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Thread | Another soulless stadium
at 09:56 28 Dec 2024
Having been to the new stadia at Man City, West Ham, Spurs and Arsenal for the first time this season, I can't say I am impressed by the experience or atmosphere.
Admittedly, the atmosphere will presumably better for more high profile games, but the very design doesn't seem conducive to producing the sort of noise that the old single stands could produce, especially when you factor in a number of "tourist" fans.
In my view there is nothing to beat a 4 stand stadium for atmosphere such as Wolves and Forest. Indeed, the best noise produced this season was in my view that produced at Wolves, once they had equalised, from the vast single tier stand behind one goal. [Post edited 28 Dec 2024 9:57]
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Thread | Lack of Premier League experience?
at 21:36 21 Dec 2024
When you watch a game like today, I wonder if the issue we have is that we don't have enough Premier League experience.
I am not criticising our players from last couple of seasons but wonder if we bought too many players in the summer with Championship experience "on spec", and perhaps hoping to make a profit on them. Or we bought player like Cajuste and Philips who are potentially top draw but are not up to speed.
Of course, Delap has turned out to be the business (hopefully) but Clarke, Hutchinson and Smzodics have not exactly set the world alight.
And just look, for example, at what a 39 year old Ashley Young is currently able to offer Everton. [Post edited 21 Dec 2024 21:43]
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Thread | Water bills
at 09:22 19 Dec 2024
I have the misfortune to live in the Southern Water area whose record when it comes to maintenance, discharges and the environment is appalling, and has been for as long as I've lived in the area (as I found out to my cost a couple of years after I moved to the area).
Their reward is the biggest increase in water bills of all the companies over the next five years; 53%, with inflation on top of that.
The size of the increase is an indication of the state they have got the infrastructure into.
EDIT: Whilst these companies should never have been privatised, I am not convinced that nationalisation is the panacea because these companies no longer have ingrained in them the public good ethos.
[Post edited 19 Dec 2024 9:35]
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Thread | Probably the loudest fans all season
at 22:13 14 Dec 2024
Just watched a Wolves video which praised our fans and said we were probably the loudest this season.
As it is, I thought our fans being seated the length of the pitch meant the atmosphere we created was not as good as normal. [Post edited 14 Dec 2024 22:15]
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Thread | State-sanctioned grooming
at 10:08 28 Nov 2024
This practice emerged about 15 years ago with an undercover cop called Mark Kennedy, and is absolutely shocking.
It led to the setting up of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/27/undercover-police-officer-bob-la
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/28/police-officer-spy-cop-bob
It’s the testimony we’ve long been waiting for. On Monday, at the undercover policing inquiry, the man whose cruel and disgusting deceptions have come to epitomise the “spy cops” scandal will be questioned. Many of us are hoping for answers, not least because his story suggests a closing of ranks across the British establishment. Even if you think you’ve heard it all, some of the details in this column will take your breath away.
Bob Lambert worked for the Metropolitan police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in the 1980s and 1990s, first as an undercover cop infiltrating environmental and animal rights protests, then as operational controller of the squad, supervising other spy cops doing similar work. In the course of his undercover assignments, while posing as a radical activist called Bob Robinson, he deceived four unsuspecting women, innocent of any crime, into starting relationships. He stole his identity from a dead child.
With one of the women, Jacqui, he fathered a child. Two years later, he vanished. She discovered his true identity by chance more than 20 years later, and has yet to recover from the devastating shock. She says she feels “raped by the state”. The person she loved and trusted was a ghost. “I feel like I’ve got no foundations in my life …. your first serious relationship, your first child, the first time you give birth – they’re all significant, but for me they’re gone, ruined … I was not consenting to sleeping with Bob Lambert, I didn’t know who Bob Lambert was.”
When he sat with her as she went through 14 hours of labour, she later wondered, was he being paid overtime? His abandoned son was also traumatised by the discovery of who his father really was. According to another former spy cop, Peter Francis, when Lambert was his manager, he advised Francis to wear a condom when sleeping with activists.
