Frank Dacey

Apparently 50,000 Chelsea fans signed a petition to get Anthony Taylor tken off this game after he sent James off against us.

I've no real evidence for the 1st July thing, just a feeling that the optimism before the attack; the orders to walk across no man's land, the timing of the attack at 07.30 must have led to a major sense of let down and a questioning of the officer class and possibly within the officer class itself. I've already mentioned Attlee who served in Gallipoli and France but Harold MacMilllan was a notably radical Tory in the inter-war years and Oswald Mosley was a left-wing Labour Minister before veering off to Fascism. As Waitak points out very correctly the sons of the ruling classes were directly in the firing line. I've never seen them but I believe the war memorials in the great public schools are very moving. Of course the 20s and 30s were desperate times and people in 45 were determined not to go back there, yet it's an odd thing that in the 20s and 30s themselves elections overwhelmingly returned Conservative, or Conservative dominated governments.

The British people generally did stand up well to enemy bombing in the war, as did the Germans, under a far heavier weight of attack than was visited on this country, and as did the Soviet people who endured unimaginable privations in the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad. So it's not just a British thing, it's a human thing to close ranks in the face of the enemy. My Mum lived through the Blitz; she worked at British American Tobacco, down near the docks, and I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. Perhaps she got through it because it wasn't as bad as it might have been. An earlier post mentioned 70,000 civilian casualties during the war (from all causes, not just enemy action) but the pre-war estimates (I suppose we'd say modelling today) were for 600,000 deaths in 6 months of German bombing. It's why the government ordered a million coffins to be prepared for the outbreak of war, but had no real plans to rebuild damaged housing because they thought the people dehoused would be dead. So, surviving when you didn't expect to may have enabled people to cope. But that generation were pretty stoical; they knew life could be nasty brutish and short. My Mum as a young girl had lost her Mum and her teenage sister to TB, then a killer disase, for which the only treatment was really kill or cure. I can't imagine her experience was unique. Someone earlier mentioned mistrust of the ruling class. I've always thought this began with the unmitigated diaster of the Ist Day of the Somme back in 1916. It still didn't stop the British people putting their trust in 1945 in a public schoolboy and former army officer, and they were right to do so.

Police officers presumably are vetted so what form did that take with Couzens. Also the police ignored clear complaints that Couzens had exposed himself hours before before he carried out the murder. Had they acted on this intelligence then he wouldn't have been at liberty to do what he did. The problem for the Met is that this is just the last in long line of mistakes over the last few years, many involving the Commissioner who seems never to take the blame.

Last time I saw him interviewed he looked almost unchanged and sounded really well so this is a shock. Scored a hat-trick in my first game at Anfield. The third member of that we've team lost this year, after the Saint and Tommy Leishmann. I'm sure he'll get a great tribute on Sunday.

I always think with Solskjaer that because he was a boyhood red, he has to come across as an uber-manc to appease the neanderthal elements of their support; i.e. all of them.

Looking forward to this game as, for a few years, I was a season ticket holder at Brentford, choosing to follow the Bees largely on the grounds that they were unlikely ever to play Liverpool! I started watching them the season after they had got promoted from League One. They tried to play decent football and it was great to watch them get promoted to the Championship and consolidate there. The older fans were long-suffering and they must be pinching themselves at what they're seeing now. Good luck to them for the rest of the season, after tomorrow, of course.

Yes it was Binns Road and yes it's all gone now. Bad management ran it into the ground. The model railways were taken over by Triang and renamed Triang-Hornby. Later Triang went bust but the model railways survived as todays Hornby Trains, but they're all made in the Far East now. Original Hornby Dublo trains can sell for high prices today if the're in good condition.

Hornby O gauge, made in Liverpool.

He has played for the Blades and I've heard described by their fans as a Rolls Royce defender, so obviously VVD has rubbed off on him.

Paul Gambaccini laid into Cressida Dick on the BBC today in a magnificently impressive rant. Her record is truly astounding; murder of Jean Charles de Menezes; Operation Midland, Daniel Morgan case and Stephen Lawrence case. How she has not only survived but prospered is a mystery and it emerges today that the plan is to extend her term for two more years.

Not TV for me but radio; the theme from Pick of the Pops as the show played out was the sign that the weekend was over.

Richmond Bridge in Surrey

Jennings, Banks, Shilton.

Described in an article this morning as 'workmanlike'. Given the author was a Spurs fan it didn't seem to have occurred to him that this player has won more in the last couple of years that Tottenham have in the past 30.