Elephant in the room

That’s a very harsh view of the German footballers Tim. It’s only hypocrisy if the German players are closely linked with the government - perhaps they oppose it. Also, as I understand it, the protest was specifically about the way Fifa has tried to silence symbolic or other criticism of human rights abuses, rather than a direct criticism of Qatar. And in any case, continuing to trade with other countries while at the same time criticising some of their actions is perfectly normal, so you might as well accuse almost everybody of hypocrisy.

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I applaud the German players for their actions and they are supported widely in their own country but just like many other countries around the world critical of the Qatari regime Germany is happy to trade with them, that is hypocrisy.

We are all guilty, we buy Chinese goods yet rail against their human rights record.

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Well I kind of agree with what you say in this post Tim - but I still think your previous post seemed to unfairly single out the German team as hypocrites.

The problem of China I think illustrates the broader point. It is, in fact, almost impossible not to ‘trade’ with China, since Chinese manufactured goods (often as small component parts) are everywhere in modern life. But I don’t think our mere purchase of something Chinese (or indeed Qatari) stops us criticisng their human rights abuses, or indeed makes us hypocritical.

If you stop to question the politics or ethics of every shopkeeper every time you buy something, you’ll soon run out of time - and possibly shops !

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Even if you don’t love watching football, it may be worth following Les Bleues at this year’s World Cup in Qatar. Especially, eyes on Kylian Mbappe:

Even if you still don’t believe footy is a beautiful game, if you just this once ignore all the politics and virtue signalling, it is worth seeing a human who is truly physically extraordinary.

:sparkling_heart:

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What’s going on in the World Cup anyway? Cameroon beat Brazil… Germany knocked out…
Changing of the guard ?

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I seem to remember reading years ago that the founders of Pink Triangle Turntables were gay and that’s why they chose to use that name (derived from the Nazi symbol).

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Back to the beautiful game

Watching a legend

If you want to watch 20 blokes struggling to score just pop into the nearest nightclub.

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Best team won in the end although penalties is always an awful way to lose.

Agreed. France were pretty awful for the first 75 minutes, then absolutely stunning for the rest.

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From my experience of ten years living right in N/c city centre (in an apartment block next to Eldon Gardens mall) Geof’s post resembles a description of a typical quiet Monday evening in the ‘toon’.

I remember when the Stones played neighbouring St James’s park and the local bikers’ pub emptied out just before the concert, while watching them from my second storey apartment and listening through open windows as the band warmed up, I suddenly noticed a crippled biker, who was obviously well over the 80mg, crawling towards the stadium on his hands and knees while dragging his crutches behind him - it was like a scene from a mediaeval Brueghel painting.

Have never squirmed or been on the edge of my seat like that before, it just got better and better after the morale seemed to ebb away after the second goal by Argentina. I have to say though, I thought Mbappe was extremely rude to M.Macron who tried to comfort him best as he could and got the impression he is nothing more than a spoiled overpaid footballer. There are winners and losers to everything and to be a gracious loser is often better than acting like a right tosser.

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