Spike

already met some interesting characters on my trip

In Australia

People have died in the Brisbane floods

Flying to Brisbane today via LA and Auckland!

Ricketts the family that owns the Chicago Cubs are looking at Chelsea. They are the absolute worst, they are the most anti-fan owners I've seen in a long time. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, they are the reason why I don't like the Cubs anymore, they pulled their Cubs off the national television to start their own expensive sports network, they commercialised Wrigleyville into a lil' Rickettstown, and are huge sponsors for Trump and the Republican party. Apparently the star players that won the Cubs a championship were too expensive but they can afford Chelsea... fuck off.

'Dickhead fans do stupid shit at football game' how you are guys still shocked by this?

I think she was a little past her peak like in her late 40s He would chow on burgers during tea breaks madman

Yeah definitely that and not 40 straight years of drinking, eating pies, smoking durries, and doing lines that did him in. Definitely the pandemic's fault

I had a pair of Andrew Gaze basketball shoes once. I played basketball like three times. I hate basketball

Went through this recently and I know how you are feeling, I'm pleased you can at least fly home in a time when many others cannot.

Typical British condescending ideas of Australians, it'd be funny if it were not so common

He was a drunk, a sleaze, a womaniser, lazy, arrogant, and a really shit commentator, but he was our wanker and the only guy in cricket that I loved to love and loved to hate at the same time. I enjoyed getting angry at his nonsensical commentary because he was such a glorious cunt.

How depressing

Question of the day. How far down the pyramid of English football do you have to go to get a league with all the clubs owned by British?

I as talking about shell companies once ages ago and @LFCMadLad thought I was talking about Shell petrol stations I can’t believe I remember that but it was so funny, sorry mate!

You’d think so but they are a rich as fuck club mate, and they hock their players at a premium when they do. They get all the same TV rights and sponsors as clubs like Man United, and United spend a lot, Who actually knows how much personal money Abramovic puts in the last decade, couldn’t be as much as the first decade. I think people underestimate how much Chelsea has become a mainstay powerhouse, and think it is all Abramovic money.

It could have happened to any club, but Manchester United's success in the burgeoning years of the Premier League coupled with their marketing of Beckham and the club itself is the worse thing that ever happened to world football. New Corps' worldwide reach, the TV money, Manchester United being the first world famous club, set the path for England's top league to not be 'English' but a 'world league'. Importing players from Europe and South America became the norm, instead of Ireland and Scotland, transfer fees had nearly quadrupled since the 80s, and English teams breaking their own spending records en mass, sixteen years on from the first million pound player the record was sitting at over seven million pounds. Foreign ownership is a symptom of the globalisation of the English football, not the cause, it's easy to forget that Manchester United has smashed the transfer record two years in a row buying two players just shy of the thirty million pound mark in 2001 and 2002, Chelsea broke it with Shevchenko in 2006 by 1.7 million more pounds. The precedent of spending had been set in earlier years, Blackburn Rovers, Alan Shearer, Dennis Bergkamp, Stan Collymore, and many others. The foreign ownership and aggression shown by Chelsea in the mid 00s merely exasperated what was already a festering wound. The results weren't just changing English football but European as well, going over to Spain Fiorentino Perez took the Premier League's modus operandi and applied marketable and expensive players to Real Madrid, resulting the two Galacticos generations marked by four astonishing transfers of English talent to Spain, Beckham, Owen, Ronaldo, and Bale. Six of the world's ten most valuable clubs play in the England, and further three more in the top twenty. Everton is more valuable than AC Milan, Tottenham is more valuable than Juventus. 9 out of the 16 world transfer records since 1991 were set by English clubs, and only one each by Chelsea and Man City respectively. Without Sky and the Premier League there would be no Abramovic, Saudis, and Emiratis, no United smashing the English transfer record four times in the league's first decade, less importing of foreign players, and maybe the only moneybags you'd be looking for is Jack Walker at Blackburn. It is very easy to blame foreign investment, in fact I'd say you are right if you do, but not Abramovic, not the Sheiks, Thais, and Saudis, it's some cunt born in Melbourne, Australia that gave up his citizenship to be American in the 80s you want to blame. Jointly with Greg Dyke and the representatives of Arsenal, Everton, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Tottenham that agreed to the breakaway league. To make a deal that throttle's every other club in England and Wales so they can take the Lion's Share of the TV money.

English football has been a cancer on Europe since 1991.

Just watched a compilation of Draisatl spearing players in the nutz. Funny but he shouldn't do that.

I wasn’t because I had been drinking. You seem to think that I have an issue with defining what war crimes are, I don’t. I have an issue with the hypocrisy of it, the nature of war and the defining of the crimes are mutually exclusive there can be and never will be a war that is without war crimes, for both combatants. You keep bringing up bombing hospitals or whatever but that isn’t the only crime that can be and will be committed. The first hypocrisy is the loser being the only one punished, even then they are largely not, the second hypocrisy is they are charged by those guilty of the same atrocities, sometimes using a kangaroo court - another war crime. Countries try to actively subvert the ICC and even if they didn’t who is holding them accountable? How many crimes are unreported and unpunished? It is nice to say things like ‘rape is a war crime’ but it still happens en masse, an estimated 200,000 German women were raped by American GIs alone, we know that is evil, they know that is evil but that is by definition a war crime, and what is the result? War creates a culture of violence and impunity. I will never stray from the idea the war is an implicit breaking of all war crimes. All war is a crime.

No, you still got it wrong.

Uh mate, I think you are arguing against someone else, because you are addressing points I didn’t make nor ever intend to make, I think you grossly misunderstood whatI was stating,

'Intentionally killing civilians is a war crime but unintentionally isn't.' - That is madness. https://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/336923d8-a6ad-40ec-ad7b-45bf9de73d56/0/elementsofcrimeseng.pdf According to the international criminal court these are war crimes, and as far as I'm concerned the moment war happens, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and are going to happen regardless. We all agree these things are awful, terrible things, but they are going to happen, and are happening right now. Willful killing Torture Inhumane treatment Biological experiments Willfully causing great suffering Destruction and appropriation of property Compelling service in hostile forces Denying a fair trial Unlawful deportation and transfer Unlawful confinement Taking hostages

I'm anti-war and I think that war by its very definition is a war crime. That isn't aloof or cynical. The arbitrary line in the sand of war that people promise to 'not cross' is quite frankly bizarre to me because there is no way that any sort of armed conflict is anything but crossing the line. People are going to die. I just bought 'Diesel and Heat' 1st print on vinyl.