Alf Bentley

Yes - and if he arrives late, overweight and with a surly attitude, they'll call him Lardy Mardy Tardy Vardy. If he arrives with a resilient attitude but insists on playing in goal in a cardigan while singing songs, they'll call him Hardy Cardy Bardy Wardy Vardy.

I agree with almost all of that. But I'm not sure that a potentially wider appeal would damage the chances of defeating Farage. The Greens adopted that approach at the last election and took 2 seats off the Tories in the rural shires (as well as 1 off Lab in Bristol plus the usual one in Brighton). Although a large part of the Greens' membership has always been leftist, I reckon them adopting a more explicitly left-populist approach is potentially more damaging to the left/centre left electorally, even if it proves less successful for them as a party, as I suspect. The votes they now gather will be overwhelmingly from folk who might otherwise have voted Lab or LD - previously some of their support came from non-aligned or even former Tory voters (as their wins in rural Suffolk & Herefordshire showed). Still an awful lot of stuff could happen in the next 4 years, though - though I do think they and Corbyn's crew will have to come to some arrangement or they could both fail!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0d0d08jnjo "Zack Polanski has been elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales by a landslide, signalling a clear shift to the left for the party. The London Assembly member beat Green MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, who were standing on a joint ticket, by 20,411 votes to 3,705. In his victory speech, Polanski promised to build a "green left" to take on Labour, telling Sir Keir Starmer's party: "We are here to replace you." " Will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months - and potentially through to the next election. I'd welcome the environment and social inequality rising up the political agenda, if they achieve that.....but I'm dubious that they'll win widespread support for a populist Green/Left agenda or that this is the way to go about it. It will doubtless be very popular with Green Party members (as the landslide vote suggests) and will probably attract more active support from others who already share their views. I can imagine it boosting party membership....but it could risk damaging both the Greens and the Left/Centre-Left electorally, as it'll be largely preaching to the converted. Imaginative populist campaigning could win over some metropolitan Lab/LD voters who are disgruntled with the Govt. But they'll lose support among environmentally-minded small-C conservative moderates - and won't attract much support from Red Wall/working-class Lab or Reform-minded voters. For a start, the Greens & the Corbyn-Sultana crew will surely have to form some sort of alliance or non-aggression pact? Because otherwise they'll be largely fishing for votes in the same pool - and damaging one another - unless one or other quickly comes to dominate the Left/radical Green vote? There are too many unpredictable variables to seriously start predicting the outcome of the 2029 election. But, unless the Govt has the sense to introduce electoral reform (unlikely) or the state of the nation becomes even more volatile than it already is, I can't see either the new eco-populist Greens or the Corbyn crew winning more than perhaps a dozen seats under FPTP. But they certainly could win enough support to split the centre-left vote - and potentially pave the way to a Farage Govt, if Reform wins most of the right-wing vote plus support from voters alienated with all the trad parties. Maybe not. I'd like to think that a lot of people who might express a protest vote in local elections or to pollsters will think more seriously about who they want in power at a general election - and I'd expect a lot of anti-Reform tactical voting. Or Reform might discredit themselves while running local councils or during the election campaign. Or the Tories might bounce back under new leadership (Badenoch will be gone in months, surely?) Even so, a scenario is quite feasible where a Green/Corbyn alliance of some sort wins 15% of the vote in 2029 - enough only to win a dozen seats in areas dominated by young / left / Green-minded folk (Brighton, Bristol, parts of London, a few university towns), but enough to hand a large number of marginal Lab & LD seats to Reform and/or a rejuvenated Jenrick-led populist Tory party. The following 2029 FPTP general election scenario in England (ignoring Scotland & Wales as too complex) could be imagined: Reform 28%, Lab 24%, Con 15%, LD 15%, Green/Corbyn Alliance 15%.....giving Farage an overall majority on 28%, despite centre-left/Left parties taking 54% of the vote.

No, that makes no sense, Davie. Normally, all squid would be equally moist as they live in the sea - meaning that it would be impossible to distinguish a notably damp squid. Tonight, though, all squid are on the beach, sunning themselves in the warm glow of LCFC's glorious deadline day business. This evening, Super Jon Rudkin has certainly shown that he has another string to his bone, as they say in the cello industry.

That wouldn't be a Marmite deal, @Marmite. It would be an Australian Beef Wellington laced with toxic mushrooms deal.....wouldn't entirely rule it out, though... I thought McAteer to Ipswich was surprising, but my unimaginative brain struggles to envisage anything more unexpected than Vardy (38) to Cremonese....

