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Good summary IA. Fact is, we’re still not good enough, and had we gone up, we’d have struggled, especially as the budget is said to be a lot smaller next season. The positives are that the club is still there, and despite all the challenges of the toughest season in the Iron’s history, we nearly got promoted.
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Beware of Alfreton, they’re having a good spell.
Only lost one in the last ten and scored more goals than Tamworth this season.1 user thanked author for this post.
The main issue here is the woman’s right to choose v religious patriarchs’ wish to impose their views on women; views based on pre-modern ideas about the creation of life.
The point is this. If abortion were banned, women would still seek it out, and the practice would be driven underground, just as it was in the past, with (usually poor) women enduring some of the most dangerous and barbaric medical practices imaginable, at the hands of charlatans and snake oil salespeople. Once again, it would become a cottage industry practised in back streets by the bad, mad and impecunious. Desirable? I don’t think so.
But let’s be clear, there are still far too many unwanted pregnancies, and the key to preventing many of them is education and contraception. With better education in schools and families, not least in some of the most staunch, severe and fundamental religious communities where contraception and sex are still taboo, women can grow to be confident and educated to take decisions which prevent unwanted pregnancy.
So, forget all the pompous piffle and frankly hypocritical comments about “ideological preference” from the ideologically motivated religious lobby. Instead, JI and others should consider how much their views are shared with fundamentalists of all kinds, especially Muslims, when it comes to basic issues around women’s rights, human rights, democracy and the death penalty. They’d be quite at home in Saudi Arabia; in fact I believe there are some cheap deals to Mecca, currently.
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S’pose JI’s lack of self-awareness plus obvious contradictions and double standards have a limited comedic value, as do those of Trump and Truss… which take us seamlessly back to the OP.
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Truss lacks any sense of the ridiculous. She and those like her are full of their own sense of entitlement, and seek constant admiration to bolster their egos. They have 0% self-awareness, but 100% self-confidence and 100% self-delusion, so they just blunder on arrogantly.
There are lots in public life, Trump, Johnson, Farage… and to some extent it has got them where they are today.
But another thing is the way the religious extremists on here align themselves with the far-right. This is odd, but digging into it, it’s quite logical.
For them, social divisions are part of a wider battle for Britain; one of Christianity v Islamism.
You can see the fear of Islam in their posts. Remember all the Brexit propaganda from Les and the jonnies about an impending Turkish invasion? And the links to far-right websites? JI telling us ‘we’re at war’, as well as the lunacy of BPG’s videos.
For the extremists on here and elsewhere, their religion is a symbol of identity, allegiance, and insurance for an imaginary afterlife. It’s a passcard to paradise. It’s an intense, cultish subscription which is almost impossible to drop or change. They didn’t choose it, it chose them, and giving up would be like giving up football for tiddlywinks, or worse, like an Iron fan becoming a Mariner!
Despite the ridiculousness of all this, rational argument, evidence and facts have no effect, so all the political extremism of the far-right seems justified in order to ‘save’ Christianity.
It’s reinforced and made worse by right-wing politicians and news sources which play up division and lay it on thick in the cosplay of culture wars, to distract the public from calamitous state of everything at present. It worked with Brexit, just, but it won’t again, as the next election will show.
But the oddest thing seems to be the tendency now to talk about Europe v Islam, when a few years back we were being told about the ‘evil empire’, and how those nasty foreigners were responsible for all our ills! Now it seems the great nations of Europe are our allies! Rank hypocrisy or what? What would Jesus say?
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Somewhere On High
There’s a queue at the pearly gates of heaven. St Paul is still rigorously inspecting everyone’s credentials. Supplicants’ life stories pass swiftly before his eyes, as he survey’s their suitability for eternal membership. It’s been busy recently, and behind some 30000 despondent figures from the Middle-East, an expectant “Jihadi” humbly waits his turn, as his application is reviewed.
“So, is this the best you have to offer?” Paul asks him, sternly. “You’re one of those keyboard warrior jonnies, criticising human rights, immigrants, asylum seekers, trade unionists, doctors, nurses, teachers, women seeking abortions, even Afro-Caribbean lesbians from the comfort of your sitting room.
And you’re a fanboy of those vile American sites, those telling you to get angry, and support the depraved Farage, Johnson, Trump and even the despicable Netinyahu. It’s quite a CV.
Oh, and what’s this? Once upon a time, you thought the advent of conspiracy tv stations and websites served to “balance progressive establishment power”, despite 80% of mainstream media already supporting the Tories. Odd, when elsewhere you plead for ‘facts’ and ‘reality’! And, it seems you believed in free speech at all costs – presumably this includes speech which is harmful to others, like your ‘right’ to be publicly racist, or the ‘right’ of others to deny the holocaust!
Even the ABC does not escape your bile – a pious virtue signaller, in your eyes! But don’t you realise it’s his job to signal virtue, you fool!” thunders Paul, enraged.
“Jihadi… it seems you have an affinity with the thick, selfish, angry people who have dominated the Tory party and its client media for a decade or more. Do you seriously think there’s a place in here for folk like that? Do you think Jesus would have turned away the so-called “small boats”. Do you seriously think in His world, the meek shall inherit bugger-all? It’s a perversion of the Christian ethic. Your politics have usurped your religion.
And finally, all the above expressed through your self-regard on the website ‘Iron-Burp’ means that, all considered, there’s no paradise for you Jihadi, we’re full up!” Paul says firmly.
“But where can I go, he pleads, who will have me?”
“Well you can try Old Nic, downstairs in the boiler room – he often takes your sort. You’ll like it, they are your kind of people – ex-Kippers, a few freemasons, Daily Wail editors… the Tory front bench. It’s hard work down there, but very warm.”
“But I only tried to interpret…” mumbles Jihadi, forlornly. “And freemasons, what do they have to do with it?”
“Because their so-called ‘grand architect of the universe’ isn’t one of us, he isn’t Christian! Now, be gone,” bellows Paul, “for I must go back to assessing other applicants.”
Jihadi hangs his head and turns away, as the gentle, pitter-patter sound of Sounds Like Rain echoes over the tannoy, and from the celestial stadium somewhere in the sky, the ghost of William Punton looks benignly on.
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