Dave_Og Posted October 27, 2022 Share Posted October 27, 2022 1 hour ago, underdog said: Did I not read that there was a secured loan (debenture) on land too? Maybe for gym refurb? Wonder who pays that off Doubt it makes any difference. Purchase price would just be adjusted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TamarBridgeLatics Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 FOOTBALL | ROD LIDDLE Sharpshooters, rich owners and outspoken views make fifth tier a fascinating league Rod Liddle Sunday October 30 2022, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times At first I thought it was a new initiative from the FA — decisively upping the progressive political ante after rainbow-coloured armbands and Black Lives Matter stickers. Now, football boots with stitching that reads: “F*** the Tories!” I assume Gary Lineker has a pair at home. But no, it was not the FA. It was just one player, a prolific-scoring Scouser called Paul Mullin. He had the boots specially made — such an extravagance for one plying his trade in the National League with Wrexham. But then Mullin is not quite an anonymous journeyman like some of his peers down there and Wrexham are not your usual National League side. The club got wind of Mullin’s two very left feet via social media and banned him from lacing them up. They said in a statement: “The club can confirm that the boots revealed by Paul Mullin on social media will not be worn tonight, or in any other Wrexham AFC fixture and that the photographs taken at the Racecourse Ground were done so without our knowledge or approval. For the record, the pictures wouldn’t have been permitted to be taken, had we known, and the issue will be dealt with privately by the club.” Mullin, the Wrexham striker, was prevented from wearing boots that featured the phrase “F*** the Tories!” MATTHEW ASHTON/AMA/GETTY IMAGES Mullin has an interesting, if not bewildering, back story. Eighteen months ago he was named the English Football League Two player of the year, having scored a remarkable 32 goals in a season for his club, Cambridge United, and hoisting them into League One. They named a stand after him in honour. Mullin has scored, by the sackful, pretty much wherever he has been and at the end of that 2020-21 season some very big clubs came knocking. I remember musing here that it was only a matter of time before he was playing for the likes of QPR in the Championship: he was, at that stage, only 25 years old. But bizarrely, you may think, he took two steps back to join the Hollywood Express that is Wrexham — a club run by the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. So money, one supposes, could have been a bit of a motivating factor in Mullin’s decision. He continued his scoring exploits the next season, winning the National League Golden Boot, as Wrexham finished second (although some distance behind the champions, Stockport County). Mullin scored a couple of goals against Grimsby Town in the play-offs, but not enough to prevent Grimsby from winning 5-4 at the Racecourse Ground. Langstaff, who has scored 17 goals already for Notts County this season, has drawn comparisons to Haaland and Vardy JON HOBLEY/MI NEWS/ALAMY Mullin has been scoring again this season, although his 11 goals is six shy of the number scored so far by Notts County’s minor sensation, Macaulay Langstaff. I say minor sensation — once again the big clubs are circling this young (he’s 25) Teessider who previously turned out for Billingham Synthonia and is now being compared — no, really — to Erling Haaland and Jamie Vardy. County are top of the National League and this month beat Wrexham with a goal from, of course, Langstaff. I hope he had “I Love Rishi” or “Up yours, Keir” stitched into the side of his boots. It is important that the most gilded marksmen in the division balance each other, politically. Fittingly, Mullin’s home constituency is the safe Labour seat of Sefton while Langstaff’s is the red wall seat of Stockton South. Notts County and Wrexham are the two sides with the biggest budget in this painfully difficult league and the Welsh club are still splashing the cash this season, having brought in Elliot Lee (yes, Rob Lee’s son) from the Championship side Luton Town, where he scored 24 goals in 93 games, and prising one of the league’s stand-out utility players, the Gambian Jacob Mendy, away from their increasingly dangerous Hertfordshire rivals Boreham Wood. But then Boreham Wood have themselves a much bigger budget than most and look likely to feature in the play-offs at least, along with a rejuvenated Chesterfield, who at last have a few pennies to rub together. It is a hellish league to get out of in the right direction and all too easy to continue a downward spiral, with four teams relegated. The two sides that came down from League Two last season — Scunthorpe United and Oldham Athletic — both find themselves hovering just outside the trapdoor, while poor Torquay United, in last place, look doomed. The cruelty of the division clearly appeals to the supporters (as does, I suppose, the rapidly improving standards acquired by dosh) because the attendances continue to rise. Wrexham have pulled in an average of not far short of 10,000 fans this season — more than respectable for a League One side and on a par with one or two in the Championship. Notts County and poor old Oldham are not far behind them while last season Stockport County pulled in more than 7,000 and have added another thousand or so this season in League Two. That’s 3,000 more than they got when they were in the third tier 20 years ago. Nasty though it may be, an immersion in the National League can have a remarkably rejuvenating effect — if you can keep your head above water for a while. 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Wardie Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 Nasty though it may be, an immersion in the National League can have a remarkably rejuvenating effect — if you can keep your head above water for a while." Good article. That last part says it all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 Rod Liddle's a nonce, he said so in the Spectator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whittles left foot Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 47 minutes ago, Matt said: Rod Liddle's a nonce, he said so in the Spectator. And why does that have any relevance be it true or false? