Jonny Vegas

Fully agree Keith. Our model is much more comparable to North Korean than the USA or elsewhere.

5 hours ago, Loki said:

Isn't this precisely the sort of comment that @stewdoggwas talking about?  I don't think there's a best way of taking that, it reads as (and is) straight patronising.

I do wonder if it's a particular trait of modern Britain that we have such an awkward relationship with patriotism.  In most countries, the death of the Head Of State would be met with a similar emotional response but I wonder if you'd also get a subset of people deciding to judge everyone because of it.  Maybe.  There are certainly countries like the US though where patriotism is assumed and adopted by all sides in the vast majority.  Flying the flag there doesn't cause nearly as much controversy as over here, it's very much part of the everyday culture, along with the pledge of allegiance etc.

Patriotism and the american flag isn't very popular with native americans in the USA. The vast majority of the population of the USA are migrants who either themselves or ancestors went there in search of a better life, many of them because Britain had invaded and pillaged their countries.

Patriotism and flag waving here has also largely been hijacked by the far right which makes it an even more difficult thing for many people including myself to identify with or support.

Furthermore the worship of a non elected head of state born into a life of obscene luxury isn't what I'd call patriotism. I think its telling that the majority of people I know who are very pro royalty/the queen are over 60 and or of a military background where it was indoctrinated into them that these people were important and should be given special treatment rather than people coming to their own conclusions.

A lot of businesses or celebrities "paying tribute" will be doing so out of fear of being given shit for not doing so.

Trevor Sinclair has had to delete his twitter, is facing the sack from his job and a barrage of racist abuse, general abuse and death threats for a tweet simply asking why should he and others mourn. Its absurd.

I cannot name you a single thing the queen has realistically done for me or anyone I know in her entire lifetime. I do remember her coming on TV wearing a £5m hat surrounded by gold whilst people were losing their livelihoods and unable to attend loved ones funerals during covid telling us all to hang on in there though.

I absolutely respect peoples wishes to mourn if they feel so inclined to do so but I do not believe its something that should be enforced on 60 million people.

The vast majority of people putting up posts on social media about it are the same ones who post about every big incident the media tells them to care about.

Day's like today are very handy for identifying who out of your casual and work friends are normal people or not based on whether or not they put a social media post thanking a woman they've never for "all she's done" for them and/or "the country" without being able to give a single example of what exactly that was.

Already pretty sick of it being everywhere. I turned on Sky earlier and saw my entire planner was a garish purple tribute to her.

I went out for food and on the radio the presenter sent his well wishes to the royals, who almost certainly would have listening to Absolute Rock at the time, before then playing that Coldplay "nooobooodddyyy sssaaaaiiidddd iitttt wassss eaaaassssyyy," song.

It genuinely felt like a comedy sketch poking fun at how mental britain is.

I appreciate that she's someone's mum, sister, gran etc. but she's also had 96 years of obscene luxury whilst she sat back and did fuck all as children in "her country" went to bed hungry mongst many other terrible things. 

There's probably a lot of nice people who died alone today without fanfare that didn't spend £12m of tax payers money to prevent their son being held accountable for his alleged noncery too.

Punk's main appeal was that he was so different to what else was in WWE at the time. Do I think he would have the same success, popularity and impact that he had if he'd have been doing it 10 years later? Absolutely not.

His success was more about timing and opportunity than unreal ability.

People saying he's the biggest star in AEW is way off the mark for me, Jericho is a much bigger star than Punk for starters.

I really wish it was a storyline because one time renegade upstart rebel CM Punk becoming everything he hated and stood against and wanting to shit on the new wave would be a fantastic story arc built back from day 1 in the company saying hes back for the fans etc. 

If the story was Punk has turned into an egotistical, self obsessed twat it would be very entertaining rather than the reality of its just becoming increasingly apparent thats the reality.

7 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I'm sorry, are you actually suggesting over achieving is a bad thing?

