btb

Glad to see Contador finish his last active ride in first place - would have shed a tear or three if Froome & Poels had caught him. Congrats to Froome & Sky who had 5 riders in the top 20 of today's stage finishing ahead of riders like Yates, Chaves & Roche. Wouldn't surprise me if that was Sky's plan from the day after the route was announced. Anyway it was an interesting race right up to the final climb although you kinda felt it was ominous when Froome took the red jersey after Stage 3.

After the last Test it's good to be going into the last day with West Indies still in with a chance of winning and although an England win is the most likely outcome, yes, all four (4) outcomes are still possible.

Still all 4 possibilities open.

Barguil out! Wasn't really a threat for the GC but could have affected the outcome as he was intending to attack in the mountains.

Just watched ITV4 coverage of yesterday's stage with Adam Yates remarkably chirpy for a GC contador (sic) in 8th and not liable to finish much higher. Today's stage seems relatively low key with a breakaway 7mins ahead with just over 40km and a Cat3 climb to come. Mon the Breakaway!

Goes back to what we've talked about before, most recently during & after the second SA Test - can England's middle order Stokes, Bairstow & Ali play sensibly and nurse England to a decent total, say about 250-300 or are we gonna see a low scoring shootout?

Not a killer stage but one where there was always gonna be a chance to steal a few seconds in the final climb. Once again Froome has shown the savvy to go along with the strength that he and Sky possess. As long as Froome doesn't crash the only way he won't win as far as I can see is for Orica to designate Chaves as leader and ask the Yates brothers to work for him.

Looks like TM is preparing the way to let Europe retain the ultimate court of arbitration after Brexit in some form. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/22/theresa-may-u-turn-brexit-european-court-justice Chances of the UK getting a deal that will satisfy the Leave Camp are looking less likely by the week.

What the fuck is this all about? http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/tastefully-dressed-men-and-women-to-replace-podium-girls-at-vuelta-a-espana/ Is there anyone who would not prefer their podium girls wet?

I was thinking the same at the time (sic) and it's been important in the end 'cos those 2 secs would have put him on the podium ahead of Bardet.

The attitude of players these days is to attack your way out of a situation, we're gonna get more series like that with huge swings from Test to Test. In the first Test England batted first and were in trouble and it worked for Stokes/Ali that time it didn't. OK so the situations in the two Tests weren't identical there maybe some of that is down to the Lord's pitch still being in good nick or as JJJJS said maybe the more aggressive batsmen need someone like Root at the other end keeping it steady to launch their aggressive innings successfully.

AC = AB

What's the timeline to organize & hold a second referendum? Sturgeon jumped the gun.

That's literally been Sturgeon's plan from the start, so not sure what would change other than emphasizing the fact. I'm a Nat myself but even allowing for the fact that different things have been said at different times that's just revisionism

IndyRef2 should be put on the backburner until after the Brexit deal is completed. At that point we'll know what the May government has secured for us and whether the EU are willing to offer Scotland anything as a GIRFUY to the Tories. Politics in the Twitter age is going to more fluid than what we've been used to and I'd love to see Davidson, Dugdale & Rennie defend the clusterfuck we're likely to emerge from these negotiations with - I'm not holding my breath though.

I seem to remember being told this couldn't happen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38733090 ********************* There seems to be a growing realization that whatever Brexit deal we eventually achieve is likely to be worse for the UK than what we currently have, yet the general feeling is that we've made our bed and now we've got to lie in it. Not for the first time in my life I'm baffled.

Couldn't resist it.

Never expected to see Loy available until mid-August until McCann had a chance to see how he fitted in with Dundee's new squad. If he's available and within our budget I'd love to see Loy back, if not so long and thanks! ************** I've always said a manager should hold back a bit of cash to see who becomes available as the summer window closes but that's not the same as leaving holes in the squad and hoping to find the missing pieces in other clubs surplus stock (Alex Rae - Summer 2016), this approach only works when fine-tuning a decent squad. As a whole I'm pretty pleased with where we are so far. Bring it on..............

That's where we disagree IMO the damage was not done by the nurse who's story smelled hammy to pretty much everyone at the time (she all but retracted it a couple of days later when she tweeted that she was speaking for NHS employees as a whole) but by Cherry's calamitous intervention. I think Labour & JC showed at the GE that there is political mileage to be had by staying out of the gutter. It's been a bad couple of elections for the SNP (Council & General) but in the Twitter age things can turn again very quickly and the underlying reasons why SNP support touched 50% two years ago are still there. Aggressive yeah we've got to seize the initiative back but dirty - no.

I'm another who thought Sturgeon handled the nurse well at the time certainly better than Davidson responded to the guy with Aspergers. The problem for the SNP was Joanna Cherry going OTT with the false rumour that Austin was married to a Conservative councillor and her subsequent forced retraction, which became the story. It nullified the topic of Food Banks as an issue over which the Tories could be criticized in Scotland. As to the people abusing Austin - leave it to Karma, stunts like the one in question are self-defeating and just feed into the Record's "hate filled nationalists" agenda.

Bit of both. Davidson got absolutely nowhere by continuing with her IndyRef2 obsession and got it back and then some from Nicola Sturgeon, you have to wonder how much confidence RD has in TM & how Tory policies at UK level will fare over the next few years. Dugdale did far better focussing on the SNP's record on education which contains room for improvement, she spoiled it a bit at the end by saying "Vote SNP, get a Tory government" which was a bit of an open goal given ScotLab's tactics during the recent campaign. ******************* A bit of a pity KD/ScotLab didn't get a mention in the News, but that's the price they pay for ignoring the day job for two years.

Doesn't happen in important votes (reckon that'd include the Queen's Speech) and certainly not in Confidence motions - I can remember back to the Callaghan govt. where they were considering bringing one MP in off his death bed, in fact checking this up it seems that he only had to make it to Westminster not even to the voting lobby. In the end though he did not make the journey and Labour lost the vote.

At Westminster MP's on opposing sides can pair off with each other on most votes allowing them not to be there.

...............or can it?

Gavin Reilly - it's a bit of a "mibbes aye, mibbes naw" signing but that's the market we're in. Mibbes aye would do me - the last time we were promoted from this division we had a Reilly in the squad so I'm taking it as a good omen!