Shine Like Marble

@steven67hartley Big Ron just dripping with personality. Such a contrast to what we have now.

Was just on my way into the Stretford End this night 42 years ago. Easily the best Old Trafford match in my lifetime.

@admcollingwood Thomas777 spoke of this:

There is a weird tendency among western 'thinkers' to apply post-hoc justifications to every act of aggression. Start a war with Iran, and use Iran's retaliation as justification for starting the war in the first place. But we've seen this story before! Roll up the world's most powerful military alliance to the borders of a nation to which it is openly hostile, and then use the reaction as justification for the policy. These are basic life lessons that most ordinary people learned before even their teenage years. I don't know what life was like for the young people who lived in wealthy suburbs and went on to live in the gilded world of American Ivy League universities and Washington, DC think tanks, but in the rather more rough and ready world of Tyneside, we learned pretty young that if you start a quarrel with somebody in the school playground, or pub, and get punched in the teeth, that was probably your fault, not theirs. "But I was in the RIGHT! Not FAIR!" cries the pathologically entitled. "Yeah, that's not how life works, kid," explain the neighbourhood dads. I cannot emphasise enough that this is really not a good way to run foreign policy. You may not life the Iranian revolutionary regime, or Putin or Xi, or whomever -- and as a Briton, I have different preferences for the way a country should be run. But you have to live with them, or live with the consequences of fighting them. Infantile, post-hoc justifications for your behaviour uttered through tears as you dab the blood trickling from your swollen nose simply won't do.

@techtoby__ If COVID had not already made clear, the average Brit is a spiritual slave who desires nothing more than to have the boot of the state stamped firmly in their own face.

Average British comment on Salaries

@rioferdy5 Was there that night. Sir Bobby leading the team up to collect the European Cup 50 years after Munich & refusing a medal from Michel Platini. Incredible. That man alone had more aura than most football clubs.

Just sat & watched this back… At the time, I never realised the aura that was within the club then...imagine looking in on that...Sir Bobby, Sir Alex, Best in the world/entertaining CR7, most apps in club history Giggsy etc..... Mental 😱🔥

@admcollingwood Singapore, currently touted as a safe haven for those pulling funds out of Dubai, faces the same fate when the US confront China. The Gulf have backed DT with billions in investment yet have been abandoned for an Israeli PM who dumped him in 2020 at the first opportunity.

Being an US ally at the frontier of one of Washington's geopolitical conflicts is increasingly turning into a huge liability. Imagine you are a member of the Taiwan elite. You look at the state of Ukraine. You look at the UAE. Maybe the Hong Kong outcome doesn't look so bad?

@JAYSONMACBRIDE @ClarkeMicah The arc of history is long, but it bends toward @ClarkeMicah being right.

Peter Hitchens has said it over and over again for decades. Ignored and ignored. Yet, those who ignore, later complain about the very things he warns. I cringe at the odd worshipping by certain parts of the right over Liz Truss. x.com/i/status/20322…

@StretfordPaddck They will knock down Old Trafford with the promise of a state of the art modern stadium that is the envy of the world only to build an anonymous three tier bowl as cheaply as possible. It’ll have as much personality as The Riverside.

🏟️ INEOS could scrap the planned “tent” canopy roof from their proposed new stadium design to cut costs. The feature alone was estimated to cost around £200m, and removing it could reduce the overall budget for the 100,000-seat stadium project. Behind the scenes, United are understood to still be working on funding for the ambitious project. #MUFC

@eugyppius1 Iran’s failure to establish deterrence after the Soleimani assassination has played a big part in the current disaster. Caution & diplomatic efforts at de-escalation just make you a push over in Washington’s eyes.