Absolutely and obviously not. The point I'm trying and have clearly failed to make is that he over achieved largely because he was handed gigantic opportunities most predominantly the "pipe bomb" segment which was different to something anyone had seen before and elevated him instantly overnight.

He acts like everything he's getting is because he really is the best and deserves to be at the top when in reality theres numerous people in AEW better than he is at every aspect of the game. 

Good for him that he's over achieved but his fragile ego knows it deep down and no matter how many little hissy fits he throws nobody sensible is buying him as anything other than deluded and bitter.

I spent a couple of nights with my wife and kids up at Loch Ness staying in a little village called Fort Augustus. 

They had a chippy there called Monster Fish And Chips where I got battered slices of stornoway black pudding and chips. Sublime.

The absolute Irony that in maybe 2004 I went to an FWA show and they handed out free wrestling magazines to I think everyone with Shawn Michaels on the cover.

I asked Punk to sign mine and he drew all over Michaels' face and said "he's one of the biggest pieces of shit this business has ever seen". 

Now he's a 97 HBK tribute act without the in ring ability or charisma.

One of the most overrated performers of all time who carried a hugely over achieving career off the back of being handed an absolute golden envelope with the original "pipe bomb" promo.

In fairness though Cabana definitely is everything Punk says.

3 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Slight aside, but one of my favourite games is seeing randomly named dishes in restaurants and texting an Indian mate to see if it's "real"

If it's not, he will invariably respond "Nah, made up for the white people"

My favourite is Duck Tikka-Otty Tooty which he assures me no such thing exists.

The restaurant is called The Gaylord (tee hee hee)

I think 90% of the menu in every indian/pakistani restaurant is made up for white people. Even the dishes with the names of traditional dishes are generally the white people variant.

The best and most traditional food in my opinion is always from the "sweet centres", not sure how common they are outside of the west midlands and theres a few in Glasgow. They predominantly sell the sweets like barfi, gulab jamun, jalebi, patisa etc but the savoury food is usually exceptional too.

One of my mates would always order in takeaways/restaurants in urdu and one time when I asked him what he had said he explained "Im telling them not to make mine how they do for white people". 

Back to chippy chat...scottish chippy curry sauce and english chippy curry sauce are worlds apart. In england its sweet, lumpy and generally watery. In Scotland its generally more akin to chinese curry sauce. In Ireland I've generally experienced the same.

Chippy tea for me on Tuesday night, counting the days. McMonagles chippy boat on the river clyde, "the worlds only sail thru chippy".

I see mental health advocate CM Punk began his sympathetic baby face "underdog" redemption promo segment last night by calling a random fan a fat virgin.

He really is a helmet isn't he.

I really don't like Gargano so I don't particularly want to defend him however I also think the key word is "can" not "will" get whatever they want in life.

Sadly there's millions of people who are going to work their arses off their entire life and never get a clean run of the balls. 

I'm in agreements its standard plucky underdog face spiel.

15 hours ago, air_raid said:

Are we to infer you took your kid to the merch stand, close enough to be able to touch the t-shirts, then didn’t buy him one?

I took him to the back of the 200 person deep huddle around the stall, realised the smallest size would dwarf him and the prices were insane then the next morning ordered him 4 "custom" t shirts in his size printed with brushed up images of his chosen designs of his favourites from the website for less than the price of one. 🙂

Teaching him a valuable lesson in patience (and piracy).

No compete clauses are generally only for significant PPV/TV appearances I believe.

With the greatest of respect 99% of the wrestling world isn't ever going to know or care if a released WWE guy shows up in a UK promotion.

11 hours ago, s279 said:

For anyone after a bit of overpriced tat.

I'll have a look as I wouldn't mind something from the event, but I cant see the T-Shirt designs being much good. Interested to see what "exclusive merch" covers other than the T-Shirts?

