Spose I'd best put something on here to, y'know, make it look a bit more full.
I was in the pub the other day, and was listening to a New Labourite from Sunderland (I was mildly intrigued by this) arguing politics with a guy who sounded like his brain had been mixed up with a Sun Says columnist's.
I was watching the football, and frankly after a pig of a week doing Freedom was in no mood to talk politics. However, they both managed to say something interesting. The Sunderland man was saying he thought that although Thatcher was a bitch, Sunderland was better off, and perhaps, on some levels, it is. However, extensive research from Sheffield Hallam university says otherwise for the miners and dockers in almost every ex-industrial hub, with higher unemployment, lower living standards, no job prospects, lower life expectancy (I could go on). So I think he's talking bollocks, but it was interesting to hear someone from one of the great losers of the Thatcher years defending her descendants.
The other guy was going on about immigration. Boringly. Actually thinking about it, he wasn't at all interesting, except when he reacted to the use of figures from the Office of National Statistics which undermined his case with 'I don't trust them'. Unlike, apparently, what the Sun has said this week. An interesting placement of trust, that.
Sadly, the football wasn't much better than the calibre of that conversation, which gives you an idea of how truly dire Ipswich actually were.
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