Grovesred

It's almost a shame my other half packed in the fags - this would have been an ideal Valentine's gift.

what does the purple star mean?

A purple star on an orange flag is an Orange Order flag. I think it was a symbol used by William of Orange's troops.

Disappointed there are people in Perth bigoted and stupid enough to display such a flag in public.

I don't understand this hatred for the police.

I’d turn this round and ask why it is that the police seem to hate football fans, despite the fact that the huge majority of us never break any law whilst pursuing our passion.

There’s a scandal brewing following Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire forces’ use of Section 27 orders effectively to kidnap and mistreat groups of Stoke and Plymouth fans.

There’s no suggestion that either group of fans had broken any laws, or made much noise, let alone behaved violently or in an anti-social manner. The managers of the pubs where they were enjoying a pre-match drink confirmed that both sets of fans behaved “impeccably” and said they’re welcome back at any time.

Yet the police herded them all onto buses and refused any access to toilets, meaning these innocent people were kept in disgustingly insanitary conditions for several hours.

The eminently respectable Football Supporters’ Federation has launched its “Watching football is not a crime” campaign in response to these and other abuses of police powers.

Respect is indeed a two-way process, but having witnessed many abuses in the course of watching League and Conference football for nearly 40 years, I’m afraid the police inspire in me not respect, but contempt, just as they have contempt for football supporters.

gutted

I don't think the difference is between England and Scotland, but between different grounds.

I don't travel away so much these days but in recent years the most over-zealous stewarding of the seating/standing thing was at Rushden & Diamonds. Instead of excercising some common sense, they piled in every time they detected a straightening knee, and created a potentially serious situation, with a lot of normally placid people getting very angry.

easier to claim benifits than earn a living

I guess you've not had to claim benefits recently?

Luckily, I haven't either, but a close family member relies on incapacity benefit and I can assure everyone that he has to jump through hoops to retain his entitlement, that in my opinion he isn't able to work, that he doesn't earn hundreds a week on the side, that he gets neither free methadone nor free booze (attractive though that sounds), or any of the other insulting allegations that have been made in this thread about people with disablities.

Quite frankly, it's bollocks, and talk of political correctness is a diversion from the madness of a world that thinks nothing of spending billions on warfare and bailing out mega-rich bankers, but assumes that disabled people are workshy lead-swingers.

I'm afraid it's the old "The Unemployed Are To Blame For Unemployment" trick.

But unemployment isn't rising because people are taking drugs, or having kids, or having limbs amputated, or not getting enough training. It's rising because there's a worldwide economic crisis, which the government can do bugger all about.

Therefore, despite all its cheap talk about increasing taxes on the rich at some undefined future date to fund spending to stimulate growth, what it's actually doing is attacking the people with nothing and scapegoating them into the bargain. In case anyone had forgotten, they're reminding us of the equation New Labour = Old Tories.

On the question of invalidity benefits, the government is so keen to get disabled people into employment, that it's closing Remploy factories all over the place. As a result of the York factory closing a few months ago (after a direct promise from Mr Brown that it would NOT close) many disabled people in the city who used to support themselves and their families with hard work and dignity are on incapacity benefits and about to fall foul of the new rules which will inevitably stigmatise them as workshy scroungers.

Sounds like his meds need topped up...

No, it's OK, I've calmed down a bit now, so a swift pint on the way home is the only medication I require today

Don't get me started of fecking John Batchelor...

Oops, too late

I love his claim that he'll buy Chester City for £2m. I'd be surprised if he's got 2p to spend.

He bought York City for £1 and proceeded to rob us blind, taking £250,000 out to buy himself a nice house in Wilmslow and a further £50,000 to keep his motor racing team afloat.

His hospitality at motor racing events consisted largely of beer and spirits plundered from our social club.