I drove my son down to Newcastle when they were here in April and I honestly could not believe what they were charging for merch.

From memory I believe the standard t shirts were £35 and the generic "UK tour" one was £30 and was made of the thinnest, cheapest material possible. I am not exaggerating when I say it was practically transparent.

The stalls were absolutely mobbed and I could not believe that so many people were buying stuff at those prices in todays day and age where you could go back to your seat and order everything on sale for half the price, or have ordered it a week prior to going and worn in there with you. 

Baffling.

No, I believe that is also true.

14 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

To be fair most wrestlers could probably beat up Punk fairly easy. He's not exactly the most imposing physical specimen. 

He is however someone who dedicated a number of years full time to MMA training which considering as far as my knowledge extends, Page has no "shoot" fighting background would make his eventual pasting so hilarious.

The funniest thing about the Page/Punk drama would be that if Punk decided to shoot on Page I have 100% confidence that Page would absolutely leather the little rat.

Looking forward to RAW tonight and I do expect there might be one or two memorable moments to hopefully signify the beginning of a new era.

Montez Ford's heel turn and the beginning of his singles run is a near certainty tonight in my eyes.

3 hours ago, Infinity Land said:

I guess this is more of a Twitter thing, but I figure it would be appreciated here more. Due to the Eddie love.

10-30 second sound bytes on most of the AEW roster.

 

I keep watching Kingston's stuff hoping to understand what it is that people see in him and I still don't get it. I think he had an awful look, is shite in the ring and shite on the mic. Has a wrestler ever screamed CZW as loudly as him? I don't think so.

He doesn't even come across in the slightest bit intimidating or scary to me whatsoever.

14 hours ago, Louch said:

Raw is NXT wouldn't work. The wider Audience in wrestling has always came from big guys doing less. Raw needs it’s Next Nash than it does it’s NXT anyone 

I was speaking to a work mate the other day who's a few years younger about what "growing up" feels like and the changes you notice when you have done so.

For me, in terms of wrestling growing up is realising or accepting that small athletic guys with no real character, charisma or persona, no selling smacking the living shit out of each other for 35 minutes is actually shit no matter how much I used to think it was amazing.

The most entertaining NXT match ever was Eva Marie vs Bayley.

As much as people keep saying its not about parties or the SNP one of the main points for a lot of the people in here and in general is to get away from the tories and the current labour regime.

The labour regime wont be forever, Starmer has no chance of ever being PM even as much of an absolute shit show Johnson is.

Another huge concern of mine is independence happening, there not being any benefit and as things potentially get worse it opens the door massively for increased support in scots Tories or similar. The support for Scots Tories is already higher than its ever been in my life and Id imagine higher than its ever been full stop.

A scots tory affiliate with power in Scotland being spoonfed by UK govt Tories would be significantly worse than the situation we currently have in my opinion.

Regarding taxation I've always thought the fairest way would be to massively simplify the system. Let's come up with a figure where we're not going to tax anyone earning less than that, then let's have everyone else pay 20% on all income regardless of income and take away all the loop holes and means to avoid doing so.

I don't earn, won't ever earn and don't personally know anyone who earns £100k a year however them paying £40-50k a year in tax to me is absolutely wild.

I think the number of wealthy people using various loopholes or tax avoidance methods is all the proof you need as to whether they'd be likely to leave altogether if those methods were removed or their tax was dramatically increased. The wealthy rarely NEED to live or operate anywhere, they can pick and choose where to go.

Inflated tax also in my opinion causes people to question what level of earning they need to reach to make it worth passing certain thresholds. My annual wage means that if I were to take a role paid higher than mine in the same company or work any overtime it would push me over the threshold and mean any extra earnings would fall into the 40% tax bracket. 

I make career based decisions not to do so and dont do overtime unless I need the money for something specific as I feel its not worth the extra work, pressure, stress, responsibility to pay 40% of the money I get for that to the government for no change to mine or my families situation or quality of life whatsoever.

