exiledwhite2

Bolton is a huge town which makes the decline seem much worse, much more dereliction on show, you can see the past glories too Lots of town centres down south are fine but there's more spending power amongst the locals and it's harder to get somewhere else to shop. If you have money and live near Bolton it's easy to get to get to Manchester or Trafford centre or a.n.other out of town place and why wouldn't you What has happened to the town centre does smack of complacency and poor planning though, it has felt that way since the 90s at least

Huybrechs is playing well and not overawed at all but Taylor is playing better He could potentially get under Taylor's skin though if he hangs in there Ooooh just broke back

How the fuck Barney got through there, playing like that against Lewis... Staggering Playing sets though, as long as you hang onto your legs and hit the inevitable pressure doubles you can stay in the game while being out scored Lewis absolutely blew it, his finishing was awful, and even getting down he kept leaving himself awkward doubles

Lewis has been dragged down to Barneys level

Absolutely weird game. Barney favourite to win right now, unreal

That was great Lewis playing really well

I really didn't either, was shocked to hear it. I only knew he did countdown etc. Hope he is ok. Shit time of year for people who are low anyway.

It's the season of love and understanding, merry Christmas, everyone

Peter Wright? 33's at the moment, has a decent draw up to the semi

Within reason (first point) - but I doubt many here have an issue with, for example, people on minimum wage. Which Labour introduced. Not sure if your life changes that much under either party if you are one of the hardcore workless types

I don't see why the Tory brand is toxic personally but the FT is a tad leftie/liberal in it's politics IMO. Like you I've voted Labour all my life and never thought I'd see the day when I vote Tory. In many ways it doesn't matter, I live in a rock solid Tory seat now anyway. I still voted Labour last time but it was the first time I genuinely looked at all parties and considered their policies. Although Labour had made an utter fuckup of things I didn't believe austerity was the right thing to do, economically, but I've studied it a bit more in the meantime, and the results are there to see now... I was wrong and am glad Labour left office. Same is true of many tories. That, or naked self interest (i.e. I want to pay less tax). Nothing wrong with self interest of course, but Labour support in the past was a noble thing and was transferred to the next generation of the working class. Times change, society has changed. Plenty of people out there (still) who fare better under Labour.

It was a global recession and we are one of the few countries to be looking to emerge from it. Who said they have a get out of jail free card? Judge them on their record. We're in a far healthier position than most countries now. Imagine where we'd be if labour had got back in? Christ.

Sleaze, unpopular leaders, divisions over Europe... It had also been quite painful to get to where we had and people had decided to vote them out long before the election. But it was an absolutely fantastic set of circumstances to come to office in.

Without being rude I think you buy into a few concepts far too easily. Firstly, why would leaving the EU drag us back decades? Don't agree with that. The fundamentals of trade would remain - businesses will trade across broders, if it suits them. So why would it no longer suit them? We won't know the impact of coming out of the EU until we try but claiming anybody who believes we'd do just fine outside of the EU is 'insane' is... insane. Secondly, we've heard all the same rhetoric for the last 15 years on immigration (both parties) and we are no nearer controlling it. I've heard it so many times now I genuinely don't believe a word of it, nor do the people saying it, they just want to fudge the issue until after the election and hope it goes away afterwards. Yep. We had a decade of plenty and they squandered it, so that we were still vulnerable when recession hit.

It really is mind boggling that they seem to be favourites to get back in. Mind boggling. I've never voted Tory in my life but the current government have made a decent fist of an utter calamity that they inherited.

What policies? The Tories set out to keep net migration below 100,000 yet it was 250k last year. More than 100k from outside the eu. There's nothing to stop 1 million people heading here from the eu next year. They've been going on about it for years and haven't been able to do a thing apart from restricting numbers of highly skilled non eu workers.

Christ Where did you visit? I was at the horniman, hays galleria (right next to hms Belfast) then went to a bar in monument, scarpered at 10pm so didn't see too much debauchery / drunkenness

Just starting to join the club. This won't be pretty.

Was out around London bridge all day yesterday on works do it was belting Were any of you boys round there?

Crafty bastard. Spoke to a supplier of mine today who's son still believed in Santa in year 6. Only one in his class apparently. He said to his wife, if he doesn't catch on this year we'll have to tell him before high school or he's gonna get slaughtered haha My 5 year old is already getting suspicious about certain aspects of it, but while the goodies roll in she doesn't give a shit. Can't see her making it to 10 still buying into it all. Hopefully she won't ruin it for her little sister!

Support is maybe because Crolla has just been smashed up by burglars, possibly ending his career?! Ffs let it go man. Khan has no charisma, he's a bit deluded, he doesn't have a following... It's not all to do with his ethnicity.

Keith Branagan

The status quo is deeply ingrained into us, decades of only having 2 parties to choose from (with a realistic chance of winning), and the belief that it's not worth voting for a party who won't win. I agree that many will ultimately not vote UKIP but deserting your 'traditional' party is a process that is well underway IMO. The main parties will HAVE to face up to the fact that immigration is a huge issue and the more they ignore it, the more support UKIP will get.

That's really sad. And obviously a head injury for a boxer is not good news at all. Really enjoy watching Crolla and seems like a nice lad too.

I imagine they'd regard it as clawing back UK money, given we are net contributors to the EU. And as the article states, that's less money for parties who promote European integration (which is what the fund was set up to do).