17 stone giant

Fantastic match between City and Spurs. I thought City would get through, despite the 1st leg deficit. Both semi-finals look intriguing. I fancy Liverpool and Spurs.

People pay to watch rugby league every weekend while there are kids in Africa starving. I'm sure you've seen the adverts. Just £10 a month can provide clean water etc. Nah, I'll go and watch Wigan Warriors instead. I'm not saying it's right. We're all guilty of doing it, mind. I don't watch Wigan Warriors though. Southampton FC I do.

Bring back GB and bring back Obama. He was good. A million times better than what they've got now. American president behaving on Twitter like a teenager. The world has gone mad. Get me off it.

Ice hockey is a brilliant game. I went to watch it in Sheffield. Annoying listening to the tannoy announcer mind and his repetitive shouts for the Sheffield star steelers, or whatever it was. Much preferred going to watch Great Britain in Nottingham. What's this thread about? Oh, the NHL. Yeah, I don't support a team. Dabbled with the Pittsburgh Penguins a bit in the early 2000's, but don't really care about them or anyone else. Love ice hockey at the Winter Olympics though. And used to play as Chicago on NHLPA 93 on the Super Nintendo. They had the best goalie - Ed Balfour. Him and Patrick Roy from Montreal. Jeremy Roenick at centre had some great skills as well.

UKIP are finished as a serious political force. They're too badly damaged now. The Brexit Party are the ones to vote for if you're pro-Brexit or just want to send a message to our MP's to get their act together.

On the one hand I can see that this seems like a very sensible approach. The problem I can see with it, however, is that it breaks down in reality. How do you arrive at the detailed proposal, and how can people have confidence in the process that leads to that so called detailed proposal? For example, suppose there is a Leave vote in the advisory referendum. How could any Leave voter be certain that what then gets negotiated with the EU, is actually anything close to what really could be negotiated, if there was real jeopardy regarding the UK leaving? I mean, David Cameron was a Remainer. He could have gone to the EU, concocted some hopeless deal with them, and then returned to the UK and said "this is the best we can get, folks. Do you want to leave with these terms, or would you rather remain after all." That's the problem I see with it. No Leave voter is going to accept that Cameron got the best possible deal. We sort of have that problem right now, with some leavers thinking that Theresa May deliberately got a bad deal, in order to try and scupper Brexit. That situation would be many times worse if it the negotiations were being done by a Remain supporting PM, and based on an MAYBE we're leaving scenario. Leave voters are going to assume that it was a remainer stitch up. And why wouldn't it be? Cameron wanted to remain, the EU wanted the UK to remain, so why would it be in either of their interests to come up with any sort of decent proposal? It's in the interest to do precisely the opposite, and to basically portray leaving as an utterly disastrous choice. I hope I've explained that ok. I'm a few glasses of wine down right now, because it's Easter. I might not even have fully understood the point in the text that I was quoting. That is a definite possibility right now. My head isn't in the best shape.

I strongly agree with that. I saw a Leave voter interviewed recently and he said he wasn't going to vote in the EU elections. Hearing that made me very angry. It doesn't exactly show that he had a strong commitment to leaving. It's as if he voted for it three years ago, it hasn't been delivered, but he can't now be bothered to go down the voting station again to give MP's a kick up the backside to get it sorted. Probably got more important things to do - like going to the pub! Despite being a Remain voter, I've always been one of those more willing to accept the outcome of the referendum and tried to take the view that we should do what the majority voted for. But when I see an attitude like that, it does make me rethink things somewhat.

I voted for Brexit Party and Yes in the poll. It was only an indicative vote, though. It was intended to be non-legally binding and advisory only. I might change my mind between now and election day.

I suppose it could be argued that we need to be patient, because it's a long term project. By playing as GB - albeit only once every four years - it will hopefully encourage the development of players in Scotland and Wales (Ireland too, if they're included). Right now there aren't any/many players from those countries that would make the team/squad on merit, but hopefully in four years time there will be. And even more again in eight years time. That surely is the hope and the thing that eventually will help to distinguish GB from England. We're only right at the very start of this journey.

I definitely agree with that, and thankfully Kevin Sinfield does too. As he said, it would devalue the shirt and what has gone before, to do anything other than select solely on merit.

As a neutral and outsider, the "best" for me - as in the one I'd most like to watch - is Wigan v St Helens.

Well, that would make you one of the very few on here that doesn't. Anyway, let's at least hope that the GB squad has some non-English players in it. Otherwise it really will have been a pointless exercise.

