Messages

[both incidents were seen by officials at the time and therefore no further action can be taken]

The FA say there will be no further action taken on the various incidents from the weekend regarding Robin Van Persie, Chiek Tiote or Robert Huth.

It is believed that match referee Howard Webb did not see the incident between van Persie and Newcastle midfielder Yohan Cabaye during Saturday's game, but on reviewing television evidence he did not deem it worthy of a sending-off offence, so no further action will be taken.

In the cases of Newcastle midfielder Tiote, who appeared to stamp on Tom Cleverley's leg, and Stoke defender Huth, who was involved in a similar incident with Liverpool forward Luis Suarez, both incidents were seen by officials at the time and therefore no further action can be taken.

If somehow ego didn't matter, Gerrard would be an ideal right full-back in Rogers' system.

I've often thought that. He's played there before with great success.

Most notably the 2005 CL final if I recall correctly.  It would be an option and I can see how it would work.  It's not working at the minute so something needs to give.

Is that not the position he broke into the team playing in? Don't think Stevie, as much as he loves the club, is a Javier Mascherano type who would play anywhere for the team, could be wrong.

right back isnt exactly a position liverpool are weak in though, with johnson, kelly wisdom and flanagan all capable

True, more a case of where would you play him if he was no longer a first line midfielder. Not going to happen anyway.

If somehow ego didn't matter, Gerrard would be an ideal right full-back in Rogers' system.

I've often thought that. He's played there before with great success.

Most notably the 2005 CL final if I recall correctly.  It would be an option and I can see how it would work.  It's not working at the minute so something needs to give.

Is that not the position he broke into the team playing in? Don't think Stevie, as much as he loves the club, is a Javier Mascherano type who would play anywhere for the team, could be wrong.

In related news , the fecking Packers blow a 21-3 lead at the half and lose 30-27 with Rodgers getting sacked 5 times in the second half.

This season is ridiculous for the Packers, they are loaded for bear but blow games, the O line coach will be gone before Thanksgiving I reckon.

Watched it on redzone alright, piss poor showing in the 2nd half letting your QB get slaughtered. not looking good for a playoff spot bar some sort of miracle.

I never heard of these things before.  What planet are these people living?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/19866191

A teenager has had emergency surgery to remove her stomach after drinking a cocktail containing liquid nitrogen.

Holy f**k!!!

[Why Spain's greatest football match, El Clasico, matters to Palestinians]

Why Spain's greatest football match, El Clasico, matters to Palestinians
By Jon Donnison BBC News, Gaza City

Barcelona Football Club arguably brings more joy to Palestinians than any other institution in the world.

That's certainly my impression after almost three years in Gaza and the West Bank.

Every time the Catalans take to the field you can guarantee you'll struggle to get a table in the bars of Ramallah and the shisha-infused coffee shops of Gaza City.

On match day tradesmen touting maroon and gold Barca jerseys set up shop at Qalandia, the traffic-infested Israeli military checkpoint that separates Ramallah from East Jerusalem.

I've lost track of the number of mini Messis I've seen dribbling their way around dusty backstreets.

And if Messi senior and co manage to pull off a win, as of course they nearly always do, the night air is filled with the sound of car horns as supporters crane out of their sunroofs and parade round the streets.

Of course, as the best team in the world in recent years, Barcelona FC has support across the globe.

Everyone loves a winner.

But Palestinians seem to have a particular affinity for the club.

"We can identify with the Catalans and their struggle against the great power of Madrid, like the way we struggle against Israel," one supporter in Ramallah told me with a slightly far-fetched simile.

I can't remember too many signs of military occupation the last time I was strolling down Las Ramblas.

Of course there are a good number of Real Madrid fans here too but they're definitely outnumbered.

You certainly don't meet too many people cheering for Manchester United, Arsenal or Chelsea, let alone my team Bolton Wanderers.

For Palestinians, Barca rules.

It was with some surprise then that I learned that there were calls for Palestinians to boycott Barcelona FC and in particular this weekend's showdown with Real Madrid, El Clasico.

If ever there was an institution that Palestinians might struggle to turn their backs on, I thought, it would be their beloved Barcelona.

But this is a classic example of how there are few things untouched by politics in this part of the world.

The controversy all started when Israeli government officials put in a request to Barcelona FC for a former Israeli soldier to be able to attend Sunday's game.

Not just any soldier, though.

Gilad Shalit is the young man who spent more than five years as a hostage in Gaza after being captured by Palestinian militants in 2006.

