RandoEFC

An idiotic dinosaur defending an idiot and a dinosaur.

Yeah the thing is they're polling like shit in those constituencies though. There was an in-depth "Red Wall" poll over the weekend. People largely think Boris Johnson is a liar now and Brexit just doesn't register as a priority. They also did some hypothetical polling of which way they'd vote at the next election depending on the Conservative leader. Under Johnson, Labour are projected to win back 45 of the 48 seats they lost in 2019 and under every other leader apart from Sunak, who was projected to a bit better than Johnson, the Tories are polling even worse. It's a shame there isn't an election tomorrow because the Tories certainly wouldn't get a majority and Labour might even get one themselves without a coalition. Just got to hope this shit sticks in the long-term and Starmer makes a decent case when the next election comes. The Tories are in a lose-lose at the moment though. Johnson has shot his bolt and it looks impossible for him to chart a path to recovery, and they don't have an obvious replacement who is anything more than just palatable in Sunak, who's economic policies are likely to go down very poorly in the seats they need to keep. We'll see anyway. Regardless of what it means electorally, I'll enjoy the retribution of Johnson having to go down in history as having an even shorter stint as PM than Theresa May after spending a lifetime lying and cheating his way through with that one goal in mind. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

Christ it's like a morgue around here. The defeatism is off the scale! Gone from believing there was a genuine chance of a Corbynite revolution to thinking Boris Johnson going down isn't worth celebrating because everything is just shit. Each to their own, I'll be having myself a glass of wine or two when he's no longer Prime Minister.

Iwobi was Moshiri's signing as well. Assume there was some super agent involvement. This was within 12 months of Marcel Brands being signed and the same summer his importance was raised by his appointment to the actual board. Brands didn't want Zaha or Iwobi but Moshiri wanted to make a big money statement signing and ended up with his second choice. Not long after, Moshiri overruled Brands, who wanted to give Silva a bit longer, to sack the manager, this after Moshiri was so enamoured with him that he got us in hot water legally for pursuing him as Watford manager. Brands also didn't want Ancelotti as the replacement because it flew completely in the face of what he'd been employed to do as Director of Football, Moshiri overruled him on that too. He is a maniac.

If people still think that there isn't a difference between Johnson and any other Tory then I just don't think you've been observing the same Johnson that I have. I despise the politics of the Tory Party as much as anyone but no other government in my lifetime have sunk to the levels of dishonesty and depravity as this administration has (in an incredibly short period of time too). Cameron was a horrific PM who brought us austerity and then the referendum. Probably had the most odious and damaging policies of any of them but at least that's the platform on which he campaigned and at least he resigned after losing the EU vote. If that was Johnson in the same position then he would have just tried to ride it out. May was an absolute waste of time and you needn't say anything more about her than "Windrush". Still, she was working to the same conditions as Johnson when it came to signing a Brexit deal and she refused to implement a border between Northern Ireland and Britain. Johnson comes along and signs off on that with one hand while he's writing a tweet with his other hand announcing how he's successfully signed a deal to Get Brexit Done! without having to implement a border in the Irish Sea. Let's not forget all of the racial slurs, homophobia, sexism, spending of public money on his affair with Arcuri, etc. etc. Finally, there's nobody in the Tory party who can emulate the bizarre electoral success that Johnson has delivered. Sunak is the only one who has a bit of a foundation of popularity but when it comes to writing a manifesto, he leans toward Camerony austere economics and that's where his power base comes from in the party. He won't be able to maintain his authority as leader without an old-fashioned conservative plan for the economy but it's a plan that the electorate has absolutely no appetite for anymore. Never count out the Tories with the might of the British print media backing them up. Things might change and Keir Starmer is no nailed on winner but the way things are set right now, they've got a lot of trouble ahead with or without Johnson in charge. All polling shows that the last few months have done broad damage to their standing and not just his individually. There's a genuine chance coming up to get them out of power for the first time in a horrifically long time and while what gets posted on here isn't going to make any difference, if too many people keep thinking and saying that the rest of them are all as bad as Johnson then the political standards in this country are going to keep getting worse.

Their politics might be no better but at least we won't have to be embarrassed every time we switch the news on that a man who can barely dress himself is the best a country of 70 million people can muster for a leader.

"If Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister by the end of the week, I'd be very surprised." I'm not sure it quite works like that but I'll be getting the popcorn in. Hopefully he fights on and extends the long, slow death of his disgraceful premiership, doing as much electoral damage to the Tories as possible in the process.

