diable rouge

Group Stage 3 points... Group Stage 3 table...

Re. the ''I'm always asked about my accent'' takes. It is indeed common to ask someone where their accent is from, it's an easy conversation ice-breaker. The difference is, if you're white, there's rarely the follow-up question of ''Yes, but where did you originally come from?''...

All to play for. World Cup Group Fixtures - Round 3... Tuesday 29th November Ecuador v Senegal Netherlands v Qatar Iran v USA Wales v England Wednesday 30th November Australia v Denmark Tunisia v France Poland v Argentina Saudi Arabia v Mexico Thursday 1st December Canada v Morocco Croatia v Belgium Costa Rica v Germany Japan v Spain Friday 2nd December Ghana v Uruguay South Korea v Portugal Cameroon v Brazil Serbia v Switzerland

Group Stage 2 points... Group Stage 2 table...

...because it just seems to wind you up so much.... And there we have it. The circle is complete. You should've made that your last post...

World Cup Group Fixtures - Round 2... Friday 25th November Wales v Iran Qatar v Senegal Netherlands v Ecuador England v USA Saturday 26th November Tunisia v Australia Poland v Saudi Arabia France v Denmark Argentina v Mexico Sunday 27th November Japan v Costa Rica Belgium v Morocco Croatia v Canada Spain v Germany Monday 28th November Cameroon v Serbia South Korea v Ghana Brazil v Switzerland Portugal v Uruguay

Group Stage 1 points & table...

World Cup Group Fixtures - Round 1... Sunday 20th November Qatar v Ecuador Monday 21st November England v Iran Senegal v Netherlands USA v Wales Tuesday 22nd November Argentina v Saudi Arabia Denmark v Tunisia Mexico v Poland France v Australia Wednesday 23rd November Morocco v Croatia Germany v Japan Spain v Costa Rica Belgium v Canada Thursday 24th November Switzerland v Cameroon Uruguay v South Korea Portugal v Ghana Brazil v Serbia

Anyone interested in joining the World Cup game, scroll up to Oct 28th for details...

Week 14 points... Week 14 table...

The thing with Google word searches is that they throw up anything and everything with whatever words are used, in this case you typed ''Brexit disaster''. So, as well as articles claiming something along the lines of ''Brexit is a disaster'' there will also be articles claiming something along the lines of ''Brexit isn't a disaster''. Similarly, there will be articles that contain those words yet they're not writing about either. So with all that in mind, I'll pass on your generous offer and instead file it under ''It's Friday, I'm off to the pub''. There's nothing wrong with 'pivoting' if it's still relevant/pertinent to the case in point. SME's and how well or not they are performing all contribute to the bigger national picture (by the way, SME's aren't limited to 'individual traders'). Interest rates are also entwined with what's happening nationally. Brexit is omnipresent, it's tentacles are everywhere, you can't distill them to suit your 'position'. As for the last bit, please, not the ''everybody hates me'' martyr card, it's Friday, go to the pub and cry your Brexit tears into a beer. To show you there's no hard feelings, I'll volunteer to drive you to the airport when you leave, just to make sure you get on that fecking plane...

Last round of matches before the World Cup break. Week 14 fixtures... Saturday 12th November Manchester City v Brentford AFC Bournemouth v Everton Liverpool v Southampton Nottingham Forest v Crystal Palace Tottenham Hotspur v Leeds United West Ham United v Leicester City Newcastle United v Chelsea Wolverhampton Wanderers v Arsenal Sunday 13th November Brighton & Hove Albion v Aston Villa Fulham v Manchester United

Not at all, I'm sure it's been said but I'm equally sure that unless you cite the context it was said i.e. it could have been said in relation to when discussing No Deal, then it's nothing more than throwing words around. Again, for some people Brexit has been ''really, really bad'', and who's to say that whoever's used that term on here hasn't themselves had a really bad experience with Brexit? Not everyone wants to wash their dirty laundry on the EDF. And if you want some data, I'll send you my latest mortgage statement courtesy of the Brexity free trade loons at B4B and their mucky paw prints all over Trussonomics and the catastrofuck that turned out to be. Remind me, how are B4B showing the £50b fiscal black hole in their 'data'? And Seph makes an important point, it's not just economics that Brexit has affected, it's had an extremely adverse effect politically, and I'll add socially too...

Cat, do yourself a favour and stop referencing B4B. David Henig, an independent trade expert, referenced them recently in a comment about The Guardian's Larry Elliot's piece entitled ''Brexit isn't to blame for our current problems''... Whether from left or right, there is no part of economics that Brexit fundamentalists will not undermine if it doesn't produce their 'right' answer. Heck, a Guardian Brexiteer will even reference the joke that is Briefings for Brexit. (I read this as a quip rather than a typo) Once more for the partisans, if Brexit has no cost then there is no case for free trade. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case. Should on the other hand, trade barriers just be one facet of growth, then we'd expect UK performance to slightly lag competitors, as it is there never was going to be a UK economic fall off a cliff. Some sectors are doing ok, Brexit isn't obviously affecting Scotch Whisky, the Premier League, or universities. But in other sectors, greater barriers, lower competition, economic cost. It's telling that Cat's attack line is now reduced to 'Brexit's not been great but it's not been a disaster either', as if that is some kind of 'win'. That's not what Brexit promised, quite the opposite in fact. Once again, this isn't about what Cat thinks, his type of Brexit, but how the millions of people up and down the country who voted for Brexit, perceive whether Brexit has delivered on those promises or not. Politically, when you have differences of opinion on the direction a county should take, the onus is always on the winner to deliver, usually via a GE. It's irrelevant what the losing side said/promised. Their ideas are not being implemented, the winner's are. Corbyn's promise of free broadband for everyone is immaterial because he didn't win. So. unless Brexit delivers on what it promised, people will rightly conclude that it's failed. And polls suggest that this is already cutting through, even I was taken aback that one recent poll had Rejoin at close to 60%. That's Rejoin, i.e. completely undoing Brexit. I'd always envisaged that we would first of all stay Brexited but join the Single Market and maybe the Customs Union as a half-way house, something we should've done initially. I'm also not sure what this fascination with the word 'disaster' is, I presume someone on here has said it and it's buried itself in Cat's head. Perhaps Cat's the only one who can use throw away lines. Besides, what makes something a 'disaster' or not is wholly subjective. Henig doesn't think Brexit has been a disaster to the economy as a whole, but to the SME who's gone out of business because they can no longer afford to export their goods to the EU, they will rightly claim it has indeed been a disaster...