He was eventually freed last year after the Islamist movement Hamas, which governs in Gaza, agreed a prisoner swap with Israel in which more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were handed over in exchange.

Mr Shalit has kept a low profile since his release, with his parents asking for privacy to allow their son to re-adjust to life as a free man.

The 26-year-old is a keen football fan and is believed to support Real Madrid.

Israeli officials put in a request to Barcelona FC, asking whether Mr Shalit could attend the game at the Camp Nou stadium.

The club said yes.

But when the news hit the media, some Palestinian groups called for Barcelona to withdraw their invitation and threatened a boycott.

Hamas officials in Gaza were quoted as saying Barcelona games would no longer be broadcast on television in the Palestinian coastal territory, without adding how they would go about stopping this from happening in practice.

Barcelona FC realised they'd opened something of a can of worms.

Club officials quickly announced that it had also invited three Palestinian representatives to the game, including a Palestinian footballer who spent three years detained in an Israeli jail without ever being formally charged.

Mahmoud Sarsak, who has played for the Palestine national side, was eventually released in July this year after having been on hunger strike - taking only water and vitamins - for three months in protest at his detention.

Israel believes Sarsak is a member of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

Sarsak is a popular figure for Palestinians and Barcelona had hoped that by inviting him to counterbalance Shalit the club might be able to put an end to the controversy.

Not so. Sarsak announced in Gaza that he would not be attending the match on principle.

"I refuse to sit in the same place with a killer who came on a military tank," the former prisoner said, referring to Shalit.

"I respect Barcelona's invitation, but I have to avoid angering the Palestinian people and their supporters as well as all those who supported me during my hunger strike."
Own goal

Sarsak added that he also respected those who believed he should attend the match in order to represent the suffering of Palestinians but said that after giving it a lot of thought he would boycott the game.

Hamas have been keen to trumpet Sarsak's decision, although I suspect they may have plenty of now closeted Barcelona supporters amongst their ranks.

It's worth noting that this row has also highlighted the ability of Hamas and their secular rivals Fatah, who are in power in parts of the West Bank, to disagree on just about anything.

The two other Palestinians offered tickets by Barcelona were Jibril Rajoub, a leading Fatah figure and head of the Palestinian Football Federation and also the Fatah dominated Palestinian Liberation Organisation's ambassador to Spain, Musa Amer Odeh.

When contacted by the BBC on Thursday, Mr Rajoub confirmed he and Ambassador Odeh would not be following Mahmoud Sarsak's example and would be attending the game.

Hamas are likely to try to make political hay.

It's hard not to feel, though, that Hamas and the Palestinian boycott movement have scored something of an own goal here, if you'll pardon the pun.

Most Barcelona fans I've spoken to here have appeared gobsmacked when I've suggested they might put political principles before El Clasico.

"Are you kidding me?" has been the most common reaction.

"I watch football and support Barcelona, because I see only sports, I don't see politics. I won't allow for Israel to deny us from this fun time," says Nasser Ziad, a 25-year-old Barca fan in Gaza.

"I was so sad and disappointed when they announced that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit will attend the Clasico but, personally speaking, I wish Sarsak had accepted the invitation to the match," he said.

"I don't see it as a way of normalisation with Israel. It would have brought more attention to our cause."

Thirty-year-old Ahmed Shafik agreed: "We should turn this into an Israeli-Palestinian Clasico. Sarsak should have gone to Camp Nou and used his presence for the good of our cause."

I've not found any Barcelona fans in either Gaza or the West Bank who've said they won't be positioning themselves in front of a big screen tonight.

It seems unlikely that Hamas will manage to stop the game from being broadcast on satellite channels in Gaza.

But if it does the Islamist movement is not going to make itself very popular.

Most Palestinians probably don't remember Bill Shankly, the legendary former Liverpool manager.

But in the run-up to El Clasico, they would probably appreciate his most famous quote:

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19861023

Fionntamhnach can research the difference between wrongful convictions and recidivism. If the number of people reoffending exceeds those wrongfully convicted then yes I would take my chances.

No way, as mentioned such cases as Birmingham and Guilford counter this completely, if there is one thing Irish people should understand it's this. If the option had being available, as stated by the trial judge and on the original appeal, those people would have been executed. And remember the forensics were viewed as being 100%, above reproach at the time.