You know much more about rugby league than I do. I'm sure you can come up with some non-English players that they might choose to include in the squad. Some that I've seen mentioned are Regan Grace, Lachlan Coote and Jackson Hastings. I'm just giving my opinion that I can't believe that there won't be any non-English players in the squad. I might be proven wrong come November.

I thought I'd been fairly clear about things. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have deflected. Anyway, I feel like we're going round in circles a bit, so I'll leave it there.

I know there aren't very many, but surely there must be some? The GB squad won't surely be all English?

I'm a global green, and I have nothing but hatred for anyone who isn't. So, who's on TEAM GG then? We've got Gary, Jeremy, Caroline Lucas...is that Bob Geldof or Nick Drake? Hopefully both. I'm not sure on the others.

Thankfully The Pope is praying for “all those who are striving to cope with this tragic situation”, so that does give me some reassurance that things will improve from now on.

Yes, I've acknowledged that. But Natalie Rowe wasn't talking about all those incidents. She was talking only about the one incident she had had with Boris, and was arguing that this alone made him unfit to be PM. That's what I was disagreeing with. The fact that there might be a whole load of other reasons too that point towards him being unfit to be PM, is a separate point. Personally, I don't want him as PM, and I wouldn't have voted for him as London Mayor. But I have to recognise that a lot of other people think differently to me. For example, 1,054,811 Londoners voted for him to become their Mayor in 2012. That's a lot of racist pigs we have in London, IF we're agreeing with Natalie Rowe's analysis. Unless of course we're saying that it's fine to be a racist pig if you're only the Mayor of London or an MP, and that it only becomes an issue when they want to become PM.

I haven't seen anybody defending Boris over the Natalie Rowe incident. Everyone has condemned that as being wrong. What I have said is that I don't think that one incident alone is enough to declare Boris a racist pig and deem him unfit to be PM. Neither do I think me taking that view automatically makes me a racist pig too. I raised the point initially because I've noticed that that style of arguing seems very prevalent nowadays. I'm sure some of us can remember George Bush Jr with his "you're either with us, or against us" remark. Not only does someone want to give their own opinion, but they also want to say that anyone who thinks differently is XYZ (which is always something bad). I think that's a road we should be careful about going down.

I certainly don't think that the incident was acceptable or humorous. My point was that people sometimes make mistakes and do things that they later regret. The question for each of us is when do we judge that those things have happened so often that it becomes more than just a mistake. I personally don't think that Boris Johnson is a racist. Likewise, I don't think that Tony Blair is racist/xenophobic towards the Welsh. I could be wrong about one or both of those things, but that's just my opinion.

Oh, sorry, I assumed you had been following the thread: I disagree with her analysis that - solely on the basis of that incident - anyone thinking Boris is fit to be PM, is a racist pig. It's not a question of whether overall he's fit to be PM - that's a different matter altogether. It's a question of whether that one incident alone is enough to deem him unfit. In which case, it would also beg the question is he fit to be a MP, was he fit to be London Mayor, was he fit to be allowed to appear on HIGNFY 23 times? And are the people who approved of those things also racist pigs? I made the point that although what he did is clearly unacceptable, that people do make mistakes. I just think you'd be setting the bar very high if you were to deem him unfit solely on that basis. Maybe I'm just too tolerant, I don't know. Maybe Tony Blair was unfit to be PM after his outburst against the Welsh. I'm sure some people might think so. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4290624.stm

So, unless I'm mistaken, we're both disagreeing with Natalia Rowe's analysis of the situation. Do you not think therefore that because we have reached a different conclusion to her regarding the incident, that she might say that WE were ignoring the racism?

Ok, thanks. I can remember now some of those examples. He's a bit of a Prince Phillip when it comes to putting his foot in his mouth. I'm not sure that all the examples I've read about in this thread necessarily make me think he's not fit to be PM purely for those reasons. After all, it hasn't stopped him in the past from becoming Mayor of London, and he is also currently an MP (not that that says much either way). I certainly don't think that anyone who does still want him as PM, is a racist pig - which was the original point that I was addressing. I do, however, hope that there are better candidates than Boris to be our next PM.

Please list for me the other examples of him being racist, and I'll be more than happy to consider whether I think that constitutes a pattern.

I do agree that having taken the decision to play as Great Britain this year (and therefore not having any England matches until 2020), it would have been a nice idea to actually get behind the concept and put some focus on it. Make it GB watch and you can then focus too on all the non-English players that will be in contention for a place in the team and squad. That includes any heritage players that are eligible.