ClaphamFox

It was being suggested in some of those social media circles that the Russians had bioengineered a whizzy next generation form of pneumonic plague that was: a) much more contagious than previous forms of plagues; b) had a long incubation period; c) induced a feeling 'euphoria' that encouraged the infected individual to go out and party like Keith Vaz, infecting everybody they met; and d) was completely resistant to antibiotics, meaning a 100% fatality rate for anybody who caught it. I'm relieved to see that these reports seem to have been exaggerated.

So are we all safe from the big Russian plague or what? It seems to have gone a bit quiet…

I agree entirely. The problem arises when someone who wants less privatisation also wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth (the Green Party motion called for the establishment of a single Palestinian state). Nobody remembers Hitler for his support for animal rights, his advocacy of nature conservation and green belts, or his opposition to smoking.

@Grebfromgrebland is correct. Between September 2025 and March this year, Green Party membership grew from 68,000 to 215,000—and was still rising. According to the Guardian, a large proportion of those new members are Corbynites who followed him into Your Party but have moved on since it was clear that project was doomed. In other words, there is an itinerant community within the British radical left whose politics are stable but whose political home is constantly changing. The Green Party is just their latest domicile, but they have managed to completely change the party in a short space of time. I sympathise with long-standing Green Party members who must be wondering where they go from here. However, from the purely selfish standpoint of somebody who does not want Reform anywhere near power after the next election, I’m quite relieved see the Greens disintegrate in this way.

It turns out the Green Party member who proposed the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion is a close friend of a jailed al-Quaeda terrorist. There you go. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckm23709pjz7o

Just three more sleeps before this one! (I really should see the doctor about my narcolepsy).

With so much drama in Washington DC It's kind of hard life bein' Donald T But he somehow, some way, Keeps comin' up fresh new shit, like, every single day...

Bolsonaro has said he wants to "free the Brazilian people". Trump has explicitly used the language of 'liberation' and freeing ordinary Americans. Brexit was sold by the Leave campaign as an act of national emancipation and Reform continues to talk in such terms. Promising 'freedom' is a remarkably powerful rhetorical device. If you persuade enough people they are somehow constrained or imprisoned by the status quo & tell them you'll liberate them from it, many will support you without troubling themselves much further about what this 'freedom' actually means in reality. It's an emotional appeal rather than a political argument, but unfortunately it often works.

It will be very interesting to see the extent to which smacking down the Farage threat determines how people vote at the next election. YouGov published some research a few weeks ago which showed a sharp rise in the number of people saying they will tactically vote to keep Reform out at the next general election. This suggests that anti-Reform sentiment is increasing in intensity across the political spectrum. Long may it continue.

On Polanski specifically, I suspect that daft Golders Green retweet may prove to be for him what the Salisbury poisonings were to Corbyn—the moment when any veneer of sanity disintegrated and everyone could suddenly see how batshit crazy they really were. The "Zionism is racism" motion will merely hasten their rapid decline back into electoral obscurity.

“There’s not even a debate to be had” rather gives the game away, doesn’t it? Zionism covers a huge range of views, from people who simply believe Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state, to genuinely racist extremists. You can certainly argue that Zionism is discriminatory, but you need to actually make that argument. “Just speak to them and listen to what they say” is an exceptionally weak way of trying to establish a proposition without having anything to back it up. It’s the equivalent to encountering a particularly antisemitic Palestinian nationalist (of which there are plenty) and saying, “Palestinian nationalism is totally racist and there’s not even a debate to be had—just talk to them and listen to what they say.” Both cases involve focusing on certain members of a heterogeneous group and treating their opinions as defining the entire ideology. It’s a cheap trick that has become depressingly common on social media platforms but never helps to shed light a complex issue.

International breaks are how I imagine wellness retreats to be. Nice to have a break and probably good for you, but ****ing boring.

There doesn't appear to be any suggestion it was a Russia/Ukraine thing. It seems one of the pilots wanted to crash the plane and the other tried to stop him and got stabbed for his pains. The passengers and crew managed to subdue the attacker and two other pilots on the plane, travelling as passengers, managed to land it. The flight's destination was Israel, which may or may not be significant when determining the motive of the would-be mass murdering pilot.

This is a bit mad. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjdv7pmj9dno

The ‘more to it’ possibly being a group of fuel thieves out on the rob unwittingly stumbling into the vicinity of an airforce base that is being heavily monitored by the security services because of a terror threat. There is something so British about it that makes me feel a little patriotic…

The Fairford suspects are all to be released on bail. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting that... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c65y7nl29k0et

So Martin reintegrated him into the first 11 against Barnsley while very likely knowing that we were still trying to offload him to the Saudis?

You'd imagine that when the leaders of this plot have their debrief, they might conclude that wearing balaclavas, blocking somebody's drive with their vans and scattering like startled deer when the homeowner returns were areas they might try to improve on next time.

It’s all very well doing that on a mild evening in Queensland in late September, but can he do it on a mild early afternoon in Nottingham in August?

Yes, they should have won the game on Saturday and it was extremely frustrating that they didn’t. But we have a young team who have only been playing together for a short time and they still created more than enough chances to win that game comfortably. Hopefully they’ll learn from that. Over the past few seasons, it has been common to hear people say that if only the club got rid of all the lazy dross and focused on bringing through young players, the fans would get behind the team even if the results weren’t always there. Well, the dross have largely departed and we do have young team that includes several academy players—and yes, the results have been patchy. Yet a sizeable chunk of the fans have completely turned on the team rather than try to help them get through games by supporting them. I find that difficult to comprehend.

He said this: "It's not just the manager, owner and DoF that has taken the piss out of the fans for the last 5 years. The players have to cop their fair share of it." How would you interpret it?

How many of our current matchday squad were involved in those relegations? Maybe two or three out of eighteen? Do you really think it’s fair to make a team of young players carry the can for failures they had nothing to do with?

They certainly shouldn't be, yet a section of our fanbase clearly feel the best way for them to voice their criticism of the manager/owners is to take it out on the team while they're trying to win matches.

Why does he sound like a plonker? I like him. Like Piper he’s both a genuine fan and also provides some genuine insight. That’s a rare combination.

Todd Boehly assembling a consortium of Gulf billionaires to buy Lukoil’s international assets. Surely there’s room somewhere in the portfolio for a League One football club in the East Midlands? https://www.ft.com/content/152aa77b-977f-4607-8a09-77291f85d2a0?syn-25a6b1a6=1