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlossopLatic Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 1 hour ago, Matt said: Rod Liddle's a nonce, he said so in the Spectator. I actually really like him as a football columnist though he does talk abit of sense about the game, then again I also liked Richard LittleJohn when he did 606 back in the day. I can't say I agree with them on other subjects certainly not Littlejohn but there we go people from different backgrounds and points of view can share similar opinions on certain subjects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 1 hour ago, whittles left foot said: And why does that have any relevance be it true or false? It has no relevance at all, should it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whittles left foot Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 2 hours ago, Matt said: It has no relevance at all, should it? Then why mention it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stanley30 Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 13 hours ago, Matt said: Rod Liddle's a nonce, he said so in the Spectator. Surely you can't post or use that word? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 8 hours ago, whittles left foot said: Then why mention it? You know what? I was wrong, sorry - there is a relevance, Liddle wrote the sports article above and he also wrote the article in Spectator where he said that the only thing stopping him from becoming a teacher is that he would not be able to stop shagging kids, over year ten though, mind - even Rod has standards. So yeah, thanks for helping me steer the conversation back on topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave_Og Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 21 minutes ago, Matt said: You know what? I was wrong, sorry - there is a relevance, Liddle wrote the sports article above and he also wrote the article in Spectator where he said that the only thing stopping him from becoming a teacher is that he would not be able to stop shagging kids, over year ten though, mind - even Rod has standards. So yeah, thanks for helping me steer the conversation back on topic. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-teenage-girl-a-maths-teacher-and-a-righteous-tabloid-fury I think I can safely say that Mr Liddle's tongue was in his cheek. His weekly skewering of some utter nonsense is the first thing I read on a Sunday morning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBigDog Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 18 minutes ago, Dave_Og said: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-teenage-girl-a-maths-teacher-and-a-righteous-tabloid-fury I think I can safely say that Mr Liddle's tongue was in his cheek. His weekly skewering of some utter nonsense is the first thing I read on a Sunday morning This article is for subscribers only… can you summarise for us @Dave_Og? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 1 minute ago, TheBigDog said: This article is for subscribers only… can you summarise for us @Dave_Og? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 22 minutes ago, Dave_Og said: His weekly skewering of some utter nonsense is the first thing I read on a Sunday morning Nonsense squared then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave_Og Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 1 hour ago, TheBigDog said: This article is for subscribers only… can you summarise for us @Dave_Og? No, I'm not a subscriber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Worcester Owl Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 2 hours ago, Dave_Og said: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-teenage-girl-a-maths-teacher-and-a-righteous-tabloid-fury I think I can safely say that Mr Liddle's tongue was in his cheek. His weekly skewering of some utter nonsense is the first thing I read on a Sunday morning Yes I agree, sorry @Matt but I think you've mis-interpreted RL in that Spectator article. His sense of humour is no doubt not to everybody's taste and he doesn't take prisoners, but you can't think he was being serious surely. Whether he was wise to express himself in the way he did is another matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TamarBridgeLatics Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 The full article. I seriously contemplated being a teacher once upon a time, when I was lot younger. It seemed to me an agreeable doss, and one didn’t have to be too bright or too ambitious, or possess any great quantity of knowledge. I sometimes wondered what sort of teacher I’d prefer to be; one of those ingratiating young men who plays meaningful pop songs on his guitar to the class and affects an air of faux rebelliousness, the kind of teacher whom as schoolchildren we all despised, or the other kind — sarcastic, stentorian and occasionally brutal, the kind we all feared. It was one or the other; there is no middle way. I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We’re talking secondary school level here, by the way — and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called. I just thought we ought to clear that up early on. At my old comprehensive school a few teachers were known to be schtupping the pupils; one of them, a female teacher who was extremely foxy in a Pot Noodle scuzzy kind of way — she copped off with some fifth-form lad, and another teacher (a man with a guitar and a faux rebellious attitude) gained the affections of an extremely attractive fourth-form girl. As pupils, we didn’t remotely mind about this and both teachers were very popular. But I knew, when I was considering my career options, that this sort of behaviour was definitely frowned upon by the authorities and that I would not last the week in my new job. Frowned upon, although not much more, I ought to say — certainly not the deranged howling that is kicked up these days, the fury and the righteous anger. And so, at time of writing, the hunt is on for Megan, little Megan. Megan Stammers, aged 15, from the national crematorium holding facility which is Eastbourne, has apparently eloped to France with her maths teacher, Jeremy Forrest, an ingratiating man with a guitar. But possibly not just France, because once there ‘the road network would quickly take them into Belgium, Holland, Germany and beyond’ — a valuable insight which was afforded to me by the Daily Mail, and for which I am extremely grateful. So possibly Iraq, then, or even Bhutan. They could be anywhere. Megan’s mum, Danielle, and stepdad have done the tearful appearance before the cameras thing, with the old bill looking on balefully, come on home sweetheart, we won’t be angry, etc. It must be horrible for them, truly harrowing — but I am not sure that their situation has been eased