Everything will be all right tonight. Everything will be all right tonight. Or so I keep telling myself, as Ulster prepare to turn and face the strain of Leinster at the RDS. Let’s hope that Ulster can put Big Brother under pressure. It’s simple, really: all we have to do is win. But hope, boys, is a cheap thing, cheap thing: we are the dead.
While Ulster have lost Stockdale to injury, one South Effrican is back for us.
But one of Them has apparently recovered from yet another head injury.
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal
In other news – newsman wept (with joy) as he told me – a familiar face is returning to Cardiff.
Someone’s back in town the chips are down
I just cut and blackout
I’m under Mulvihill’s influence and my honour’s at stake
Today is David Bowie’s birthday, in case anyone was wondering.
Onna telly this week
Friday 8th January
| Glasgow v Edinburgh | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Leinster v Ulster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Bath v Wasps | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
| Sale v Worcester | 20:00 | BT Sport Extra |
Saturday 9th January
| Zebre v Treviso | 13:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Newcastle v Gloucester | 14:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Griquas v Cheetahs | 14:30 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Exeter v Bristol | 16:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Western Province v Sharks | 17:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Dragons v Ospreys | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Cardiff v Scarlets | 19:35 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Connacht v Munster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 10th January
| Harlequins v London Irish | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 16th January
| Glasgow v Edinburgh | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Democrats like a bit of argy bargy as well when it suits them
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Hmm.
Seems like there’s plenty of grounds around to throw the lawbook at ol’ trumpy (fraud, tax evasion, failure to pay contractors etc. etc. *ahem, allegedly*) and that’s before getting into his various twattery in office as the president. He’s always gotten away with it because money and expensive lawyers, now there are no consequences yet again (let’s not start on how treatment of those without such access to money / privilege compares).
Not doing anything about the rancid turdsack is as much if not more of a political move as taking him to court.
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OT – see also AOC.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/12/european-rugby-competitions-to-abandon-group-stage-for-last-16-knockouts
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That doesn’t sound good, SBT.
You’re right it’s not just Trump as there wouldn’t have been a Trump in the first place.
I was appalled to see the rehabilitation of George W Bush continuing apace this last week but then I remembered that he won re-election in 2004.
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Tomp – iirc it’s weird for a press not to be voted in for 2 consecutive terms.
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Not common. Since World War 2 Trump and Carter the only ones to have lost after replacing a President from the other party. The incumbent has lots of advantages.
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Am looking forward to the Trump Presidential Library.
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George HW Bush also lost his bid for re-election in 1992.
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Oh, but he didn’t replace a president from the other party, so what TomP said holds.
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“Ahem, I came up with the name Liambility”
Apologies Mr Iks, of course you did. I knew that it was some wise guy from the East but picked the wrong one. Excellent naming/cursing by you, he can be a fabulous player but then he does something like this. Maybe the two things go together.
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Not doing anything about the rancid turdsack is as much if not more of a political move as taking him to court.
Absolutely – it really is a tricky situation, setting a potentially explosive precedent, especially if the USA is as damaged and unequal as SBT and others have said. I suppose there is some measure of comfort in the fact that a small (at this stage) number of Republican lawmakers are now openly backing the bid the impeach Trump. But having watched Ted Cruz’s frankly evil posturing the other day, there needs to be a majority of Republican lawmakers on board to mollify the broader Republican movement (you’ll never convince the lunatic fringe and their media).
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That stoned looking guy with the glasses craigs posted yesterday looks a bit like one of my graduates. Need to ask him where he was last week.
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Chimpie – it’s a great advert for the dangers of drugz. One minute you are chilling with friends in some cool basement apartment, the next you find yourself committing terrorism in the capitol building dressed in your mums furs with a stolen police vest.
Seems entirely plausible.
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I really don’t want to defend anything about US politics which is a sewer (and badly needs lobbying and money taken out of it), but I think it’s a false equivalence comparing last weeks effort (president encouraging his generally white supremacist base for months to doubt an election ‘cos he doesn’t like the result, then specifically inciting in person a mob with entirely predictable results, some of whom had bombs etc.) to that Democrat telling people to get in the face of congresspeople. Not that I particularly like the latter, but it’s a whole different scenario.
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Reminds me of my brother’s stag do.
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You stormed the capitol and stole stuff? Wild times
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Chimpie – imo it’s not a false equivalence to point out that the level of political violence in the US has been high recently. And it’s not false equivalence to point out that the Dems have been using the largely peaceful protests for their own gain and have been excusing the worst excesses to varying degrees.
There was something about watching houses and businesses burn whilst commentators said things like ‘it is just property’ and ‘this is what insurance is for’ that left a bad taste in my mouth.
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Move along now, nothing to see here.
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Can end up in some stupid and dangerous situations when your young, aff yer heid and a bit naive. Not that I’m talking from experience or anything.
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By all means throw the book at people going out of their way to commit property damage, while others are protesting peacefully. However, when people are more concerned about some windows being broken, than they are with institutional racism and the police straight up murdering black people, then maybe it’s time to break some windows.
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Craigs,
Can’t really get into the detail of this as stupid work keeps happening, but ‘domestic terrorism’ and deaths committed by right wing and / or white supremacist types is massive in the US, but doesn’t seem to get the coverage of the BLM stuff. The enforcement against the BLM protests (again, not condoning violence / looting stuff done by a minority) and ‘antifa’ tends to be significantly heavier, and vigilantes supported by the police.
For a comparison imagine if the BLM lot had tried to invade the capitol last week. The national guard were called on them for far less last year.
‘There was something about watching houses and businesses burn whilst commentators said things like ‘it is just property’ and ‘this is what insurance is for’ that left a bad taste in my mouth.’
