Red-Robbo

They did rather lose their (collective) heads in the last 10 minutes. I gotta say, I don't think the long break helped though. Unfocused things.

Lots of colds and chills going around at the minute. Perhaps he just thought he didn't have 90 minutes in him because he was a bit under the weather? Or maybe just a bit of muscle tightness from training. He did fine when he came in. Had the pace to get back when required that Atkinson lacked. I think it's fair enough that players warn the manager when they feel they aren't 100% fit.

More than one projectile was thrown and I'm prepared to bet that some of the throwers were not 10 years old. What did it achieve - apart from making us look a bit sub-normal - nothing. Long stoppage which was not reflected in the time added on thereby robbing us of time we needed to try to get back in the game. An incoming fine on City which will mean the club has less money. It wasn't big or clever. It was, dare I say it, Gas type small-time wankinesse.

I can't recall him winning a single set piece kick up field. Always out jumped. When he has no defender near him, he can connect with high balls. So can I!

One of them must've been Kalas's thunderbolt carefully aimed at the bloke sat about one-third of the way up in the Atyeo.

A washing machine can out jump Martin and he is one of our most wasteful forward players with his "clever" flicks on - which often go nowhere near where any red-shirted player could reach. Not our worst player today,but one of the reasons we do not capitalise when we are in possession.

Yate Town? Roman Glass St George? BMF? A whole world of non-league could await your kids. With a chance for a pint on the terraces for you and new and colourful swear words to be picked up from the pitch for them.

She didn't fancy the vegan pasties at the New Lawn then, H? Welcome back. I'll be there. Omicron seems at its highest in London and Scotland. Mainly Delta still in the West Country, and I've been facing that down for the entirety of this season to date, including when Bristol had a higher infection rate than it does now. Judging by the likely crowd, it doesn't sound like social distancing is going to be a problem.

The SA Health Ministry say they cannot say with certainty how many deaths have been caused by which variant. Two things are important though. We know most South African infections are now Omicron and we know that 132 people who died in South Africa from Covid this week; we know there is a rise in hospitalisations in South Africa with more than 800 people currently requiring oxygen (500+ up from the figure a month ago). It is naïve in the extreme to assert that this strain will not kill anyone. It almost certainly has done already and as we get further away from Nov 25th (when the variant was first discovered) we will see more. HOWEVER, it does appear to be more mild, which is why I agree with your basic assertion. Do you always try to pick arguments with people agreeing with you? Strange man.

That's a study of those who've been vaccinated with the J&J vaccine. 74% of South Africans haven't been vaccinated. As virtually all South African infections are now Omicron, it's fair to say, that most of the 134 people who've died in the last week there from Covid will have been Omicron variant deaths. I'm not trying to play down the good news that the study you quote found vaccines eliminated death risk, or that it looks almost certain that Omicron has a lower Case Mortality Rate than Delta. This is one of the reasons I feel we shouldn't be panicked into abandoning football, although, to slow the rate of this things inevitable spread, taking precautions is wise and those particularly vulnerable should avoid these high risk events.

It makes no odds, the second part of his post holds true. It is too early for any significant numbers of deaths to have occurred due to Omicron. Deaths WILL occur from it. In South Africa, virtually all Covid cases are now Omicron and they are having deaths. That said, I'm with the weigh up the risks and do as thou wilt faction voting for the first option.

I liked him. Proper "country" humour. Apart from the accent, it was much like listening to my late father-in-law spin some of his funny anecdotes.

I'll never get a scrumpy here. That line is the highpoint of the song, really.