His outlandish plans for Chester are essentially the same as his ludicrous plans for York City. He changed our name to Yorkcity [yes, one word ] Soccer [to attract massive sponsorship in the USA ] Club. He said he was going to launch a bid to buy the ill-fated ITV Digital. He was going to organise a breakaway of lower division clubs to be called the Rayovac Pro-league. He said we were going to become a feeder club for Rangers . And so on and so on...

Of course they were all a smokescreen to hide the asset-stripping that was his real project. Asset-stripping is how he makes a living and to him football is just another way of doing it.

He's a thief, a liar, and a drunk [see http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/apr/09/sport.comment for his confirmation]. The only mystery is why the football authorities continue to insist that he's a fit and proper person to own and run a football club, when the rest of football insists he's not a fit and proper person to breathe the same air as decent people.

And then people wonder why football fans think modern football is sh!t...

Top 100 singles of the 90s was on the box this afternoon but how many can you really say were great?

No more than half a dozen even qualify as good, let alone great. My choices would more likely include some indie stuff from the early part of the decade, such as the Mock Turtles, the Paris Angels, etc, but that's probably to do with time and place rather than quality.

Cher's "Believe" always stands out for me, because it was on everywhere during a particular weekend in Glasgow and is forever linked with memories of Saints playing a game at Parkhead on the Sunday afternoon...

I still maintain Whitney Houston should be shot for strangling "I Will Always Love You". Dragging her nails down the nearest blackboard would have been less harsh on the ears.

A similar thing nearly happened here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HmC12_ci64g

About 30 seconds into the clip, Daniel Parslow makes a lunge at Essex Boy, but turns away at the last minute, the ref having shouted at him something along the lines of, "If you touch him, I'll send you off!"

Neither the club's own stewards nor those provided by a (supposedly) professional security company made any effort to apprehend the bloke until he left the pitch. Apparently this is policy to avoid unfavourable comparisons with the Keystone Cops .

Personally, having caught him, I'd have confiscated his sock and scarf as evidence and thrown him out of the ground, and made him wait until his pals left the game to give him his clothes back.

It was below freezing at the time, so he'd have thought twice before doing it again.

Well maybe not, but a bit of gratuitous humiliation rarely goes amiss.

How many innocent people would need to be killed by the state before we realised we'd made a dreadful mistake in handing our rulers the power to end our lives on flimsy evidence?

The state isn't neutral in all this, dispensing justice in an even-handed way.

Take a look at the US where there's evidence it's used in a racist fashion.

Or China where there's evidence that people have been sentenced to death because they have blood or tissue types that makes them good candidates for profitable organ "donation".

Human life is too cheaply given up in the modern world whether it's kids falling victim to gang violence, poverty, or famine, soldiers and civilians in war zones, or the tens of thousands killed in road accidents.

I don't see how increasing the state's power of life and death will make the slightest bit of difference to any of that.

As for the hoary old argument "what if it was one of your own family...", well on one occasion it WAS one of my own family (subjected to extreme violence and torture, not killed), and yes, had I been able to get my hands on the perpetrartor, I'd have happily battered him with any available implement. Fortunately, I never got that chance.

The actual outcome was that he was caught, tried, and sentenced to a lengthy jail term, which satisfied the victim and much (though not all) of the family.

As it happened, the perpetrator took his own life in prison, which made matters far worse for the victim who had genuinely hoped his attacker would get help with the drug and other problems that led to him becoming violent in the first place. He now feels he will never get "closure", that this unresolved issue will always be hanging over him.

A violent criminal is dead, but his death has done nothing to help him, his victims, or anyone else. Rehabilitation might just have produced something positive for someone in this sorry saga.

From www.ycfc.net

Eagle eyed supporters at Salisbury last Saturday may have noticed that City striker Daniel McBreen is currently sporting a moustache! Dan has grown his 'tache as he is raising money to help fight Prostate Cancer and would appreciate any support you can give by making a donation.

Please find the link below where you can donate to Daniels Movember Charity.