Not seen any of this, but bizarre comments.
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Refit – I’m with you (ish) on police reform but breaking windows imo led to the escalation we saw.
And who were those people committing property damage? Anshmifa? Ancifa? Just an idea innit.
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Wot Refit said
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‘Defund the police’ has to be one of the dumbest phrases. Just gave the GOP the opportunity to shout ‘they want no police!’
‘reform the police’ would have been better.
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‘breaking windows imo led to the escalation we saw.’
So what does police murdering black folks (this was before any protests and window breaking) comprise?
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Chimpie – I don’t disagree with the point on the press coverage.
For a comparison imagine if the BLM lot had tried to invade the capitol last week. The national guard were called on them for far less last year.
No doubt the police seemed to be caught off guard and maybe there was planning for them to be. There are some evidence of this being the case and it absolutely should be investigated. But is there any evidence to show that had the cops/national guard been there they would have acted differently to blm?
One person was (rightly) shot by police for trying to get into the capitol last week. One (non black) blm protestor was shot by the police last summer and they pointed their gun at the cops.
This seems like a lazy assertion to me.
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Sadly doesn’t look like there’ll be too much rugby to talk about soon.
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The police aren’t supposed to be a political side.
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I feel like I’m channelling CJ.
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‘This seems like a lazy assertion to me’
Yep. I don’t like to put too much work into my assertions. May still be true though.
Don’t forget trumpton tear gassing a load of protestors so he could have a photo op.
Seeing as we’re being all lazy and general there’s a history of this stuff in the US of A. Student vietnam war protestors shot by the national guard. large portion of the country goes ‘yeah, serves ’em right’
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‘The police aren’t supposed to be a political side.’
The naivety is strong in this one.
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Yeah and nothing has changed since the 1960/70s.
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‘defund the police’ isn’t about reforming the police. It’s about taking the biggest that had been used to turn the police into paramilitary forces, and instead putting it into mental health, social services and other things (where it was taken from originally), so that people having a mental crisis aren’t shot.
Someone who is suicidal needs a mental health worker, not a cop with a gun.
It might not be the best movement name, but it is accurate. The police in the US have been extremely resistant to reform, so it doesn’t seem worth trying any more.
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Refit is correct
Thought I’d just say that.
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Refit – I agree with you that the responsibilities should be changed but imo the police in the USA need (along with a massive culture change) greater vetting, training and scrutiny.
This either requires a reshuffling of cash or more cash.
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Don’t forget trumpton tear gassing a load of protestors so he could have a photo op.
Nothing I’ve said ignores this BTW. It could well be that there was a different response from the top. My point is that, when called, I don’t see any compelling evidence that the police would have treated the protesters differently.
If your claim is that the Republican officials would have deployed the police differently if it was blm then yes, I’m right with you.
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The police in the USA wouldn’t need to be so heavily armed and trigger happy if the populace wasn’t so heavily armed and trigger happy. Defunding the police should be linked to an explicit and rigorously enforced reduction in the number and types of weapons that citizens are allowed to buy and bear. Of course I’m smoking my socks on this one, as it won’t happen with the NRA and other lobby groups around, especially in this febrile environment, but something has to be done at some stage.
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Chimpie – if your claim is that the police would have been deployed differently then I apologise for calling your claim lazy.
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I should hope so too. An outrage.
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Chimpie’s only lazy when it comes to the cheese on ‘toast’.
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I’m impressed Chimpie is keeping his pffting dry.
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Can’t be pfft-ing willy-nilly. It’s a strategic process.
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It’s a bit odd that the nation of free enterprise and marketing needs some instruction in the latter………….
……..”defund the police” is a a dreadful slogan, for example.
If the US society is to be guided back onto straighter rails then politicians etc will have to be much clearer in their use of language and, if they must use slogans, at least make them meaningful, relevant and precise. It’s not that hard.
It’s going to be a very long road which is why, in my opinion, people like Trump, other slime and their errant followers must be dealt with harshly now – the longer the boil is left to fester the messier the reckoning will be.
Lots of carrot required to go with the stick as well – does Congress have the will? – that there is doubt is a great worry.
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I’m lazy when it comes to many things. One has to put in effort in some areas though to enable the time for some good laziness. It’s a much misunderstood thing.
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laziness applied incorrectly leads to a lot of stress and work.
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Lots of carrot required to go with the stick as well – does Congress have the will? – that there is doubt is a great worry.
Slade I agree with you wholeheartedly on the above. A key weakness for me of the US system is that there is so little time in an electoral cycle to actually get anything meaningful done. Biden will have 2.5 years from 20th January to do anything before the next election cycle starts to make its impact felt on key policy decisions, but most especially on contentious ones that could impact on re-election. To compound this, the staggered terms of the Senate and the HoR elections every two years make it even more difficult to pass difficult or contested policy if it has an outsized impact in key swing states.
The system is great in theory and seemed to work a good deal better when there was more bipartisan co-operation, but in the current climate, it’s almost impossible to introduce radical reforms without the opposition blocking you en masse and elements of your own party objecting if they’re in a precarious position in their own states. I wonder if Biden has the energy, personality and persuasiveness to push anything of import through? I think not.
[Edit] Just to add, the politics of lobby groups and money thrown in with the above makes for a real mess. [Edit]
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I was lazy in my assertion of laziness.
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I’m too lazy to re
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Deebs – I find it depressing that there seems to be a ‘party machine’ behind the dems. It’s one of the things that puts many of the borderline voters off them. To a lot of people they just come across as career politicians who say and do the things they think people want. And they are right more often than not.
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