I’m hardly an Iran doomer, I took loads of shit for not freaking about the 12-day war. This is different, and so much here suggests the Americans imagined this would be another low-consequence intervention. They spent no effort trying to sell to the war to the public ahead of time, have yet to achieve real unity in messaging about war aims, don’t seem to have a plan to open the strait, etc

It’s pretty obvious that the mainline MAGA accounts will continue to boost the Iran war whatever happens. It’s also obvious that Trump and his administration know the war is not going as they’d hoped.

Huntley's crimes, infamously abhorrent as they were, ought to prompt some degree of reflection on the nature of punishment in the Yookay. Modern Britain did away with capital punishment, just as so many other supporting structures within society have been kicked out from under us over the years. As much as I can understand people celebrating vigilante justice in prisons - it points to a larger issue. There is something intellectually cowardly about a country unwilling to (re-)institute the death penalty, or even reserve it, in theory at least, for the very gravest, most depraved and unrepentant cases. There is nothing civilised about gleefully celebrating the enactment of justice at, essentially, the hands of the mob for doing what society was too weak to do. This is a society that celebrates the abortions of millions with gleeful abandon and yet guards the Ian Huntley's of the world with a sensitivity and rigour that so many vulnerable members of British society could only hope to receive. Britain is not a civilised country. This truth is self-evident.

"When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer … Bristow's only 27."

@Frencheconomics Have you ever listened to a “green” activist ffs. This is the intended outcome of policies designed to reduce consumption, fully supported by the Tories & Labour. This was always the plan, our entire political class supports this & have no desire to reverse it.

UK electricity generation has fallen 25% from its peak in 2004. Per capita electricity consumption is a third the level of the United States. The UK has the most costly electricity in the world. Half the gas we consume comes from the Norwegian side of the North Sea basin. The residual imported LNG has 4x the carbon footprint of supplying our own. And most depressingly of all the result is a deteriorating UK Balance of Payments, a weaker pound, and a bigger hit to the cost of living. And still the useful idiots want to further constrain UK energy production through high taxes, banning new licences, and gold-plating new energy infrastructure. Their luxury beliefs are behind the awful household disposable income growth of recent years. 🤡.

Looking for something?

@AaronBastani “No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.”

Collective psychology of these people is, essentially, Tony Montana in the final scene of Scarface. Humiliation is the worst of all worlds. Many in Europe and America don’t understand it because martyrdom is now such an utterly alien concept. That doesn’t make it any less real.

‘We had the best campaign, the biggest campaign. The king of France was there - John the Good - they call him. I call him John the captured.’

@DaytrippingRed Defoe is a great shout. Damien Duff at Blackburn. I’m sure he’d have ended up at Utd if the Russian hadn’t taken over Chelsea in 2003.

What player/players back in the day did you think “he’d have been brilliant at United” Maybe not totally obvious ones per se Always felt Jermaine Defoe would have been electric for us and for some weird reason always fancied Tim Cahill as a United player

⏳ #ThrowbackThursday! ⚽ On this day in 1910 the first official match was played at United Football Ground… or Old Trafford as we know it today. 🌟 The 116 years in between have seen some of the game’s great teams, managers and players star at the home of @ManUtd. #tbt

@pjcrerand A wonderful man & a genuine class act.

my dad signed for united this day in 1963 a lucky lucky man up the reds god bless sir matt and the busby babes

@MUFSeeAlerts Unless the game was on the 6th or it was a decade anniversary (40th, 50th etc) the club has never held a minute’s silence. Just black armbands on the nearest league game.

When did we stop having a minute silence for the Busby Babes?

Geoff Bent. Roger Byrne. Eddie Colman. Duncan Edwards. Mark Jones. David Pegg. Tommy Taylor. Billy Whelan. Walter Crickmer. Tom Curry. Bert Whalley. 🌹 Eternal.

@sulkfenomeno We literally bombed their country but they still love the Reds. Unbelievable.

A Salford based alcoholic will wake up one day, steaming off his head, and claim they aren’t real fans because “they’ve never been to Old Trafford” 😂 This is what makes us the biggest club itw.