RandoEFC

Priceless scenes when the far right's 100 riots fizzle out into a couple of England flags on a Blackpool roundabout and half a dozen EDL having to be escorted into a police van for their own safety . The racists in the UK and their apologists in the media always claim to be part of a "silent majority". Like most of what they say, the total opposite is true. They're a vanishingly small and very noisy minority.

They clearly have a problem with spending too much time with their three main characters because of the actors - Rhaenyra, Daemon and Alicent. Daemon could have been left out of a couple of episodes completely. Some of Alicent's scenes were filler and the two scenes where Rhaenyra and Alicent met each other which I believe are entirely an invention of the show-writers felt contrived. Alicent should have been allowed to take a back seat. The story was ready to move on to Aegon, Heleana, Aemond, Jace, Baela, Rhaena, whose eventual claiming of Sheepstealer is going to feel random and unearned. Has anyone outside of the Vale mentioned Sheepstealer or a dragon outside of Dragonstone/King's Landing at all? They started setting that one up well back in season one but now people are going to say they just spawned a dragon there for her to tick a box. It's difficult to adapt a story when main characters become less important and the story moves on to new characters, when your medium is television and your best/most reputable cast need screen time to justify the outlay on them. We saw this with Jaime going to Dorne in Game of Thrones for example. It's happening again in this season of HotD.

Yeah I don't think any of that season was bad but they definitely got the pacing off. That would have been a solid episode 8 if they followed the traditional GoT season format where episode 9 out of 10 is a major set piece with the battle at Harrenhal/God's Eye. I don't know if there's budgetary reasons why they only did 8 episodes but I suspect they're saying some story points for season 3 in an attempt to stretch this from 3 to 4 seasons of television. The last episode wasn't a bad episode but it wasn't a great season finale either. You'd take that if it came after a big set piece episode. I can see why people are pissed off and calling it filler. I think it's a bit shit really that they make you wait 2 years for the next season and also cut down from 10 episodes to 8.

"I would never stoke division between ethnic groups in this country or encourage anti-migrant sentiment, and the fact that I'm even having to defend myself is evidence of the media conspiracy against me and the silent majority that I represent even though there was a general election not a month ago and only 14% of voters backed my party's racist agenda."

I'll embarrass myself again yes .

Comes with a Talksport sized pinch of salt but...

I still resent people legitimising the idea that we have a genuine immigration problem. The net cost the tax-payer of housing immigrants is an absolute pitiful fraction of the cost of tax-dodging billionaires and corrupt government contracts. And if you look at the population angle, we wouldn't notice the extra people as much if the country's public services weren't chronically under-funded. People living longer is a bigger contributor to population growth anyway. Everything aside from those misdirected concerns is straightforward racism or younger kids just joining in because they want an excuse to smash stuff.

They were literally doing the Family Guy thing. Family Guy said "how ridiculous would it be if someone was THIS racist" and then England managed to be that racist. Well done to all involved.

I've never liked Djokovic but respected his ability as a tennis player. It came to my attention this week that he follows Andrew Tate though so any respect I had for him (if I had any after his anti-vax episode a couple of years ago) is now gone. There are hundreds of athletes out there who are great role models and ambassadors for tennis and international sport. He isn't one of them. I sincerely hope he retires soon and spends the rest of his life with his family and away from the limelight.

Scum all over the streets of Britain today endangering their fellow citizens, trashing law and order, scaring families and making people think twice about leaving their homes for fear of their safety. So basically all the stuff they accuse brown people and Muslims of doing despite the fact they never have. Scum. And everyone who tries to defend them is Scum as well.

Eh, Wawrinka was practically the GOAT on his day but he won 16 titles in his whole career. 3 grand slams out of 16 career titles is a massive anomaly. Fair play for turning up on the big occasions but there's something to be said for consistency too.