"It's cold outside - and the paint's peeling off of our ground. There's a man inside, in an XXXXL coat, big beard, gut hanging over his belt. Now our popularity fades - and I wonder what we're doing in a league like this. There's a knock on the door - and in just a second I know it's the PSR investigation team..."

I bet that gave him a buzz. Cheaper than over-the-counter Viagra, too. We need to attract venture capitalists into this sort of innovative erectile dysfunction treatment.

I do appreciate this. Indeed, polls only allow a limited number of options, as I recall. I was just trying to stimulate some debate. I don't see how? He was at Wolves for several years, went on loan to Everton, but we signed him on a permanent transfer (Everton had too much sense and declined the option). We then sold him to Wrexham?

I've gone for JJ. More chance of Leeds going down than West Ham, notwithstanding the latter's diabolical start to the season. You've missed a trick, though, OP....you could've included ex-LCFC players in other divisions or abroad. - Coady and Ward taking Wrexham back to L1 would be highly amusing - Could Mahrez get relegated to the Saudi second tier? Or Michael Morrison 's career arc turn symmetrical as he drops back to non-league with Cambridge? - Or a long shot ironic career arc....Vardy puts sentiment ahead of cash and signs for Sheff Wed on deadline day, only to end his career with the Owls getting relegated to L1?

He'll end his playing career at Llanelli Town. But not before he's resurrected his international career. His 4 grandparents come, respectively, from Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Lesotho and Laos.

A personal recollection.... In 1983, when I was 20-21, there was a lot of Daily Mail-style outrage about the misconduct of youth (my generation - some of whom are now outraged at the misconduct of modern youth). I used a pub frequented by a load of "old blokes" (probably a bit younger than I am now) and got talking to them. They revelled in tales of their youth spent brawling and rioting around dance halls - probably in the 1940s, judging by their age. Also, a cartoon circulated on Facebook recently about the rebellious conduct of my Grandma's generation....

I hope any McAteer sale would mean Fatawu is going nowhere....that could be naive of me, though.

"Maybe not as deep as your grave in the garden will be if you do that again!" is the appropriate response, I feel.

On a rack, medieval torture-style? I suppose that would be one way to avoid transfer spending/PSR issues and yet satisfy those who say "we need a big man up front" so we can "just get it in the box"...

I bet your wife/husband/partner was pissed off about that.

I remember seeing that on TV when I was still at secondary school and it making a big impression. I've never seen it since. It quite disturbed me at the time, but I'm unsure exactly why - the themes of brutal bullying and fatal injustice, I presume.

Sorry to hear about your travails, Davie. 12 months waiting for radiotherapy is shocking. Depending on what my consultant tells me about treatment options, I might message you at some point. I'm hoping to avoid hormone therapy, but it might be necessary, obviously - should find out soonish. Mind you, I'm particularly shocked that the PL got involved in your case and imposed PSR tests. I only had to do PSA tests....

Sorry to hear this. Unexpected bad news is always shocking in the first instance. I generally find the uncertainty the hardest to deal with. Once you know the full scenario and implications, even if unwelcome, at least you can then think more clearly about future plans and about your input into treatment decisions. From that perspective, it's excellent to hear that they're acting so quickly to discover the extent of your cancer and to plan the treatment response ASAP. Surgery, with its possible side-effects and recovery time, is not welcome but it's far from the end of the world (speaking as someone who had prostate cancer surgery in March). I'm uninformed about bowel cancer specifically, but know that plenty of folk recover from bowel cancer. While not perfect, cancer treatment options are improving all the time. Naturally, metastasis is a fear - I'm waiting for news, like you - but it sounds as if you'll know the facts about that next week. Good luck. Even with metastatic cancer, there are now often options to hold it at bay for years. My cousin's husband was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and told he had 12-18 months left, but is still going strong about 3 years later - he and my cousin have been travelling the globe, climbed a mountain recently () and were on Facebook 2 days ago enjoying a family outing. Likewise, Sir Chris Hoy is still out there cycling the nation. Though hopefully you (and I) will get better news on metastasis. A lot of folk say to avoid looking at web sites about your illness, but I disagree - so long as you have sufficient sense to tell the difference between reputable, properly researched sites and random opinion / social media gossip, which is often ill-informed. I've found cancer charity sites have a lot of useful info: Cancer Research UK & Prostate Cancer Research, in my case, but I presume there are reputable sites that cover bowel cancer. I've also looked at specialist medical research papers posted online, despite having no medical training - I wouldn't understand much of their contents, but they usually have a brief summary of their findings on whatever illness or treatment they're researching. This is usually easily comprehensible to Joe Public. Being well-informed about likely scenarios and potential treatments can help you understand better what medics tell you - and to take more informed decisions / have some input. All the very best.