We are so unbelievably fucked. Moshiri has learned absolutely nothing and I'm again left asking the question of how a man who has had as much success in the business world doesn't see a problem with interviewing a manager with that manager's actual fucking agent sat at his right hand. A bunch of morons on Twitter have dug out enough information on this Kia character in the last 48 hours and everywhere his name appears, disaster follows. QPR, 1860 Munchen, Corinthians. Does this great business mind of ours do no due diligence? No research into the track record of the people he associates himself with? Moshiri must be unbelievably well connected in his other business ventures because fuck me, I wouldn't trust him to hold my drink for me while I went for a piss for fear of ending up roofied. Our club has been hijacked by an absolute lunatic. Kenwright is culpable for it too having turned down multiple offers to buy the club because he was "waiting for the right one for Everton". In other words, he was waiting for someone who would buy the club but let him stay on as chairman, and he managed to find the one guy in the world rich enough to buy a football club yet incompetent enough to make Bill look like a voice of reason in comparison.

Rumours Vitor Pereira has been offered the job. More reliable sources suggest Lampard will have a second interview this week and an initial interview for Rooney. It's Moshiri though so he could have sacked that off in the last half hour and offered the job to Pereira. Pereira was linked back in 2013 when he'd just won the title with Porto. Since then he's bounced around minor Eastern European leagues with a bit of China and a bit of contributing to 1860 Munich's relegation and downfall. Great. Sounds like another link through that super agent Kia Goorabchan or whatever he's called. I hadn't heard of him a week ago but he seems to have suddenly become a self-appointed Director of Football. He seems to have been a part of Benitez' appointment and he engineered the El Ghazi deal last week despite the manager saying no to the player three times. Yesterday he watched the game from the directors box. I've since learned that he was synonymous with QPR's meltdown under Tony Fernandes and was booted away from Arsenal after having too much influence there, pushing the David Luiz signing amongst other stuff. Bottom line, the bloke is a parasite on football clubs pushing any deals he can so that he can get his fee, taking advantage of football clubs and owners like Moshiri who are dumb and directionless enough to say yes to any deal that they can be conned into rather than thinking about whether it fits with the club's philosophy or plan. Not the sort of bloke you want anywhere near the directors box to say the least. I fear that we are teetering on the brink of some real dark ages for the club here and Moshiri is about to do something really fucking stupid, one way or another. Final nails about to get hammered into the coffin. Hope I'm wrong.

The Boris superfans are out in force trying to stamp it out. Mainly seems to be "she was invited to use the internal complaints process and she didn't" when she said in her original statement that she was threatened with her career being ruined by people above her if she didn't let it go.

Wife beater.

I swear every time I pick up my phone the government have managed to get into yet another self-inflicted scandal. Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani made a claim earlier tonight that one of the party whips told her she was sacked from her minor ministerial role because her being a Muslim woman made some of the other MPs in the party uncomfortable or something. Chief whip Mark Spencer then identified himself as the whip in question simultaneously denying the accusation (if you didn't say it, how do you know she was referring to you!?). He then posted this thread on Twitter and promptly deleted it. This lot are so wrapped up in their network of psychodrama that they have no time and energy left to do anything but cling on to power. Forget about governing the country. Whole lot need bombing out. Every day that passes is a day too many.

I don't want to come across like a vaccine zealot, and I don't deny the risks they pose to some people. I'm just not having the false equivalence we keep seeing, 'more harm than good', baseless suggestions that any high profile person having a health problem or 'friend of a friend' anecdote is 'the vaccine strikes again' or any of that tripe. It actually prevents you from having a good faith discussion about the health risks if some people can't just stick to using real, tangible evidence instead of speculating on random incidents to make it seem like it supports their agenda.

There's a lot more evidence of Long Covid causing people long term health complications than the vaccines. Vastly more. What strikes me is how these mad people can simultaneously hold anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown positions. If you were actually successful in convincing people en masse not to take the vaccine, the health service would be getting hammered by a lot more seriously ill Covid patients and we probably would have had to increase the amount of restrictions through the winter again, and the same people that caused it by endorsing the anti-vax movement, would have been cry-arsing the loudest about the loss of their freedoms. Vaccine take up along with a milder variant has us in sight of the other side of this thing (touch wood). If you don't want to have it and want to selectively pedal "I heard this, that and the other" scare stories then by all means, crack on. But if the rest of us had all refused the vaccines like the nutty minority, we'd still be in a cycle of locking down every few months to shield the NHS, the waiting lists for cancer care and just about every other treatment would be stacking up even further, our kids would continue to see their education and childhood ripped to shreds. Etc. Etc. I believe it is a personal choice to take the vaccine. Nobody should have it forced upon them, even healthcare workers, and hopefully as the pandemic recedes, the pressure to get vaccinated goes with it to some extent. But there is no vaccine debate anymore. They have done us a lot more good than they've done us harm. This is now a fact, not an opinion, and we shouldn't be scared to say it.