She has a medical condition where she has higher testosterone than most women. She isn't trans and people peddling this lie are absolute morons. She's Algerian, and it's illegal to even be homosexual in Algeria so you won't see them sending a trans woman to represent them in the Olympic games. This woman has boxed women her whole life and lost plenty of times to other women, including at the last Olympics. It's never been an issue until now. The Italian opponent has blown it up as an issue and then you get people like JK Rowling with massive platforms tweeting out incorrect information to 30 million people about men competing in women's sports when that isn't the case. The sticking point is that she failed some sort of gender test in a different competition last year because of the extra testosterone. I don't know enough about boxing to say for sure whether she should be competing but she certainly hasn't done anything wrong. My feeling is that there are many women in sport who have biological advantages over others. Serena Williams could do things on a tennis court that 99.9% of women never could with any amount of training, for example. Whatever the appropriate response is, I can tell you that it's not to get hysterical over trans women who are biological men competing against biological women at the Olympics because that has still never happened as of today and JK Rowling and her army of transphobic supporters are getting scared and upset by the bogeyman (again).

Polling and odds still steadily moving in Kamala's favour .

You said "or even inferior to" originally which is where I thought you were over reaching. I'm glad we can agree now though.

Reports that Red Bull told Verstappen's camp they were sacking Perez then Carlos Slim and/or Liberty Media intervened citing concerns about a loss of revenue for the Mexican Grand Prix. Seems a bit fantastical but I've seen enough accounts reporting on it that I could be convinced it's true.

I have to say even if they avoid a points penalty, I'm not seeing much from Leicester to inspire confidence that they'll be in anything but a relegation scrap.

I'll just be happy to go a full season without us being odds on for relegation at some point. I'd love to see us replicate last season's performances without the points deductions and just hover between 11th-15th all season.

Murray is nowhere near the other three but neither were any of those guys you've mentioned close to him. He spent most of that era ahead of at least one of the big three in the world rankings. Murray under performed in terms of grand slam titles but if you look deeper into his results in Masters 1000, end of year championships, Olympic titles, and the fact he made it to the #1 ranking it tells a different story about his career. He even won the Davis Cup with a GB team who had no other top 50 singles players and a doubles team so bad that he had to play that with his brother as well more often than not. Ferrer and Cilic . Sorry but that take is as embarrassing as the people who convince themselves Murray stacks up anywhere near to Nadal, Federer and Djokovic. Wawrinka is the only one of those named that have any claim to being equal to Murray and that's only if your analysis goes as deep as "how many slams did he win?". Murray's career wipes the floor with his by any other measure. I don't know how you can even pretend to claim that Murray is in any way "even inferior to" any of those players you've named. There's not even a debate there. Your analysis just cries out a belief that tennis is only played for 8 weeks a year at the majors. Yes they're the most important tournaments, yes anyone who still tries to claim that Murray belongs in a top four are massively over-reaching but anyone who tries to pretend that he's anything like David fucking Ferrer in stature is over-reaching just as much.

When we get back from the summer break, I will be removing the "without Verstappen" part of the predictions as I think we can all agree the form of Verstappen and Red Bull no longer make it a boring case of going VER for pole and VER-??-?? for the podium. In fact, excluding Verstappen at this point has made it more boring as we can all see people going for Norris for pole and the win almost across the board. Hopefully this simplifies things for the last 10 races. I've been considering this on a weekly basis but think the case for undoing this change is very strong at this point and the summer break seems like a natural time to do so.

Results - Belgian Grand Prix A complete flop for Lando Norris this weekend means it's a low-scoring one as everyone predicted a pole and win double for the McLaren driver only for him to get nowhere near the podium. We'll be addressing this after the summer break. After Russell's disqualification left a Hamilton-Piastri-Leclerc podium, @RandoEFC, @nudge, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush all picked up 2 points for putting Lewis Hamilton in their top three. @Stan, @MUFC, @Tommy, @nudge, @Whiskey, @The Palace Fan and @Coma all pick up 5 points for putting Piastri in 2nd place, with @RandoEFC and @OrangeKhrush taking 2 consolation points for missing by one position. @Coma makes the prediction of the week as the only person to put Charles Leclerc in their top three at all, and he gets the exact position for the full 5 points as well. Lance Stroll was this week's random driver, and @RandoEFC and @Coma are the ones to nail it and pick up 5 points each this time. Another prediction affected by George Russell's disqualification post-race was the number of positions Max Verstappen would make up in the Grand Prix. As the Dutchman started 11th and crossed the line in 5th, these 5 points would have gone to @Tommy and @The Palace Fan, but instead go to @Stan, @MUFC, @nudge and @OrangeKhrush after the championship leader was promoted to 4th. This is how the standings look heading into the summer break then: With the top three largely cancelling each other out this weekend, @Stan extends his lead by a further point and heads into the summer break with a 12-point buffer over @RandoEFC. Back to back strong weekends from @nudge mean she is just 5 points away from challenging for the top three positions. @MUFC goes level with @DeadLinesman for 6th/7th place while @Coma undoes some of the damage of missing Hungary with this weekend's top score. In the Constructors' standings, Aston Martin were comfortably this week's highest scorers thanks to @Coma's 15 point haul, and this brings them back into contention for the title. We also have a change of lead, as McLaren's poor week was exploited by Red Bull, putting @Tommy and @nudge back ahead by a single point. Ferrari remain in touch with the rest of the pack.