The second leg was in Armenia, so it was a hell of a long way for Lincoln Red Imps to travel back enjoying having won on penalties.

As Mozart has returned to write a 2nd symphony, I'll do likewise. Might be helpful, especially as I took a different treatment route and am almost certainly heading for further treatment. Before doing so, I'd like to echo @mozartfox: if you're 45-50+ and/or have any relevant family history of issues, please get a PSA (diagnostic starting point). Also, remember that prostate cancer often has no symptoms whatsoever - and that close female relatives with breast or ovarian cancer may also increase prostate cancer risk. I had robot-assisted surgery to remove my prostate in March. The recovery was a lot easier than you'd imagine, though having a urinary catheter for 9 days after the op was no fun. I was discharged after 24 hours, had almost zero pain (just discomfort sitting on hard surfaces in the early weeks) and other side-effects were minor or quickly resolved: e.g. some minor urinary incontinence, conquered within days. I got tired slightly more quickly than usual for a few weeks, but that soon faded, and my energy/mobility was pretty much 100% from Day 1.....apart from the 9 days of catheter chafing in the right honourable member, which discouraged movement.... Post-surgical analysis of the bit cut out of me yielded pros and cons: - "Negative margins": This was good news, meaning the external surface of the bit cut out was cancer-free - all cancer in the immediate vicinity of the prostate was safely contained/removed - This notwithstanding the fact that the cancer had indeed grown beyond the prostate capsule, upping it from Stage 2 to Stage 3a prostate cancer - My Gleason score (aggressiveness of cancer) was upped from Gleason 4+5 at biopsy to 5+4 at post-op analysis, the second most aggressive rating possible... PSA readings after a prostatectomy are expected to be quite different to those quoted by Mozart after his radiotherapy. As you no longer have a prostate, PSA should quickly fall to zero or at least a mere trace, if cancer has been fully cured.... - My 1st PSA reading was 0.1: very low, but not zero, so would either drop to zero or start rising from there. Unfortunately, it did the latter.... - 2nd PSA: 0.19 - 3rd PSA: 0.3 Thus, I clearly still have prostate cancer at a microscopic but growing level - and growing quite quickly, as it's such an aggressive one. I had another PET scan yesterday and am now awaiting a consultant's appointment to discover the findings and implications of that. PET scans are the gold standard scans designed to identify the location of cancer at an earlier, smaller stage than other scans. As I understand it, the potential outcomes & implications of the PET scan are: - Most likely: localised cancer identified in prostate bed (area where prostate used to be) and/or nearby lymph nodes -> 4+ weeks of radiotherapy with or without hormone therapy to cure - Small amount of metastatic cancer identified elsewhere in body: if in a single, suitable area, radiotherapy could still cure this....but systemic approaches to hold it at bay, not cure it, might be required if it's in multiple locations or in organs where radiotherapy can't be used...the worst potential outcome - The PET scan may not identify the cancer location (0.3 or even 0.5 PSA means the cancer is still tiny). This leaves a choice between blind radiotherapy of prostate bed/lymph nodes (risking needless damage to healthy tissue & needless side-effects) or waiting a bit longer until the location can be pinpointed (allows proper targeting, but with risk of it going metastatic) (Essentially zero chance of PSA increase being caused by anything other than some escaped prostate cancer cells) I still feel exceptionally fit and well - and am now on my second new job since treatment. As usual, uncertainty is the only thing that bothers me, rather than adversity. My realistic hope is that the scan identifies microscopic cancer located in the prostate bed & I just have a few weeks of radiotherapy to cure it (would definitely prefer to avoid hormone therapy if at all possible.....did you know that the "chemical castration" sometimes prescribed for rapists/paedophiles is just another name for "hormone therapy"? ) Good luck to all (especially me ) - and, if there's any chance you might be at risk, go to your GP and get that PSA blood test. Prostate cancer caught early is almost always cured, but metastatic prostate cancer needlessly shortens a lot of lives....

Looks like you're right - according to Wikipedia.

Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar have qualified for the play-off stage of the Europa League. They defeated Noah Yerevan of Armenia on penalties after an aggregate draw in the 3rd Qualifying Round. If that's not worthy of a new topic, I don't know what is.....

I blame L'Oréal.

He didn't run onto the pitch and pull down his shorts in the centre circle revealing the words "KP Out" tattooed on his hairy backside. Didn't you see him not do that?

I like the sound of this man.