These fake relationships were standard practice in the team of spy cops Lambert ran. The officers used similar seduction techniques, built similar falsehoods about their lives and used similar methods for destroying or abandoning the relationships when they were redeployed. It looks like a refined, state-sanctioned grooming operation. As Helen Steel, another woman deceived by a spy cop, remarked, “there weren’t any genuine moments – they were purely manipulative and abusive. …. it was as if he set out to destroy my sanity.”
The great majority of the people being spied on were peaceful activists who presented no danger to democracy or human life. Many were involved in campaigning against corporate abuses. Some of the spying, like Lambert’s infiltration of a campaign against McDonald’s, looks like policing on behalf of corporate power. But even that was not the worst of it. Police spies were also used to infiltrate the campaign for justice for Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered by racists in 1993, whose case the Met, as a result of institutional racism, failed properly to investigate. Police spies were allegedly deployed to find “dirt” that could be used to smear Stephen’s family. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC, now the Independent Office for Police Conduct) found that Lambert “played a part” in the intelligence gathering by spies inserted into the Lawrence campaign.
After retiring from the police, Lambert reinvented himself as a right-on lecturer on community engagement, Islamophobia and counter-terrorism. He obtained prestigious positions at Exeter, London Metropolitan and St Andrews universities. Astonishingly, he received the London Metropolitan position after being exposed as a police spy. As I have a connection with St Andrews, I joined the campaign calling for the university to take action. But it stonewalled us. Scandalously, in my view, the university’s then principal, Louise Richardson, remarked: “I think hiring people who have had real-world experience in an institution which is teaching counter-terrorism is entirely legitimate … I’m not going to get involved in what people do privately whoever they are.” When the real-world experience a university values consists of deceiving, abusing and destroying innocent lives, you have to wonder what the disqualifications would be. The issue was resolved only when Lambert, as the Stephen Lawrence revelations began to emerge, resigned.
[Post edited 28 Nov 2024 10:12]
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Thread | The [potential] Government of none of the talents
at 09:41 5 Nov 2024
They really are scraping the barrel.
Kemi Badenoch names appointments to new shadow cabinet
The Conservative party has sent out the list of appointments to Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet. Here it is, as set out in the press release from CCHQ.
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer: Mel Stride MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs: Dame Priti Patel MP
Shadow Home Secretary: Chris Philp MP
Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland: Alex Burghart MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence: James Cartlidge MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Justice: Robert Jenrick MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Education: Laura Trott MP
Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary: Ed Argar MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities: Kevin Hollinrake MP
Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Victoria Atkins MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade: Andrew Griffith MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and Shadow Minister for Equalities: Claire Coutinho MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: Helen Whately MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport: Gareth Bacon MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport: Stuart Andrew MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology: Alan Mak MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and Shadow Minister of State for Energy and Net Zero: Andrew Bowie MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Wales and Shadow Minister for Women: Mims Davies MP
Opposition Chief Whip (Commons): Dame Rebecca Harris MP
Shadow Leader of the House of Commons: Jesse Norman MP
Shadow Leader of the House of Lords: Lord True
Co-Chairmen of the Party: Nigel Huddleston MP & Lord Johnson
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Richard Fuller MP
Also attending
Parliamentary Private Secretary: Julia Lopez MP [Post edited 5 Nov 2024 9:43]
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Thread | Our fans were magnificent today
at 21:47 26 Oct 2024
and I got the impression at the end that McKenna and the team really appreciated our support because they stayed out for some time. |
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Thread | Tolerance of other views on TWTD
at 10:07 26 Oct 2024
I recently came across the following quote by Gramsci and thought everyone on here ought to bear it in mind.
"When debating with an opponent, try to put yourself in his shoes."
And for those posters who come under attack for having a view that no others on the thread share, let's not forget the words of John Stuart Mill.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
[Post edited 27 Oct 2024 10:33]
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Thread | Kings of Anglia
at 12:14 8 Oct 2024
The latest Kings of Anglia podcast has the title
A bad day at the office - but reasons to be positive
Having listened to it, it is a balanced listen, as is always the case with the EADT when things go against us.
But perhaps the best part of it is these words from Mark Heath.
"If you are one of the people sending abuse to players on social media, give your head a bloody good wobble, look in the mirror, slap yourself, give yourself a good talking to, cause that is nonsense friends."
[Post edited 8 Oct 2024 15:27]
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