To me the only sensible approach is long sentences coupled with the option of voluntary chemical castration. Those who say the latter option won't work, or is too expensive , remind me of those who are against means testing of various allowances - (a) where's your evidence to the contrary (b) where's your costings, i.e. how much per annum does it cost to house a prisoner as opposed to a system of 3 injections a year, which if they don't take they end back behind bars anyway. It appears the understandable disgust at these creatures blinds people's reason to the point of bloodlust, which is pointless as the death penalty will never return to either Ireland or the UK.

Like I said I certainly wouldn't argue over the Gaza situation, it's systematic and, apart from everything else, counter productive. I see Shalit as a stooge, willing or otherwise, of the system, not unlike many unfortunate bastards in the UK at the moment that Wills and Harry Hewitt are taking advantage of who die the Afganistan - refusing to accept the lessons of history.

[individual]

What they are doing to gaza is a crime against humanity. The truth will come out.

No argument here. As for whether he should be a pariah, perhaps, but a war criminal?

War Crimes are those serious violations of the rules of customary and treaty law concerning international humanitarian law that have become accepted as criminal offences for which there is individual responsibility.

Took that from "International Law" by Shaw, it's only one definition obviously, but a standard one.

Sorry for dragging the thread off topic but we lose the moral argument and leave the legitimate issues open to dismissal when we start to sound as unreasonable as those whose actions we object to is all I'm saying.

Look some decent posts and while most have a view that prevention is the best solution, it is as someone said already (or close to) trying to change someone who's gay into being straight, it's impossible, and while there is hardship in the working class or unemployed classes it doesn't make people perverts, it's just as prevalent in upper classes as lower, being a pervert doesn't come with being poor

We may not agree on the punishments to be meted out, but I'd agree 100% with everything you've said there.

had liverpool not an attractive playing style last season and were also missing the killer touch

They were inconsistent last year in their style of play, I thought anyway, definitely not as good as the second half of the previous season (excluding the final 3-4 games), but, yep, they still missed a shed load of chances. This year, still missing the chances, but every game there's a consistency of style and, increasingly, of performance.

Shalit was part of this system. He is a war criminal.

Sweet divine. I'm very well disposed to, and educated about, the Palestinian's situation, but hysteria like that just alienates those in the middle ground.

If that Louis Theroux show was anything to go by, the thinking is the habitual sex offenders cannot be cured. The approach that facility took was that these fellas were locked up for the rest of their days as they were essentially a lost cause. An expensive solution.

It appears paedophilia is not treatable or curable, there's increasing evidence that would the equivalent of trying to cure someone of heterosexuality for instance. I don't know what the medical evidence is for chemical castration as a way of removing these drives, as I imagine that research would be highly controversial, but surely, given everything written above, it would be worth persuing, and I imagine there would volunteers for altruistic (genuinely wanting to be cured) and non-altruistic (wanting to be released early) reasons.

Those convicted of paedophilia are difficult to reform to prevent reoffending. Not impossible but quite low which it's why it's seen that such prisoners are a lost cause as traditional prison rehabilitation techniques have little effect. Essentially they have a form of psychological addiction that is deemed threatening to others, some through genetics, others by environmental factors in a similar fashion to spouse abuse where the offender wants to break clean but just can't.

In terms of chemical castration, my reading of it is that there is still some way for it to go before it could be considered for widespread use especially as some side effects to treatment have been noticed, and while those that follow the course have a very high rate of not reoffending, it is not quite 100%. A quick google throws up some interesting articles about it. Certainly as a voluntary programme it should be offered.

Did some reading there myself, very interesting stuff. Looks, to me anyway, like it should offered voluntarily as you mentioned. It may not be 100%, but it's a lot higher than just prison alone, or even prison and psychological help. Then there's also cost reductions etc. If there is a wide enough uptake, and the participants studied, it may be possible to improve the drugs and outcomes, for the criminals and society in general.

Well I honestly don't know if he's revered, I do recall lots of Israelis didn't want a single prisoner swapped for him, never mind the hundreds that were. Also, I don't know how he's handled himself since (thought he was sued for plageurising a children's book published during his captivity???). How much of a folk hero can you be for being captured and held hostage? It's likely only for his family's efforts to bring his case he would have been disposed of by his captors. Anyway, as for the IDF thing, we'll have to agree to disagree, I do differentiate between those who volunteer for service and those compelled.

Is the problem not that he was throwing something, "litter", from the car? Hope it was. I do tend to leave banana skins, apple cores etc. under hedges/ditches myself when out walking in the countryside, assuming it's OK as it biodegradable, am I wrong? Would never throw anything from a moving vehicle though, always thought it dangerous in any event.