Bad kick, yes. As for the result, it might appear to be very unlikely, but I don't think it was particularly unexpected. Yes, Man U are considerably better than Villa... but I just don't see them as one of the top teams in the league, they are not in the same class as Man City or Chelsea. Ronaldo would probably have salvaged the draw in this instance if he took the penalty, I'm just not convinced his overall play makes Man U a better team. If he's judged on goals, he's great, but if he's judged on the full 90 minutes he doesn't offer the complete package.

Subject exists within a maelstrom of interrogative adverbs and pronouns, sometimes repeated. The word 'votes' is thrown in. Suggests both unwillingness and inability to accept the reality of an election outcome.

I did wonder why I often felt tired after posting in P&S. Or even before posting, just contemplating the thought of pulling together lots of evidence and scientific studies to refute the latest "horse dewormer cures Covid!" nonsense.

I think you've nailed it.

I agree with almost everything you've written there.


But to me this part seems a contradiction, and I don't understand how someone could be against a minimum wage but, if there is one, then in favour of it being raised.


Democratic capitalism is the best system we have, but it needs to work for the people rather than for the elite. In order for this to happen, the government must not be enablers of exploitation and crony capitalism, they must instead act as an opposing force (to a carefully calibrated extent, not overwhelmingly so). A right-wing government is largely pointless in this regard.

I would say that most people have constraints on their freedom because they are in effect wage slaves. If for example you have to work say 60 hours a week in a low-paid job just to be able to support your family, then you are not able to pursue education opportunities, or move to a different part of the country where there are better jobs, and it is not surprising that people feel there is no way out. This makes them antagonistic towards the state, increases feelings of disenfranchisement, and enables the rise of populist demagogues such as Trump who prey on people's fears and prejudices in order to further their own ends (it's scarcely believable that someone who actually lives in a tower of gold can harness the support of much of the nation's poor).

The way to empower ordinary people is surely to loosen their shackles. A minimum wage is a first step here, but (and I suspect you will be against this) a UBI seems the ideal solution. The concept is often misunderstood as 'free money', when in fact it's simply a more equitable distribution. I feel that in a society with a UBI, the worst jobs would have to be at least somewhat more appealing in terms of working conditions than they are now. And the concept of a UBI might even appeal to right-wingers, as the establishment of a universal single flat rate payment would enable the removal of state bureaucracy involved in managing the complexities of existing income support.

I think the EFL is very difficult for betting. Like the Chelsea - Villa match last night. If it was a league match, an easy Chelsea win. But an EFL match, you know Chelsea will field a weakened side... and a weakened Chelsea side is still likely to beat Villa, but it's much more uncertain. So hard to predict. Even when you see the line-ups, that's not a huge help, as there might be some good players there who are just using it as match practice to get fit for bigger tournaments, and so aren't performing at 100%.

Yes, I agree completely. The men's side of the US Open I didn't really pay any attention to, it was inevitable that Djokovic would get to the final. Even when he was a set down in a lot of matches, there was never any doubt. Even if he went two sets down, I wouldn't have any doubt that he would reach the final. The only real surprise is that he lost the final, which I think is due largely to the pressure he felt at being on the brink of winning all four slams in the same year.

Of course there were some good matches, and some exciting new players coming through... but when you know that Djokovic will beat everyone he plays, it does take away some of the interest.

I don't think the new incoming big players will be as good as the outgoing ones. It's a very unusual situation to have three players as good as Federer, Nadal and Djokovic all playing at the same time. They each have 20 slams, which is crazy... but imagine the situation if we'd only had one of these players, without the other two - whoever it was would probably have 30 slams at least, likely more.

And it's unlucky for Murray that he was playing at the same time as these three... of none of them had been there, he would likely have won 10 slams instead of 3.

I don't think it's solely the coach. The problems with Barcelona go much deeper than that, and are rooted in money (or lack of it). Koeman was brought in to end the chaos, it wasn't him who started it. But I will certainly agree that his presence has made a bad situation even worse. It's difficult to see how Barca get out of this really. I assume their youth players are very good, and given a bit of experience will be capable of holding their own amongst the stars that Barca do still have. That may be the most likely way out in the medium term.

It doesn't look good. But I think I'd prefer another Monaco to another Belgium. Although at the moment the track looks more like Monaco harbour than Monaco roads.

The forecast says mostly dry for the next couple of days, but then heavy rain on Saturday, easing up around Sunday afternoon. So it might not be raining for the race, but it looks like this might be irrelevant if the whole place is underwater by then anyway... https://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Russia/Sochi-Autodrom/14-Day-Forecast.aspx

The situation at Barca is farcical, and it's difficult to see how they get out of this.
Laporta and Koeman can't work together, but are both trapped. Apparently the terms of his previous contract required a €6m payout to Koeman when it was broken, but Barca didn't pay it and instead built it into his new Barca contract. So now they have to pay him a huge amount of money if they sack him, which they can't afford to do. So Koeman has free rein to do whatever he likes; he is unsackable. But at the same time, the club have no money, so he can't get new players.