You can donate to his Mo by either:

1. Clicking this link https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=1432806&country=uk and donating online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
   
2. Writing a cheque payable to ‘The Prostate Cancer Charity Re: Movember', referencing Daniel's Registration Number 1432806 and mailing it to:

The Prostate Cancer Charity

First Floor Cambridge House

100 Cambridge Grove

Hammersmith

London W6 OLE

The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to The Prostate Cancer Charity which will have an enormous impact on many men's lives and the awareness will help us to fight prostate cancer on every front - through research, support, information and campaigning.

Did you know...

• Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. 35,000 men are diagnosed every year and one man dies every hour.
  
• 1 in 11 UK men will be diagnosed in their lifetime

Well done, Barrow.

The pitch is normally perfect, one of the best ones in the league.

Even in last night's state it probably still qualifies as one of the better ones in the Conference.

Mind, I hope it's better in time for Tuesday's Satanic Shield game, to suit City's crisp passing style

Keigan Parker... (City reserves v Huddersfield reserves) having been sent off...

...3 mins 26 secs into the video:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_kELQhr-Q

Nick Griffin the nazis' leader is on record as saying he wants an all-white Britain. One of his closest supporters, Collett, is on record as praising nazi germany as a good place to live.

Now, whatever their manifestos say, it's clear what the BNP believes in and it's certain that it could not be achieved without extreme force.

They follow the likes of French Nazi Le Pen in attempting to present a respectable image simply to hide what they really are. They pretend to be in favour of free speech, they pretend to be against violence, they pretend not to be racist.

The BNP is not a legitimate political party, it's a blantantly Naxi party, which exists to destroy the rights and freedoms we take for granted.

I'd certainly be concerned if a BNP member was teaching my kids - this is the party whose leaders teach that the Holocaust didn't happen, that it's a fiction concocted by governments of the countries who defeated Hitler's Germany in WWII, that it's a jewish conspiracy. Anybody who believes and spouts nonsense like that shouldn't be allowed to influence developing young minds.

...and to think it's only a couple of years since former York manager Billy McEwan denounced one of his strikers as "a tart" for wearing white boots

Manchester United 0, York City 3 (20 September 1995)

It was filmed by Man Utd's own camera team, and they don't seem to have got around to uploading it to youtube yet

One of these days, I'll learn how to do it myself from the DVD...

Spotted Keigan Parker trudging off the pitch at Bootham Crescent earlier this evening (City reserves v Huddersfield reserves) having been sent off during his first match back after suspension for being sent off a couple of weeks ago.

At least it will have meant he had time to pop round the corner to Tony's Plaice for a fish supper whilst his remaining team mates dropped their first points of the season

Video link to follow...

Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka. It follows the lives of a group of migrant workers. Hilariously funny and intensely moving, best new novel I've read in a while.

http://www.jorvikreds.co.uk/

Better at creating an atmosphere than keeping their site up to date

The Clash

Live DVD won in a competetition earlier today

the **** are proud to be British, you can't knock them for that.

You most certainly can knock them for it, when that so-called pride consists mostly of hating people they consider to be un-British by virtue of religion, skin colour, politics, or whatever else.

Again, I should point out I'm talking about people south of the border whom I know and have call themselves Rangers fans; I'm not claiming all Rangers fans are bigots.

I work with a few of them & most are complete arses who are more parenoid & bigoted(especially the real weegies) than Celtic fans . Most of the Celtic fans I know are quite good actually but I may have been lucky.

That's certainly my experience (with some honourable exceptions). It's probably skewed by the fact that Rangers' reputation and some of their fans' fondness for "loyalist" terrorism & gangsterism in Ireland attracts some of England's worst bigots and racists. That's not a trait I've personally found mirrored in the Celtic fans of my acqaintance.

No matter how hard I try I can't help but treat anyone wearing Rangers colours with deep suspicion.

He's the cousin of St Johnstone Assistant manager Tony Docherty.

Not enough to save him from any firing squad under my command.