Alf Bentley

His Mum being Glenda Jackson, of course.....

Merry-go-round?

That could be very good news, if confirmed by wider research or events. I know this can often happen, can't it - viruses can mutate so as to become less lethal or eventually even near-harmless?

I'm getting confused. Let's see if I've got this straight: - The two Russians flew to Durham Castle to go to Pizza Express - Prince Andrew drove to Salisbury with a teenage girl to test his eyesight - Dominic Cummings was in Woking to admire the cathedral .....is that right? On a vaguely serious note re. Covid19, I wonder how many police officers will be told, over coming days, "I'm driving to the beach to test my eyesight" or "I'm drinking with mates in the park as I'm exercising my judgment"?

You just type "@" followed immediately by the name of the poster you want to tag. As you type the poster's name, you'll get one name or multiple names in a pop-up list. Click the one you want and you're done.

Good one. But at first I mistakenly thought Everything But The Girl had covered "The only living boy in New Cross" by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine.......that I'd definitely like to hear.

Mark, I take your points about abusive posts and domination of topics (I'm sometimes guilty of the latter myself in dialogue with others, hopefully not often the former). Limiting daily posts as a means of stopping people dominating topics seems fair - and maybe the purpose of that measure could be publicised more? What topics you allow is up to you, clearly. FT is primarily a football forum but I do think that your array of General Chat is one of the things that make it so good (certainly the best football forum I've seen). People use forums in different ways. I only occasionally post in the football threads but find them valuable to passively obtain news, gossip and opinion. I often post in General Chat threads - to have (friendly) arguments about politics and other issues, to exchange banter, to crack silly jokes, whatever. As someone who works from home and has ended up with a fairly isolated life, I find that valuable - so, thanks, and I hope you continue to offer a high-quality forum with a wide array of threads. You stress your desire to appeal to the majority. But surely you are also seeking to appeal to a number of different minorities? The majority will have some degree of interest in major football threads. Different minorities will be interested in topics like Brexit, Birds you fancy off the telly, Technology & Science or What are you reading. I doubt that I've ever opened the Cars or The Gym thread, but often post in the Starmer and 60s, 70s & 80s Music threads. Some posters will do the exact opposite. Isn't that range of partly overlapping minorities part of what makes your forum so good, as well as catering to the majority (and we're all in the majority for the main LCFC threads)? Another of the things that makes it such a good forum is good posters - and good posters can sometimes be annoying! At one time or another, I've been irritated by posts by @Toddybad, @Buce & @MattP (I never found @lifted*fox irritating as I always assumed his melodrama was tongue-in-cheek, but can understand why others were irritated). I'm sure others sometimes find my posts irritating. But what those posters had/have in common was that they were all capable of high-quality, thought-provoking and/or entertaining posts. I'm sure that, from your perspective, prolific controversial or irritating posters (me included) can be hard work and might need reining in sometimes. But they are a loss to the forum when they go (and I hope those named will all either reconsider their departures or find a way back!). Hell, even @Thracian is a loss - some highly dodgy views sometimes, but also some stimulating posts, mainly but not entirely on football. FT would become a very dull forum if it only catered to the majority and alienated anyone who sometimes annoyed people. On the politics bugbear, I have some sympathy with @Izzy's view that there should be a dedicated politics thread again. Some issues are big enough to justify their own threads (Brexit, Coronavirus). But having a politics thread for the rest will minimise politics spreading into other topics, including generalist threads like Also in the News & Unpopular Opinions. Coronavirus is more difficult as it's inherently partly political and partly non-political. There's been a big furore over Cummings in recent days but before that I didn't think there was a major problem with political and non-political mingling in one thread. Or maybe there could be 2 threads: Coronavirus Events/Science and Coronavirus Policies. While I understand people getting annoyed at party political point-scoring, personally I find it incredible if some want to consider Covid events but not the political measures adopted in response to the biggest crisis of our lives but maybe 2 Covid threads would help? I also think greater tolerance should be shown to irritating behaviour in politics threads - most people who enter such threads know they'll sometimes get annoyed or get into arguments. Obviously personal abuse, threats, slander or whatever shouldn't be tolerated, but if it's just feelings getting heated, that can be ignored unless it gets out of hand, surely? And you clearly have tools to handle those who push the boundaries: warnings, temporary bans, daily post limits etc. Enough gas! I hope things settle down, good posters stay, FT remains a top-quality, wide-ranging, valuable forum......and that we get some bastard football back before too long!

Safety net?

@Carl the Llama's suggestion looks good for the first one. Was going to say something like "things seen back to front"......but "looking behind the scenes" sounds good from our Andean friend..... For the second: "Falling through a hole in the net"? Probably not.....

Sell out! He'll be exposed in The Sun next week inhaling laughing gas with Grealish and Sterling while snorting coke off the ample bosom of a glamour model - probably in the back seat of his new Mercedes. Whatever happened to "humble", N'Golo? Remember Islam (no, the religion not that sulky Algerian lump!)

Just finished it - and that seems to get pretty close. I'd add: 2 essentially very well matched people who somehow became mismatched - a lot to do with fvcked-up family & adolescence messing with self-esteem in her case, I'd say. Not sure what his excuse was for consistently messing stuff up and ending up in miserable dilemmas inbetween episodes of shagging the woman of his dreams. Individual identity, status, self-esteem & how it all feeds into relationships & potentially fvcks them up.... I'd say that was a really good series......but completely fvcking unsuitable viewing for the current miserable lockdown circumstances. Too much misery already! I must be a complete idiot. I chose that for TV viewing and "Robinson Crusoe" for reading...... Duh! Story of bloke who ends up in complete isolation!

The fridge is amusing......but what about the headless man wandering about outside?

I don't disagree. But hopefully the one thing sane people of all persuasions can agree on is that 4 years is a very long time. A lot - even more than usual - will change over 4 years: Govt response to Covid, knock-on effects & judgments thereupon; Brexit and reaction thereto; state of the economy and blame/credit assigned for performance; tax & spending post-crisis; potential trade deals & whether they're seen as good or rubbish; actions and misdeeds of BJ; plus "events, dear boy, events" ...... All Labour & Starmer can do for now is to slowly build a good reputation in various ways and chip away at the reputation of BJ & the Tories.....which is what he's doing very well so far.....but very early days. I liked my football analogy: what Starmer's achieving so far is the equivalent of Pearson transforming LCFC into a side that won a fair few matches in the Championship, had potential & stood a chance of making the play-offs.....he's not got Labour into the PL yet, never mind winning the PL title and achieving European status.

"Gentle romance"?!? More like a tortured angst fest! I'm up to episode 8 on I-Player now. I'm not saying it's rubbish. In fact, I think it's probably very good. I'm just not sure it's the best viewing for me in the current circumstances - the two leads seem to experience an awful lot of misery in exchange for some good sex....some of the misery caused by stuff in the background, but a lot by themselves. For fvck's sake, enjoy some happy times together for more than 5 minutes, will you?! You're not wrong about the lead male being the spitting image of Harry Maguire, though!

Yes, would've been nice of them to inform you! Much more in the world operates due to / in spite of incompetence than we'd like to believe. I have the same status with my heart issue - not one of those deemed to be an extreme risk..... I see it as good news in an odd way, as nobody is ordering us to self-isolate at home (not that the police would come knocking, I'm sure). Leaves us to exercise common sense and just avoid significant risk as much as possible.