But this is a global pandemic, it's not limited to the US. Healthcare in many countries is provided free of charge, from money derived from taxation, which has not increased during the pandemic. I don't know whether hospitals in the US are making money or not, but I can tell you that elsewhere in the world they are extremely stretched and working on very limited budgets.

If Covid was only happening in the US and other nations with private healthcare, and somehow wasn't affecting countries with free healthcare, then you might conceivably have had a point.

But it isn't, and you don't.

This is clearly untrue. They are made up numbers that bear no relation to reality. Large, publicly-available datasets from all around the world, not just from governments, but from all sorts of other institutions, indicate perfectly clearly that vaccination saves lives. Please stop creating threads to mislead people, without providing any evidence. I don't know why you keep doing this.

Obviously if we weren't there, we can't know the full facts... but it doesn't appear to be racist, and it seems like the BLM representative is at fault here.
According to the article, the hostess addressed the three women using a racial slur, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of this, and according to the restaurant owner all of the staff are "people of color".
It seems to have been blown out of proportion somewhat.

The most interesting point here is that the data indicate quite clearly that refusal to take the vaccine is more prevalent amongst black than white people. And of the white people who refuse the vaccine, they are disproportionately from poorer areas.

We might conclude that anti-vaxxer sentiment often stems from distrust of government, which in turn stems from decades of disenfranchisement. If you treat people badly for long enough, and then hold out your hand to help them, it is not surprising that they think you are holding out your hand to beat them instead.

I'd argue that inequality is the inevitable outcome if we are considering pure capitalism. The phrase "what we are currently allowing" only has meaning when there is an opposing force present to allow or forbid certain actions.

So it is certainly not an inevitable outcome if we are considering capitalist democracy. The level of inequality in a capitalist democracy is dependent in large part on the government. Most current governments allow huge inequality.

I'd also add that whilst the people in charge (whether running a company or a government) acting mostly out of self-interest is a problem, we also need to consider that self-interest can be charted with a time axis, and short-termist thinking is a huge and pervasive issue. CEOs will act to increase the share price right now, even if it's at the expense of what happens in 5 years' time, when it could well be someone else running the company. And governments are just as bad, if not worse. The Covid lockdowns in my view were implemented far too late, which exacerbated the economic damage that governments were trying to avoid in the first place by keeping society running as normal. Similar with the "too little, too late" response to the climate crisis.

I imagine the conversation went something like this:

"Please can I buy a coffee?"
"I'm afraid not, you need to have been vaccinated."
"THIS IS JUST LIKE THE HOLOCAUST !!!"

 

Do you think you might be over-reacting a little bit?

Yep. I think the 3-4 matches part is key. The reason he won't be likely to progress to the latter parts of a tournament is not so much that he can't compete against the best, it's more the toll it takes on his body having a succession of long matches in a short space of time. For example, to win a men's slam you need to win seven 5-set matches in a fortnight. Murray might be able to beat a top 10 player in a one-off game, but put him in a situation where he has to win 7x3=21 sets in two weeks, and it wouldn't be possible, even if every opponent was ranked outside the top 50.

If there's one thing that can derail the PSG super-team this season, it's failing to integrate Messi into the team. It may not matter much if they implode in the French league, they have very few challengers there... but they can't afford disharmony when they come up against the top teams in the Champions League.

Given that anti-vaxxers are overwhelmingly Republican, I'm sure we can expect plenty of court cases following the '24 election, when Republicans claim that they lost not because many of their voters died of Covid after refusing the vaccine, but rather because of some sinister Biden plot.

This is really silly. Does anyone genuinely believe this stuff?

If it actually was some nefarious plan, then what is the point of it? Other than for the great secret to be blown wide open due to a ludicrously simplistic schedule of one variant per month, and ending when they run out of letters in the Greek alphabet?  A plan that a child could uncover.

Delta is the predominant variant now, yes? So was was the devilish purpose of Epsilon and Zeta, which were supposedly released some time ago, but after Delta?

The data show quite clearly that vaccination does help against the delta variant. If you contract delta and have been fully vaccinated, chances are you will have much lighter symptoms. Hospital admission and death is vastly more likely if you haven't been vaccinated, than if you have.


It's not really upgrading. Mutations are random, some more transmissible, some less, some giving higher chance of mortality, some less. But obviously the more of the virus there is in the world, the more chance a dangerous variant will arise. This is why if a nation becomes fully vaccinated, it's not 'job done'... the vaccination programme needs to achieve herd immunity everywhere in the world in order to prevent new variants emerging.