by the howl-round, the sensationalism, the shock horror. If anything, it will have made it worse for the parents (or guardians, whatever) and will almost certainly have transmitted to the idiotic Mr Forrest a marked reluctance to return to this country. Even someone as palpably stupid as him must see that he will be eviscerated, lose his job and be charged by the police. You know, I can see the two of them now in my mind, both transfixed with the childish romance and drama and excitement of what they have done and almost certainly on a sort of level when it comes to emotional maturity. Mr Forrest serenaded Megan with ghastly sub-Ed Sheeran melodies on his inevitable guitar, one of which had been inspired by his decision to hold her hand — in full view of everyone else! — on a school trip back from the USA. I strongly suspect that Mr Forrest is ten years old really. There is tabloid fury that the school may have known about this burgeoning relationship some seven months back, when Mr Forrest first began his burgeoning through the conduit of extracurricular maths lessons. A teacher was told about it and either failed to report it to the head of the school, or he did report it and the school did nothing. The word the journalists are using is ‘grooming’, which is the word they always use on occasions such as this. But it is surely not grooming as we have come to understand the term. Or if so, the witless maths teacher was grooming the girl subconsciously; his songs and texts are transparent vessels of doe-eyed affection — I doubt very much he would have sufficient IQ to groom a pony. It is palpably not the same as stalking some minor on a social networking site while using an alias, nor indeed plying adolescent girls with drugs and then raping them, as we have heard was the modus operandi of semi-savage Asian men in the northern town of Rotherham. Call me Kenneth Clarke, but I think there are gradations of this sort of transgression, which take account of both the intent of the perpetrator and the level of willing reciprocity (not to mention the age of the groomee, if we can call them that). But for sure, what Mr Forrest did was wrong. I suspect — and it is only a guess — that thousands of teachers up and down the land conduct sexual relationships with their older charges and that in most cases no harm comes of it. But it is still wrong, and no matter how imbecilic the teacher involved might be, it is still exploitative, even if it is not consciously so. I just hope Mr Forrest is not so thrown by the hyperbolic furore that he neglects to return to Britain with Megan at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiseowl Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 Removed - accept I was wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 50 minutes ago, Worcester Owl said: Yes I agree, sorry @Matt but I think you've mis-interpreted RL in that Spectator article. His sense of humour is no doubt not to everybody's taste and he doesn't take prisoners, but you can't think he was being serious surely. Whether he was wise to express himself in the way he did is another matter. I get other peoples point of view, I think to write an article like that was stupid thing to do, to write it twice is eyebrow raising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 33 minutes ago, wiseowl said: Can we have the same level of intense debate please regarding the industrial scale rape of children by a certain cohort of our population? Thought not. Some terrible double standards on here. I bet there's no end to how many times you want to talk about it either and I don't think we've ever restricted that discourse, so go ahead - be angry at the thing you've made up in your head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorvik_latic Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 On 10/27/2022 at 12:30 PM, yarddog73 said: Maybe something the OASF can pick up on? There’s nothing to pick up on. The loan is secured against the gym equipment, not the land. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Worcester Owl Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 3 hours ago, Matt said: I get other peoples point of view, I think to write an article like that was stupid thing to do, to write it twice is eyebrow raising. I suspect he may regret it, though I wonder if he ever regrets anything he says/writes. Or rather regrets his choice of words. If you set out to write an opinion piece and unnecessarily inflame readers by making highly objectionable statements, even if satirically (as I suspect was his intention) then it's fairly self-defeating, I agree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaddyexile84 Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 7 hours ago, wiseowl said: Can we have the same level of intense debate please regarding the industrial scale rape of children by a certain cohort of our population? Thought not. Some terrible double standards on here. Have a read of this rather than the Daily Mail unwise one https://fullfact.org/crime/what-do-we-know-about-ethnicity-people-involved-sexual-offences-against-children/ Oh and they all need their balls removing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monty Burns Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 3 hours ago, Worcester Owl said: I suspect he may regret it, though I wonder if he ever regrets anything he says/writes. Or rather regrets his choice of words. If you set out to write an opinion piece and unnecessarily inflame readers by making highly objectionable statements, even if satirically (as I suspect was his intention) then it's fairly self-defeating, I agree. some people seem to enjoy shootin at their own feet just to make things difficult for themselves. lookin backwards and sideways objectively, thats what l'm saying anyway!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiseowl Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 1 minute ago, Chaddyexile84 said: Have a read of this rather than the Daily Mail unwise one https://fullfact.org/crime/what-do-we-know-about-ethnicity-people-involved-sexual-offences-against-children/ Oh and they all need their balls removing Stopped reading it when I got to the stats bits because it was about people "convicted". The police's record here is laughable, with literally thousands upon thousands never even charged; never mind convicted. Anyway Chaddy - I`d already removed my post and accepted I was wrong to have posted it - and then saw this. Shall we leave it there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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