RandoEFC

Decent teaser, was that Matt Smith? It looks good. I don't know what their plans are but there's a LOT of content from GRRM's own spin-off books and stuff so if the series is popular it could have legs for a few series if they want it to.

Embarrassing that these people can become elected officials in this country, let alone ministers, and then when they get caught lying live on television have the gall to criticise the person who pointed it out, accuse them of making a political point and try to squirm out of it by trying to tell the British people watching it that they aren't interested in it. Absolutely no shame. But this is the play book that's been getting them by. It's just embarrassing that other countries can look at us and see that those are our elected officials.

Not if you live away from the rest of your family members. Sweet, sweet freedom.

Just seen this. I haven't absolutely hated the sprint format and I can accept that it was worth a try. I just don't think it offers enough to the weekend to be worth tearing up all of the tradition behind regular qualifying and a single-race F1 weekend. Given the reception to the sprint races, especially at Monza after the novelty of it being the first one wore off, I can only ask - is there a sport more tone-deaf than F1 when it comes to the feedback of their genuine fans? Their argument that it was a success is based on how many 'social media engagements' they had on sprint race weekends. Most of the drivers didn't like it and long term fans of the sport were lukewarm on it at best. I don't mind them having stuff like Drive to Survive to appeal to the average casual fan because I don't have to watch it if I don't want to. The thing that has set F1 apart as the elite motorsport though is that it's largely stayed pure in terms of the competition whereas others have nonsense like push-to-pass or reverse grids or three races on a weekend. F1 has always minimised the gimmicks and still retained its status and popularity. DRS put a dent in that and the sprint race format is another one.

I disagree with a lot of what Starmer's done, especially since Labour lost Hartlepool and he changed his entire team and brought Mandelson on board. However, like I was saying last week, what those of us who aren't Johnson fans need to do is remember just how bad he is. I don't like that he did an op-ed in The S*n over the weekend and there are plenty of socialist-Corbynite types calling him a Tory and saying he's lost Liverpool and stuff, a mixture of people I follow due to politics and those in Everton-type circles that occasionally comment on it. Personally, if whatever Starmer (or, hypothetically, Corbyn or Burnham or basically anyone to the left of the current government) does results in getting Boris Johnson and co out of Downing Street, then I'm sad to say that I'd forgive them not anything, but an awful lot more than I'd want to. On one hand, you're compromising on your principles by saying that but trying to play the game of principles when a man like him is the Prime Minister is folly.

Confirmation of the league table one round into this season's competition:

How best to make a difference, spend what amounts to multiple year's worth of savings to an average British worker to insulate one home, or campaign to get the government to invest money in insulating millions of them? As much as I take issue with the form of protest not convincing the majority of the British public to get behind them, here we are discussing it now. Two weeks ago I didn't even realise how much of a difference insulating homes would make to emissions, here we are discussing it and now I've learned how much it would cost an average home as well. I might be in a minority of less than 1% and I might be able to do just about fuck all about it because I like 99% of the country don't have £20,000 lying around, but as much as I think the Insulate Britain guy is a bit of an embarrassment and their protest was done badly, it's raised my awareness of the situation so on some level, we have to concede that's a small success for them.

If your response to a campaigner for a cause you largely agree with is to call them a hypocrite because you can point out one or two things that they aren't doing in their personal lives to contribute to said cause even though they alone make a negligible difference, then you are a part of the problem. It's like when all those angry, balding 50 year old men saw a picture of Greta Thunberg on a plane once and decided that was sufficient evidence to invalidate everything she's ever said or campaigned for. Insulating homes in Britain would make a large, positive difference. If it was cheap to do, the government would probably just do it, even the Tories. It's not an unreasonable demand from that campaign group. However, as others have said, with both these guys and Extinction Rebellion, their methods are just the absolute worst way to get the public behind them. ER have some particularly extreme idiots in their group who want to "bring down capitalism, man" and stuff like that but my understanding is that they're an environmentalist group who want to slow down climate change. The public broadly agree with taking action to prevent climate change yet Extinction Rebellion have a net -60 or so approval rating with the public because of their blocking of roads and preventing people from going about their lives. It might seem necessary but it's counter productive to their cause. The Insulate Britain guy is a moron as well. He was on GMB last week and he stormed off stage after being asked simple questions and looked to be one bad sandwich order away from a mental breakdown. If you want to convince people to get on your side then you can't be picking people like that to rally behind as the face of your movement. The problem is with these groups is that they all get together in this echo chamber, wind each other up about how much the world is against them, end up radicalising themselves and completely losing touch with the people they need to convince to support them before they go and make their case to the public. The Greenpeace Downing Street advert (look it up) from a couple of months ago was a good example of how to go about these things. It was powerful without disrupting anyone's day to day life so when it got them trending on social media platforms people saw the British government portrayed in a negative light for not taking enough action rather than the campaigners themselves.

Literally just a duplicate Bahrain that looks a bit worse. Disappointing given some of the other circuits we don't get. Not to mention the human rights issue that dog the Middle East and lead to these blatant attempts at sports-washing. Still, we've seen from Russia this weekend that even the worst tracks can host a good race if the racing gods see fit.