I'm not sure you grasped my point which was that it IS possible to increase health spending without clobbering low-income taxpayers as you suggest. Closing the plethora of tax loopholes from phony non-dom status to phony charitable trusts to dodgy licencing deals etc etc etc would achieve this. See Zucman, Stiglitz, Piketty, Advani et al It simply is not true that you cannot tax the wealth of rich individuals or the income of multinational corporations. It requires the will, a will that isn't possessed in this country. And who could be surprised, with a Cabinet full of those getting fat in the tax avoidance business. All companies seek to minimise their taxation exposure. Mine does. But it's to do with acceptable levels of such and fairness. We've gone right off the point of this thread, so if you want to continue a discussion on taxation policy I suggest we take it onto the already running thread in the Politics Sub-forum. One point I do want to make is the US has almost the world's highest public health spend (Japan and some Gulf states are higher) precisely because their system is entirely run-for-profit and overwhelmingly in private hands, with no large purchasing superstructure like the NHS. To run the limited public health programmes that the US government does, Washington has to pay vastly more for doctors, vastly more for equipment, vastly more for hospital bed space and colossally more for medicines. It is one of the reason's why the US has the highest healthcare spend as a percentage of GDP - 50% higher than Germany, the next highest spend in the OECD. Yet outcomes in the US are not the best. Colombia, Peru, Turkey, Ecuador, Poland, Greece, Costa Rica, the Maldives and Croatia are among the countries with higher life expectancy than the US (as are we of course) and they also perform badly on other performance indicators. Speaking as someone who has a close interaction with US health system -and at one point worked within it - I don't think anyone in the UK would ask to see that model implemented, no matter how clean and shiny the hospitals there are.

Kind of how we got onto this subject. It's a rather unoriginal and tedious chant. In the case of Bristol, inaccurate as well. Another one that makes me laugh is "Is this a library?" sung by loads of blokes who have not only never been in a library but probably have not picked up a book since school.

I think a case could be made for Barnsley. I had to stop there once because my car had broken down and it was a mix of closed betting shops, derelict industrial estates and grim local versions of Cash Converters. Bits of grit were blowing down the street in a sort of post-industrial sandstorm, and I saw a bloke wearing an old vest swigging from a bottle of Bells.

Might run a poll when I have time. What's the biggest shithole in the Championship? Luton; Blackburn; Stoke; Coventry; West Bromwich; Peterborough; Barnsley; Middlesbrough; Hull; Bermondsey; Blackpool... some very strong contenders....

Must've gone against his every instinct those team orders, but he's staying there, so he did what he had to do.

A very fair summation. I'm a McLaren fan and have been for yonks. Now with Lando driving, I have a local boy (and alleged City fan) to cheer. As for other drivers, I've always had an admiration for Checo Perez. Yes, a bull in a china shop technique at times, but what he's achieved from a humble background and a nation not traditionally associated with F1 is amazing. There's always been aspects of FIA and F1 in general that are uncomfortable and have a whiff of corruption about them. But I guess you can say the same about Fifa and football. Doesn't stop me watching that.

Carrie will put on some background music to convey the necessary gravitas:

I'm actually not conflating wealth (which may be held overseas) with income, but corporations and UK-based multi-millionaire and billionaires make a lot of income on UK-based transactions. The UK generates a lot of cash. I generate and derive cash from UK-based commercial activity; Richard Branson derives even more. This income is reachable and calculatable and much of it, in the case of Branson or Apple or Amazon or whoever, is currently untaxed because of arrangements in British overseas territories that HM Government is quite happy to continue. It is just rubbish to conclude no more money can be raised from super-profits made within the UK and the cost of developing the NHS into a fit-for-purpose system has to by necessity fall disproportionately on the average Joe. You need only to have experienced the state health services in numerous northern European countries - or even just across La Manche - to conclude that a better-funded health system needn't financially cripple the inhabitants.

I've got to be honest, I've driven through it and been across the five towns on a coach, but never felt the need to stop and explore. It looked like Dresden in 1945, with added shellsuits.

13th chart down in this stat-fest gives you that number. At the end of November, we were 1,100 deaths a day above the average for the five years before the Pandemic. Worth noting that some months in spring/summer 2021 were actually below average death rates, so that shows how these infection spikes really affect things. https://data.spectator.co.uk/category/national

Maybe it depends on where he was living at the time? He's just outside Brighton now, so perhaps he has Albion as his non-city choice.

The irony of coming from places like Blackburn or Stoke and the saying 'Bristol's a shithole' is gargantuan. If Bristol really is a shithole, that would make Stoke a major sewage works with countless tonnes of foetid crap swilling about.