This is why we should've had a 2nd Ref on the final deal, instead of May kowtowing to the ERG Brextremists. As with the GOP and Trump, until the Tories are rid of them they will never be a democratic functioning party fit to govern...

Cheers Jah, no idea how Week 5 made a guest appearance...

Week 13 points... Week 13 table...

A normal/rational response would've been something along the lines of... Ok, why was I wrong to use that term in the context that I did? But Cat doesn't do normal/rational, because Cat can never be wrong. Instead he has to double down, and/or point score, and/or maybe even throw in an ad hominem, and/or caveat something within an inch of its life, and so on. Anything but I might've been wrong to say that...

Speaking of great voices, Leslie Phillips. Ding Dong... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63557414

I see Cat still doesn't understand the term 'white privilege' in the context it was originally used...

I was going to jokingly suggest Brian Blessed, then I thought, actually actors do use voice coaches, so have you thought about Googling/contacting actor agencies, especially those that specialise in voice over work? Would be rude to now not post a tribute to the blessed Brian...

I'm sure even you can concede that in relation to Northern Ireland, the UK couldn't exert control over it's border with Ireland and therefore ended up with a deal it didn't want. Brexit has indeed given more control of immigrants coming from the EU, but at the expense of our own loss of FoM across the EU. All we've done is replace one set of immigrants with another, while in the process losing our right of FoM and gaining nothing in return. To me and many others that's a big negative trade-of. Call me a cynic, but I reckon those Brexit voters that were primarily concerned about EU immigration and were wiling to lose FoM (although numerous tabloid stories would suggest many thought they wouldn't) aren't particularly enamoured that we now have more net immigration post-Brexit. And call me an even bigger cynic when I say a not insignificant % of those are also genuine racist/xenophobes and aren't best pleased that a lot of these alternative immigrants are 'non-white'. You may not think events like the small boats are Brexit related but they are to the public as a whole, The inference of a populist soundbite like ''take back control of our borders'' was that there would be control over immigration numbers i.e. numbers would come down, not control of what type of immigrant comes to the UK and especially not a resultant higher number. So when certain Brexit voters see the small boats they see a Gov not taking control of it's borders. It's irrelevant to them that this may or not be happening in other countries. So once again we have a Gov that has managed to pee off all sides of the debate, hence why in a poll yesterday circa 90% think the Gov is handling immigration badly. That will continue to be Brexit's problem, promised easy solutions to complex problems that unsurprisingly fail to deliver. Re. ''more qualified and skilled individuals'', have you got the data that shows this? My own personal non-data view is that pre-Brexit there was a natural balance between low and high-skilled immigration, which to me seems far more desirable than immigration ''massively weighted'' on one particular side. What's the point of having lots of captains if you have no one in the engine room to run the boat? The hospitality industry is currently crying out for lower-skilled workers who disappeared post-Brexit...

Corbynistas who were happy to see moderate candidates deselected in favour of Corbynista candidates upset that moderate Labour leader wants moderate candidates shocker...

Week 13 fixtures... Saturday 5th November Leeds United v AFC Bournemouth Manchester City v Fulham Nottingham Forest v Brentford Wolverhampton Wanderers v Brighton & Hove Albion Everton v Leicester City Sunday 6th November Chelsea v Arsenal Aston Villa v Manchester United Southampton v Newcastle United West Ham United v Crystal Palace Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool

Missed this due to page ticking over. Nice try at sophistry Cat, but you know very well that wasn't what I was saying. When we were in the EU the numbers of asylum seekers that were returned were small, a Guardian report last year quoted ''a few hundred'' in 2020, and if for legitimate reasons, I'm fine with that. it's not about 'getting rid of them'. The point I was making is the same as in that last paragraph, that Brexit promised that the UK would 'take back control' of our borders, and once again when Brexit meets reality, the opposite is true. We have less control, so much so we've also ended up with an internal border within the UK. I don't speak for all Remainers but I like to think that the vast majority want a fair and humane asylum system, whereby the UK takes in it's fair share of asylum seekers subject to the usual legalities (at the moment the UK languishes near the bottom). That it doesn't try and deport asylum seekers to Rwanda without going through any asylum processing. That it doesn't keep them in squalid, overcrowded conditions so that cases of Scabies and Diphtheria arise. That it doesn't dogwhistle to racists/xenophobes with fascistic soundbites of 'invasions'. I note this morning that Belize has already distanced itself from the report that Braverman was looking to extend the scheme to include other countries, describing it as ''inhumane''. Way to go, Global Britain...