Stoopid

Wonder how he felt at playing no part in Manchester City's defeat at Anfield? Seems clear Pep has his doubts and, let's face it, RM's career has basically stalled since he went there. At least in terms of feeding the ego that he seems to feel a top player should have.

I think the best moment I ever had watching a match that didn't involve Leicester was Alan Sunderland's last-gasp winner in the 79 Cup Final. Watched it in Kilburn with my Arsenal-supporting Irish uncle and got nearly as pumped as him when that went in. Massive club currently struggling, bound to come good again. But - I agree - Mourinho isn't the answer...

Even though it knocks us down a place, like to see a Man City win. It keeps the top 2 in reach and, more importantly, punctures the Scouser's sense of invulnerability - esp at home. We are genuine contenders for the title this year, there is no doubt in my mind!

Frank Worthington for sheer effortless beauty. Ridiculous ability that made it seem as if he was operating in a different reality to the rest of us. Which, of course, he was.

Agree with this. I began my Leicester-supporting saga in the early 60s and was pretty sure I'd never see a better side in the Royal Blue. Of course, the 15/16 heroes changed everything, but still - in purely footballing terms - I felt Gillies' side had the edge. Ranieri's men had incredible spirit and self-belief, but the 60s lads brought a style and occasional beauty to Filbert Street that -as I say - I thought would never be matched. Until now. The spirit of the title-winners and the style of the early 60s side seem to have come together in our present team. To have achieved that so soon after our unlikely title triumph (when it would have been so easy to slowly decline) reflects great credit on everybody associated with the club. There's never been a better time to be a Leicester fan. But being a perverse old bleeder I find that strangely worrying.

Noticed many recent clangers perpetrated by the BBC. It used to be a reliable reference in matters of grammar etc., but that seems less important to them these days. We may hope for an improvement, but it's probably in vein...(sorry).

Kudos for the Ferris reference - on the whole an interesting discussion. I'm not going over my position again, though but...

Couple of things there. First, you say the mega-rich have no influence on the rest of us. Well, apart from funding the Conservative Party -in fact all parties on the Right - and forming the vast majority of the Cabinet, not to mention the Press you may have a point. And 'as long as they pay a decent chunk of tax'...come on, mate. The examples of the rich avoiding tax are so egregious and widespread it would be tedious to even begin on that well-worn path.And 'we're all wealthier' Are we? The news that came out yesterday about the unprecedented use of food banks would suggest otherwise. 'The politics of envy' - a stick used to beat the left since the heady days of Victorian paternalism, and as meaningless then as it is now. Envy has nothing to do with it...I don't want to be rich - and I certainly don't want to be like the rich! I'd just like to see a society where money is used as an instrument to unite society rather than divide it. There is more than enough money and wit in this country to provide a society where decent housing, education and employment are available for all of its citizens. But as long as we run the place on the Daddy knows best lines implicit in laissez-faire Toryism we'll get nowhere.

This back & forth is getting increasingly pointless. It's clear you're not getting my point(s) as your answering specific paragraphs by simply restating your view clearly demonstrates. And - try as I might - I couldn't quite shake any meaning out of that last bit, but let's leave it, eh? As that great social and cultural commentator Terry Collier put it; 'Some fell on stony ground.'

Yes - it is my creation, and a rather pleasing, felicitous one - even if I do say so myself (let's face it, you're not going to!) Look, the point I'm making is that while war may be a cliché, the experience of it never is. But the platitudes that we dress our version of Remembrance in is danger of making them just that. And that in turn Disneyfies the whole thing - and makes it more about our attitude to it than it does the real, lived experience - this makes it more, not less, likely to recur. i mention my uncle just because he wasn't a hero - just a daft lad who liked a drink and died because some Yank screwed up. And my old man would have been with him if he hadn't got pissed in Harwich & missed the boat to Singapore (lucky for me!) Far from heroic, just real messy human life... And the more we fill our ears with bugles and our lapels with poppies, the farther we stray from the poor bleeders who had to fight and die in the reality of it. All this Poppy stuff has nothing to do with their lives and deaths. And I just find it slightly insulting to their memory - to say nothing of their intelligence - to suggest it does. I refuse to be defined by cliché (bit of a forlorn hope on this forum admittedly). And, on their behalf, so do they.

I'm not going to enter into a slanging match with you mate. But either you're deliberately misinterpreting what I said or you just don't get the points I'm making. Fair enough - either way to continue in this vein would be as tedious for me as it appears to be anathematic to you... One question. How old are you? I only ask because I wonder if you remember how Armistice Day was marked in the 60s - when the majority of people had direct experience of the war? It was a very different thing to those people to whom war was not an abstract construct. Perhaps their example - their very real experience of loss, hardship and sacrifice - means more than the rather self-conscious all-pervading fiction we've somehow managed to turn it into these days. By the way, my uncle was killed in the war. By an American bomb. He was a prisoner on a Japenese ship (the Lisbon Maru) when that particular inglorious episode took place. I often wonder which one of the poppies propped up on the Cenotaph represents him.

Hang on mate - I'm bloody ancient, and I make Joe Stalin look like Michael Gove!

So am I. The point I'm trying to make is that the recent obsession with remembrance - and recent it is; I can assure you that the the whole poppy phenomenon was much less marked when I was young, when the people who actually lived through the war were the vast majority - is actually reducing those people to something like ciphers or fictional characters ( The 'Glorious Dead') rather than they actual human people they really were. And rather than inspire the younger generation to avoid war in my opinion it has the opposite effect. By fictionalising the memory of those who served in it, by turning them into 'heroes' rather than the flesh & blood ordinary people they actually were they are becoming less real and more like fantasy figures and somehow glamorous - somehow to be emulated. If anything this makes future war more likely, in my opinion. We do the dead a disservice by deifying them. I find the recent emphasis on 'remembrance rather self-indulgent and very far from emphasising the squalor and hatred that war actually entails. And I repeat, the vast majority of blokes that I knew (and that was plenty) that actually fought in the Second World War never went anywhere near a poppy.

Must admit, this had me in stitches!

The only point I was trying to make about socialism being a vote-winner was in the immediate post-war election, when of course it was. The economic weather was tough and Labour lasted one term. But the NHS, free education and improvement in housing and working conditions were lasting achievements that it's hard to imagine the Tories introducing. As for the 60s & 70s (Labour's heyday, as you say, apart of course from Heath's 3-day week etc)., it's often cited as a period of economic & social unrest. Maybe, but It didn't have the homelessness, food banks and massive income disparity that are so evident now. Brexit probably will have its say in this election, though I must admit I find the whole subject so overwhelmingly dull that I can't even be arsed to think about it...