Results - Hungarian Grand Prix Double update incoming. Qualifying in Hungary saw everyone pick up 5 points for Lando Norris' pole position, with the exception of @Coma, who didn't predict this weekend, and @OrangeKhrush, who gambled on George Russell, only for the Mercedes driver to be eliminated in Q1. Race day saw a clean sweep of predictions for Lando Norris to win (with Verstappen excluded). Everyone therefore picks up 2 points for his 2nd place. Nobody predicted a victory for Oscar Piastri, but @MUFC, @Tommy and @Whiskey pick up 2 points each for putting him in their top three. @Stan, @nudge and @DeadLinesman were the only ones to hit any 5 pointer here, putting Hamilton correctly in 3rd place. @OrangeKhrush also grabs a couple of extra points for placing Hamilton in his top three but in the wrong position. Onto the random driver, Fernando Alonso, and the 5 points here go to @nudge, @Whiskey and @DeadLinesman who nailed his finishing position of 11th. It wasn't the best bonus question I've ever come up with this week. Most people plumped for Sainz to beat Leclerc of the options available, with @Whiskey going a different way with Kevin Magnussen. Neither of these drivers beat their team-mates in the race so no points were awarded here. Here's how the standings looked after Hungary: @Stan extends his lead at the top as the only one of the front-runners to hit double figures this weekend. His 11 point gap over @RandoEFC is the largest we've seen this season. @OrangeKhrush loses more ground after his worst weekend of the season and is now joint 3rd with @Tommy. @nudge and @DeadLinesman were the joint top scorers this weekend and now have some of the previous front runners in their sights. @The Palace Fan loses two places in the standings while @Whiskey matches his best score of the season. Mclaren and Red Bull continue to pull away in the Constructors' standings as both teams his the mid-twenties again. Aston Martin score just 7 points this weekend, 3 of those coming as insurance after @Coma didn't predict. Ferrari deserve credit this weekend for being the joint-highest scorers and still have a realistic chance of finishing off the bottom of the table.

Shock horror. Who's said that?

This is true but it's also not that difficult to find out what's true and what isn't if you want to.

It would be amazing to see Murray win a medal of any colour to finish his career after the torture he's put himself through for the past 6-7 years for basically no reward. They're into the last eight, one more win would put them in the last four which gives you more of a chance of getting a medal than not. It's really not impossible now.

I didn't even clue myself up on that police incident because I saw something about people with brown skin and the police being involved and I just knew the detail of it and people's reactions would disgust me. The way those people are conducting themselves in a grieving town is an absolute disgrace. I bet you can count on one hand how many of them are actually from Southport. The rest of them are the same rent-a-mob thugs who descend upon London to "defend Churchill's statue" or whatever other reason they can come up with a couple of times a year. Any of those who can be identified from the footage should be chucked in jail for 10 years. And if they can track down any of the people who started the rumour about the offender being a channel migrant to rile people up then they should be doing 20. Unfortunately it's probably the Russian nerds running bot accounts to destabilise and divide our society even more. God I fucking hate the state of the UK (and much of the western world). We live in a golden age of information and yet this many people have ended up genuinely thinking that Muslims and brown people are a threat to them.