Soy Adrián

Poland basically gamed the system by not playing any friendlies for the last two years. Looking forward to the human rights derby in the opening game.

My knowledge of the SDP, the Alliance and the Lib Dems up to 1997 isn't strong enough to answer this, but for anyone whose is - is the point the party's at now comparable to any particular time then? It seems that they're doing usefully in by-elections and may well make moderate gains in strong areas in the Locals in May, but are a good few years off showing any signs of turning around their awful position in Westminster.

You can really tell that you've never faced any actual oppression or discrimination in your life. I see you haven't bothered to comment on the link I posted before - any thoughts?

I mean... when the main 'dissenting opinion' against what you call political correctness is the President of the United States, you can't really claim to be an underdog any more. This thread hasn't been updated in a few months, but if you wanted proof that Trump is a wannabe fascist dictator: https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5...amp;sh=4196c529

Obviously it's a secret ballot - but announcing it on social media etc. could get you kicked out.

I've never had to vote anything other than Labour due to the seats I've lived in. There's a handful (Richmond, Lewes, Westmorland) where I would consider voting Lib Dem to keep the Tories out. The fact that doing so could technically get me kicked out of the party is yet another showcase of how nonsensical First Past the Post is.

...that's the opposite of what that expression means? But no, obviously not.

Allardyce is also a Wolves fan, so unlikely he would go to West Brom. Apparently Slaven Bilic has already turned it down so I'm expecting them to offer it to Pardew next. Thought we were alright tonight against Leicester. Can see how Moyes is going to help bolster the defence a bit and with everyone fit our attacking options should be enough to get us out of the bottom 3. I can see how Leicester end up getting beaten more than they should - aside from the first 20 minutes they were really passive.

I find it incredible that they decided that it was a good idea to model 18-24 turnout like that after the absolute roasting pollsters got from doing the same thing to a lesser degree during the election campaign.

If Liverpool or Chelsea fail to top their group there's a very narrow field of teams they could play in the last 16 due to the success of the other English teams. Off the top of my head either could get PSG, Barcelona or Besiktas. If neither finish top they could face whichever or Roma or Sevilla they weren't in a group with as well.

Loans to developers to get problematic sites developed can be quite effective - the Greater Manchester Housing Fund has faced criticism for being overly focused on supporting big apartment schemes in and around the city centre (which is somewhat fair) but most accounts say it has made a notable difference and the money will make its way back to the public purse provided it's a loan and not just a grant. But yes, allowing councils to more easily borrow cheaply to build genuinely affordable homes would be more effective. The housing crisis is effectively two crises, the first being that we haven't built enough units in a very long time and the second being that those which have been built have been purely on the market's terms and haven't been affordable enough to anyone at the lower end of the income bracket. You may as well try and kill two birds with one stone and let councils build again.

I mean... you're more likely to be right than wrong, but it feels daft to dismiss them on the basis that they're not as good as three of the best teams in Champions League history. PSG look terrifying going forward but I'm still not convinced by their defence. Bayern are improving now that Ancelotti has gone and tend to come on strong in the knockout rounds once they've all but won the Bundesliga. Barcelona are in excellent form in Spain and will be there or thereabouts again. Real will improve as well. City are obviously the best bet of the English sides, but I'd expect Guardiola to try and ensure that they win the league this season and really go all out in Europe next season. Any of the other English clubs could make a deep run with a bit of luck. The only thing will be that the fight for the top 4 in the Premier League looks like it will be really hard this year, so all of the teams other than City might have some difficult decisions to make.

Well, there are certain reasons for some political parties - although I don't know many people on this forum who are dedicated enough to any of said parties for them to want to oppose it for that reason.

In all honesty, there were conflicting statements from the Leave side during the campaign on staying within the single market - just as there were for virtually every issue. They calculated, correctly as it turned out, that the only way that Leave would win a majority of voters was if it was able to be all things for all people. There was never a single coalition of voters large enough to win the referendum on any specific policy platform. The contrast with the Scottish referendum is totally evident - as depressing as it was at times, to the Yes campaign's credit they put forward a specific programme, fought and lost on it. The whole purpose of the EU referendum being advisory was that in the event of one side or the other winning with no such clear programme, it would be possible for the government to carry out the referendum decision but would have scope within that to forge the best possible path for the country based on some objective information. Basically it's horseshit whenever the Leave side it claims it has a mandate for any specific action like leaving the single market.

Such a snowflake.

56% of people last year. Incredibly, your own experience for once doesn't chime with the public at large. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_...ion-uk-2016.pdf

The idea that you could solve the housing crisis by significantly reducing immigration is a total misnomer. For starters a large proportion of our construction workforce are immigrants, so you would seriously struggle to literally put the bricks on the ground quickly enough if you were to tighten the borders. Obviously as others have mentioned, there are several other far clearer reasons why housing has become unaffordable which Paul as always wilfully ignores in favour of demonstrating his lack of understanding of safe spaces again. Of course for years in the mid 20th century immigration was comparably high to what it is today, and we got by fine. The market built roughly the same numbers that it does today, and that it always will short of doing something stupid like abolishing development control. The difference was that the state pretty much matched those numbers, meaning we were regularly hovering around 300,000 homes a year being completed.

Some Tories do seem to be waking up to the housing crisis and how it's completely torpedoed their vote share with the 25-40 bracket. To be honest there's probably not a lot they can do to fix it in this parliament to boost their electoral prospects significantly because it's such a long-running problem and would require something truly radical to fix quickly, as has been mentioned above. This is all for nought anyway as the Chancellor probably won't be prepared to make even small funds available. He's a proper fiscal conservative anyway, but Brexit is going to magnify that for the time being.

Germany do invariably take their foot off the gas in friendlies - we beat them before the Euros, for example. They could well win it again this time, but I'd be more concerned with England being drawn against Brazil of the two.

Care to paste the article text in here so I don't have to give them a click?

We could get a repeat of the 2002 'Group of Death' featuring Argentina, England, Sweden and Nigeria. I wouldn't fancy that much, but then again we didn't last time.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/22/how-di...t-2017-general/

I got us getting Russia, Tunisia and South Korea. That'd be a very favourable draw.

64% of 2015 UKIP voters voted Tory in 2017. That's well above the margin of error.

Apparently in Australia you are more likely to win election if your surname begins with 'A'. Try working out why that might be...