Son of L8

Never mind the voting. The FF on the GF in here is the real travesty. Bunch of cunts.

Good chance of downpours tomorrow in London from when play begins to at least the mid-afternoon. The Lankans are still fragile enough batting to lose this, but we'll need to make quick work of them to avoid drawing the game.

Nah, it's nigh on impossible not to get out of that group.

While I agree it's unlikely, let's not underestimate the sheer mediocrity that is Woy Hodgson.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

... and there's the other side of Bairstow's game.

I still have trouble with d. Sorry but I do.

 

Imagine I have a supermarket, and my security guards catch 100 shoplifters in one week, but we let 99 of the offenders go free, and just prosecute 1. And the 1 we prosecute just happens to be the only black shoplifter. Would that not be a racist act?

 

Similarly, to single one country out of the perhaps hundred or more serious human rights offending countries, isn't it significant if that is the only Jewish state?

 

Please, to the usual suspects, don't turn this into the usual shitfest. This is a genuine question and I am open to having my mind changed if you can show me that singling one group of people out for a boycott can be justified.

By that logic, wouldn't you have to call the boycott movement against South African apartheid racist? There were other oppressive, discriminatory states in the world at the time who were not singled out by activists to the extent that the Afrikaner government was, but I've never heard a reasonable, sensible person describe the anti-apartheid movement as anti-Afrikaner racism.

That's a bit glib, though, so putting that question aside -- No, I don't think it's significant at all. If people were boycotting Jewish goods, services, etc., from outside of Israel, that would obviously be significant. But there are all sorts of reasons why Israel would be given more attention than other human rights offenders: the length of the conflict (people have been looking for a just solution for generations now, and logically will move to try out new avenues to effect change when the old ones have failed), the scale and global profile of the injustice (rightly or wrongly, we hear far more about Israel and Palestine than we do about conflicts in Africa for example, which directs people's attentions and efforts), the direct defense and support for the offenses from within our own governments and societies and the extent to which Israel's power and impunity is entwined socially, politically, economically, militarily with our own countries (people get angrier when things are done 'in our name'), the conflict's significance in broader social and political terms (settling the Palestinian question would remove a huge barrier to addressing other major contemporary issues like recruitment to extreme forms of Islam, etc)...

There's all sorts of reasons why people would logically focus on Israel that have nothing to do with the ethnicity or religion of the majority who live there. Some, even most of these conditions could be satisfied when looking at other states, but all of them? No, not in very many cases at all.

To be clear, though, there are most certainly some anti-semitic people involved in activism against Israel. I don't doubt that for a second. I also don't think they're anywhere near a majority or even a significant minority in a movement like BDS. I don't think broader social justice efforts can reasonably be labelled anti-semitic because of those peoples' presence, and I certainly don't think reasonable people with legitimate social justice concerns should be accused of anything like racism without having solid grounds for it. Anti-semitism is a possible explanation for BDS, but there are others that in the case of most people are far more likely; leaping to the least-likely and most-convenient explanation for a person's involvement (convenient from the perspective of dismissing the movement and protecting Israel from criticism, which is very frequently the motivation) usually sounds like pure opportunism to me.

The last line there to be taken generally, I hope, and not personally.

I get the Guardian Weekly delivered over here, mostly because I get some comfort out of a bit of news from back home and I still like handling a real newspaper. Plus, it passes the time on the shitter. Anyway, I was flipping through last week's edition when it came in, and on one page there was an off-set quote in the middle of this article in bright blue, bold ink:

"Hundreds of men rushed to hospital clutching their penises, convinced they were retracting into their bodies and that if they let go of them, they'd die."

The finest high-quality British journalism.

... Mind you, I still stopped and read the article.

Fuck me, that split-screen of Bairstow's stance was unreal!

Bairstow living a charmed life here at times, but on for another big score. What a time he's been having with the bat lately.

There are much more recent articles but they all claim the rank and file are in favour of leaving

 

http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/11/our-poll-over-two-third-of-party-members-ready-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu.html

Which is why talk of a Tory split / civil war in the event of a Leave vote is incredibly fanciful. Their voter base is either indifferent or against the EU, and if there's one thing modern Tories understand it's political self-interest. If Leave wins, Cameron will get fucked off post-haste, a few of the vanishingly small number of not-a-complete-arsehole Tory figures will flounce off and make a bit of noise, but the rest of the Parliamentary party will unite behind that odious cunt Johnson and be more than prepared to fight the next general election.

Only a narrow Remain victory has the potential to do any meaningful political damage to the bunch of nonces governing the UK today.

So Cook is going to pass 10,000 runs in front of a few hundred people in Durham.

Unless he gets out...

Good. Maybe we can actually see a competitive test match at Lord's -- this series has been pointless so far.

Sri Lanka have always taken time to adjust to conditions on a tour. Didn't they play the ODIs first last time, when they won the Test series 1-0? I seem to remember some of the Lankans saying they used the one-day games to adjust to the climate and such and that was a factor helping them win their first ever Test series over here, rather than playing the Tests first when they hadn't faced any proper bowling on our May surfaces yet.

Of course they also have a shit top order, but even they should at least have some backbone to show over two Test matches.

I just tuned in to see if it was over yet, and they're only three down. Did the Lankans discover their bottle, or is the bowling just pish?

I'm not sure how I feel about this experiment in staging three-day Test matches.

The Beeb have done a little interview with Gillian Duffy, Gordon Brown's "bigoted woman", to get her perspective on Britain's place in the European Union.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36373649

You can always count on the national broadcaster to hold up the tone of the debate and dig deep into the really important questions.

Enjoyed reading the first half of Aggers' column on the Beeb the other day, which more or less amounted to "Why the fuck are we playing Test matches in Leeds in May?" Mostly because I said the same thing a number of times during the match, and I like it when people agree with me.

I hear there's some cricket on tomorrow.

I like cricket. Much better than that other game.

Fuck fyckinga ll of that shite.

My guts have gone on strike. These are going to be the longest five hours of the year...

Yep they'll be shocked by that and it might encourage one or two to join up with Klopp!

 

Their problem was going 2 up in 9 minutes. Probably thought the game was won and eased off even if they did create a few more chances.

That's our secret weapon. Let the opposition have an insurmountable lead, then -- bang! they're fucked.

Fucking football. Fucking Liverpool.

Fuck off I love you.

Thing about Stokes is that he's either brilliant or ridiculous, rarely anything in between. He can be a match winner, but he's never, ever going to be a consistent option -- that's his whole career so far.

If you throw him the ball at the death, you're gambling on the sublime version turning up. Morgan gambled, bet the house on that last over, and lost.

Abuses journalists AND referees. Sounds like my kind of manager.

Also, "you infected bird!" is an ace insult. I'm going to call someone that today.

Speaking of insults, though...

Pedicabo off

That's a first person singular in the future tense. You said, "I will ass-fuck off."

Aye, Ali offers his wicket up too -- can only see an Aussie win now.

Just losing wickets too easily here. We're going to run out of batters to see us through without a proper partnership developing.