Vaccines haven't done me or anyone I know any harm. Haven't come down with any more colds or flu than usual or suffered any side effects. No heart problems, hair loss, nobody I know has had their willy fall off. To be fair they might not have told me if they had. The benefits are pretty good though, a highly vaccinated population allowing for us to live our normal lives, freely see family and friends, play football, watch football with full stadiums again, keep schools open so I can do my job normally again, all without risking overwhelmed hospitals and loads of people dying. More harm than good though yeah.

Forget about the name and just think that we're interviewing a manager with this CV: Grief.

Exactly. My Dad is in his 60s and has diabetes. He's otherwise fit and healthy and probably has another 20 years in him. If Covid had got him it would have been "underlying health conditions". I couldn't care less what Farage has to say and what his latest grift is as he attempts to claw back a sliver of relevance.

Facts are defined by reliable sources. Anyone can say anything and call it a fact. Farage has a track record of saying many things, lots of opinions, plenty of falsehoods, and occasionally but rarely facts. I've not watched the video to be honest because even if what he says is evidently true, there's a very good chance that it isn't based on his track record making it a waste of my time. I'm sure if it's important and factual I'll hear the same thing from plenty of credible sources over the coming weeks.

Most of Zemmour's vote share has come from a fall in Le Pen's support. All he's really done is split the right-wing vote. A lot of right-wing commentators have touted him as a guy who's inspiring people to turn to their politics. He isn't. Macron's polling levels are largely unchanged and Le Pen's have divebombed. The polls mid-2021 had Le Pen and Macron neck and neck at around 25% each. Most recent data shows Macron still at 25%, Le Pen 17%, Zemmour 13%. There's a shift there but barely commentworthy.

Farage

Cannavaro hilarious.

Tory backbencher William Wragg has accused the government and Number 10's special advisors of blackmailing rebels to support the Prime Minister by threatening to withdraw funding from their constituencies. Wragg has suggested those on the receiving end should go to the police to report it. Astonishing on several levels really. Wragg can shove it up his backside because none of these Tory backbenchers had a problem with the government using "vote for a Conservative MP and we'll give your constituency more funding" as a campaigning strategy which was raised around the time of the Hartlepool by-election and is absolute gutter politics. According to Wragg and his friends, though, blackmailing the electorate to get them to vote Tory is fine but dare to blackmail a Tory MP and we'll report you to the police. I absolutely despise this lot. I know increasing funding in constituencies your party needs to win in order to stay in power isn't new or exclusive to the Conservatives, but the way they've gone about it is absolutely vile. Conservative government refuses to fund Labour-voting constituencies for a decade, then campaigns on a platform of "look how your Labour MP has let you down and taken you for granted" when said constituencies start rotting at the edges, go on to win the constituencies that they've actively and cynically neglected for years while peddling pure guff about "levelling up". No interest in the betterment of this country or its population at all, just pure power-grabbing. While it's good that Wragg has had a pop at the government in that it damages Johnson, it would be nice if one day the political discourse in this country taken up by Tory in-fighting could drop below 90%. Wragg will now stand up and claimed to be an "old-fashioned Conservative with principles" or something like that when all he's actually doing is saying "blackmail the electorate to keep us in power all you want but I absolutely draw the line when it comes to you threatening my mates on the back benches!" Shithouses.

Murray and Raducanu both eliminated, sucks from the British perspective. Dan Evans at least progresses to R3 with a walkover win against Rinderknech. Medvedev beat Nick Kyrgios in four sets in what was the match-up of the day. Tsitsipas and Rublev also through. Seeded players Dimitrov and Schwartzman knocked out. A few upsets on the women's side. 3rd seed Garbine Muguruza knocked out in straight sets along with 6th seed Ana Kontaveit and 12th seed Rybakina.

The Conservative MP for Bury South has now defected and joined the Labour Party. To get the serious part out of the way, this is the move of an opportunist who clearly cares more about keeping his seat than the values that drove him into politics on whichever side of the aisle that happens to be, and isn't really fair on, for example, the Labour candidate who stood in Bury South at the last election, or the constituents who voted for a Conservative candidate. Then again, both parties have changed since then and if voters can change their minds and values, there's no reason why MPs can't. I still think you should face a by-election under those circumstances though at the very least. Still, none of my reservations are going to stop me laughing my tits off at one of Johnson's MPs defecting directly to the Labour Party.

Good. Night. Vienna.