I wasn't that enthusiastic about watching this last season and almost didn't bother last night when I realised I couldn't get Fox on Sky anymore, but I put it on Disney+ and ended up really enjoying it and binging 5 of the 6 episodes that have come out so far. The storylines in this final season feel quite compelling so far, I just wish they didn't always spend full episodes on one storyline because you get a cliffhanger and then you don't go back to those characters for the next 2 episodes which is annoying and is probably why I was thinking of binging this so I didn't get excited about something happening to say Daryl and then not be arsed by the time I next see him 3 weeks later. Still, I find TWD is a bit over-criticised because it did have a dip, but they haven't received much credit for pulling it back together reasonably well post-Andrew Lincoln.

Yeah it's more that they don't have enough drivers to deliver the fuel to the garages. The issue is that some drivers have left the UK and gone to the EU, or drivers that worked across the whole EU including the UK can no longer enter the UK with freedom of movement. But aside from that, Covid has stopped a bunch of people getting their HGV licence and all the other stuff Harvey mentioned earlier.

I'm not listening to Maajid Nawaz because he chats mostly shit between the occasional salient points he makes. I don't get why those of us who have had the consequences of Brexit inflicted upon us despite voting against it are being the bad guys or counter-productive when we point it out. It's not about undo-ing Brexit, it's about moving the people around us to a place where they actually listen when experts say "if we do this, then these things will happen" instead of listening to rent-a-quote backbench MPs, be they Conservatives or from another party. Those who voted or supported Leave weren't shy with their "I told you so"s when we sorted our vaccine procurement before the EU even though it wasn't as simple as us being able to do it because we left. Still, two wrongs don't make a right and I'd rather we had a debate faced on the full factual situation which goes beyond Brexit being the cause of the shortages.

The Tories are the experts at telling us that it's our own fault for not listening when they told us not to panic-buy, and the British public are the experts at letting them do it because we'd rather point at our neighbours and blame it on them to justify our own "every man for himself" approach towards making sure we have what we need ourselves. Actually those people wanting to blame it all on Brexit when it isn't all Brexit are not being particularly helpful because they're playing the role of bitter, salty Remainers which is perfect for the Daily Express and GB News. Brexit hasn't helped though and one of the HGV driver unions in Europe has openly scoffed at the solution put forward of offering fixed-term visas to a certain number of European drivers that end on the 24th of December. Who'd have thought that "do our Christmas deliveries for us but then clear off before the day please" isn't an appealing message to potential overseas employees who already have their opinions of the UK coloured by five years of anti-immigrant and anti-European rhetoric and the end of freedom of movement. It is worth pointing out to this government and pro-Brexiters in general that you can't ask people not to blame Brexit when the government's top solution is to temporarily reverse the headliner Brexit policy of ending Freedom of Movement. It's not broadly acknowledged in the UK but many Europeans now see us as quite a nasty country and much of the European media openly enjoys our post-Brexit mishaps. We can feel sorry for ourselves but eventually we'll have to accept that we'll reap what we have sown.

Hearing nothing but bad news and divisions coming out of the Labour conference. Starmer and his team pushing for unnecessary further power grabs while the unelectable far left of the party continue to undermine the leadership and convince themselves there's a hope in hell that they'll ever get close to the power they need to help the people in the country they claim to want to help while calling each other "comrade" on stage. I'm sick of all of them. The country desperately needs someone to get Boris Johnson and the Tories out of power. It shouldn't even actually be difficult after all the calamity they've presided over and there's two more years of Brexit fallout down the tracks before the next election. It should be a walk in the park. Yet the Labour "Centre" are too paranoid about being associated with Corbyn in any way or being dubbed Marxists to offer any sort of progressive or coherent vision (and several of his policies remain actually quite popular) while the aggrieved Labour "Left" have spent the last 18 months barely hiding their desire to see Starmer fail because it makes the 80-seat drubbing their holy Messiah took look less embarrassing. And that's not to say the Labour centrists were any better when the man they didn't want was in charge. Wake up and smell the coffee. The current prime minister, the people around him and the Brexit chaos that comes as a part of the package need to be cleared out. Get together, find a compromise, clear them out and when you have the power to actually help people, decide how to do it. As long as Boris Johnson is in Downing Street, neither wing of the Labour Party has any business pretending they're any less bad than the other.

I am a bit jealous that the German electoral system forces the larger political parties to always have an open mind to working with each other while the far left and far right parties can never claim that they aren't fairly represented because they are supported by such clear minorities. There's always the fraud arguments I guess.

German election day. What are we saying @Tommy and friends?

very good

Should have put a tenner on it but still well played. I'm glad it's no calendar slam for Novak. Nothing against him really but nobody should dominate that easily in a sport like this.

Can only he a good thing, I would think.

She's just broken new ground in such an absurd number of ways, first qualifier to win a major, not dropping a single set or even needing a tie break since the first round of qualifying, ranked 150 in the world, being 18 and just doing her A levels, etc, etc, that it almost feels insignificant that she's the first British woman to win a grand slam since Sue Barker won the French, and Sue Barker's so old I had to be told she was a tennis player, not just always a commentator.

Medical time out for Emma at 5-3 30-40. Not sure what the rules are here because of the visible bleeding on her knee but horrid timing for both players.

This is such a good match.

Tennis commentary is literally the worst commentary. Just wall to wall generic and obvious statements.

There's always going to be some but they're no more than tedious bores arguing about what nationality is. It ultimately doesn't matter. You're either happy to see someone reach the pinnacle of their sport thanks to the opportunities and support they received in our country, and be proud of that, or you aren't.