvring for domestic policy. Pathetic really. To be fair Tony Blair (yeah I know) has been working on this for years and basically sees no prospect of peace anytime soon as the will is just not there from either side (unlike NI in the 90's where peace was genuinely important for both sides).

EU suspending aid and building projects to Palestine was an extremely disappointing step. Fortunately it seems like Macron and Sanchez have veto'ed it. There would've been zero reason for doing this.

Once the EnzoBall roadshow gets unleashed on the top flight, we'll need 100,000 seats.

Fascinating to see that there are at least two methods to success in the Championship. The one similarity is probably that Ipswich and us fully believe in what we're doing

Irish situation is completely different. Firstly, in the end, there were politicians and leaders who actually did want peace, even the worst aggravators. Here that is not the case.

Starmer’s speech today, here’s hoping for lots on housing.