I'd need to make huge sacrifices to time spent with my family and personal life to try and reach a level in the company that would pay a wage high enough to even consider it then being financially beneficial enough after giving 40% of that away on top of the income tax I already pay.

46 minutes ago, David said:

This is a point that most people seem to be ignoring for whatever reason. Would the population be willing to accept a hike in taxes? Or a decrease in public spending? All in the name of being independent?

Let's be honest, Scotland has a pretty cushy deal at the moment. We enjoy the benefits of being part of the UK, but have a lot of autonomy to do things differently. 

Not only is it a huge question to ask whether the people clamouring for independence would be willing to accept a hike in taxes plus a reduction in public spending but also how do the SNP spin it? Those are measures that they've constantly criticised but would be absolutely essential to give things any hope of even being the exact same standard as they are now.

My position has always been the same, I am entirely on board with the IDEA of independence. In 2014 I didn't vote because I felt that I wasn't "for" the union but I also had not been convinced by their campaign that there was a good chance of things being better if we were independent. 

We're 8 years on without anyone really having addressed or answered any of the concerns or questions about how or why it would or could be better other than having full control in our own hands.

A large part of me cant help but feel its exceptionally sneaky as well to try and capitalise on the whole of the western world hitting the shits to hope people here attribute all of that on being under westminster control rather than something that seems to be effecting everyone, everywhere to similar levels just in some places the people in control aren't as much of a cock.

A lot of SNP "wins" are in my opinion largely perspective based rather than fact based.

Having a "better" NHS is largely based off of wait times and availability of services yet there isn't hugely dramatic differences between England and Scotland, despite I believe Scotland having a smaller population than London.

As others have mentioned one of the SNPs main jibes is tory privitasion of the NHS...something they've been doing here for years.

Nearly everything they (rightfully) lambast the tories for they've been doing here for years just in a smaller scale. Even their own economists as well as independent ones have said independence isn't possible without an increase in tax and a decrease in public spending/services. Austerity measures they've built their entire party around condoning.

They do all the same dodgy syphoning off money and contracts to their friends that the Tories do as well, the only reasons its on a smaller scale is that they have less money to do it with.

I'm sure pretty much every major figure in the EU has publicly said we wouldn't be able to just rejoin the EU...but Sturgeon is still saying it.

The EU wants all member states running at a public spending deficit of no more than 3% the UK as a whole runs or was running at 2.5%...Scotland is or was running at 8.6%. 

I know lots have said voting Indy doesn't mean SNP being in control but lets be realistic, they'd be in charge at the start whilst everything wad set up and then our alternatives would be brand new start ups or voting for the british funded exisiting parties, I can't help but imagine it being anything other than utter chaos.

The vast majority of people that I know who vote for the SNP all say the same thing, they acknowledge that the SNP overall have done an absolutely terrible job in the 12 or so years they've been in power here. However they say thay as they're the only party who are pushing for independence and as long as they are, they will keep voting for them.

My belief is that the SNP know this is the case and will keep dangling the carrot to keep their power in Scotland for as long as they can. I think in these circumstances they know or believe an actual referendum let alone independence is highly unlikely but they can put it on the table and blame England for it not happening.

I'm all for the idea of independence, I've no time for Johnson or any of the other tories, nor diet tory Kier Starmer however as others have said, pretty much none of the concerns I had in 2014 have been addressed whatsoever, right down to not even having any clear plan on what currency would be used.

As a father of two young kids and a mortgage to pay, as much as I dislike the tories, the union jack and even the term british, I dislike plunging my family's immediate future into even more instability and uncertainty than is neccessary during times which are already absolutely fucking brutal without someone being able to give me pretty specific examples as to why it would be so much better than things are now.

I watched the show and enjoyed it, I still don't really get people's obsession or fandom over Okada.

Will Ospreay may well be a twat in real life but what a performer.