hw88

Yes, the board is moderated by the disciples of Mrs Whitehouse. How on earth are we going to discuss farm fowl of the UK without mentioning charlie oscar charlie kilo? Oh, and City will win the league tonight!

Cumbria used to have a SL team - Workington Town. No need to franchise.

Exactly. We, as a society, are so divorced from the natural world hardly anyone would survive. I sometimes watch the 'Naked and Afraid' type programmes were people who fancy themselves as hunters and outdoorsmen/women try to survive for a couple of weeks with next to nothing. They all end up starving - nobody thrives.

All farm animals would disappear, there would be no use for them. All the available land would have to be turned over to arable production, even land that really isn't suitable for such. Without animal manure chemical fertilizer would have to be used, not very eco-friendly, to maintain production levels. With more land given over to farming, wildlife habitat would be further reduced leading to a greater chance of extinction of our increasingly fragile wild populations. As you said, these people are a sandwich short of a picnic.

Quite! The whole human-animal interaction thing is a minefield of problems riddled with contradictions and hypocracy. Nature is 'red in tooth and claw' as they say, and we are part of nature. Zoos, for instance, a valuable tool for better learning and understanding, or just a prison for animals? The way the world's population is rising and natural habitat is decreasing soon the only place animals will exist is in zoos!

Me too. Classifying cities by population is a minefield of delineation problems - urban area?, metropolitain area?, conurbation?, city limits?, etc, etc.

Owning a pet is just animal slavery no matter how good an owner, or should that be overseer, you are.

If it were made shorter with fewer fences and a smaller field it wouldn't be the Grand National, just another steeplechase. It has 30 fences and is over 4 miles to make it the ultimate challenge and differentiate it from other races. You are correct in that it has changed over the years and it is now a pale imitation if what it once was. Ironically more horses have been killed since the course was made safer - 1970s & 80s - 12 deaths in 20 years, 1990s-2010 (after the course was made 'safer') - 17 deaths.

These people won't be happy until we are all vegan and the only sports permitted are yoga and non-contact tai chi.

Then it wouldn't be the Grand National.

Yes and no. A falling horse adds to the spectacle but nobody wants the horse/jockey to be hurt. It's the same with motor racing, everyone likes a spectacular crash but nobody wants the driver to die.

I think that is because, in England, they introduced league fixtures in the 1980s - only a 100 years behind every other sport. Prior to that it was just friendlies - I remember there was a big hoo-hah because Leicester had to change from letters to numbers on the back of their jerseys! So with greater meaning to the fixtures the crowds increased accordingly.

I think the really big crowds were in the late 1940s and 50s - as it was with football. In those days there was no tv, men often worked until noon on Saturdays, shopping was 'womens' work (and certainly not a leisure activity), so going to the match was effectively the only recreational activity on offer. As those things changed the numbers going to sporting events dropped accordingly.

I don't doubt it. Sadly we are no longer in the 1950s and the days of routine big crowds are long gone. Unfortunately it will take a lot more than a new stadium and a rich owner to turn around the fortunes of Oldham and clubs like them. People have simply got out of the habit of going to sporting events, and not just Oldham. These days we will be praising Wigan and Saints for attracting 16,000 or so - in the past 25,000+ was the norm.

Will they? I doubt it, well not in sufficient numbers anyway. Sleeping giant? Possibly, but that term can be applied to any number of teams that have been left behind by SL - Swinton, Workington, Halifax, Hunslet to name but four.

That's even stranger! If you don't play everyone twice or play the same number of games then just go on percentages like they did over here.

Anyone know why they get 2 points for a bye? Surely 0 points would be more logical.

As Earl St Vincent wrote in 1801 "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only that they will not come by sea."

That's Texicans for you! Probably the most important battle for the Americans was Chesapeake 1781 when the French prevented the RN from either evacuating or reinforcing Cornwallis in Virginia so leading to the British surrender at Yorktown and their independence.

Gettysburg lasted for 3 days. The single bloodiest day of the ACW was Sharpsburg (or Antietam).

Tottenham fan? East London? What's wrong with WHU?

Correct, but what I am saying is that some people are predisposed to be left leaning or right leaning. We all have the same information yet some people choose to interpret it one way and others another. Take the asylum seeker situation for instance, we all know they are in a desperate situation yet some people want to welcome them here while others do not. Presumably something in our brains is guiding our decision.

No it isn't. I suspect many people on this board vote Labour and only will ever vote Labour. Why is that? I suspect it is because something deep in their brain is telling them it is the right thing to do. Similarly something deep within a gay persons brain is attracting them to people of the same sex. The same would apply to straight people too.

Is it a choice though? Surely some people are more inclined to be conservative while others are more inclined to be socialist. It all depends how ones brain works. Am I speaking for 'most' straight people? Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I can only go from my own experience - which is that people are quite happy for gay people to get on with their lives but don't constantly want to hear about it ad infinitum as it is not their business.

Am I right in thinking that there is still quite an 'ethnic' element to Australian soccer. I remember in the 70s we used to get the Aussie football results in the summer for pools purposes and a lot of the teams had names like Hellas, Juventus, Croatia, Yugal, Budapest, etc.