Declan

I think we've got to remember this was meant to be a transition year. There was a whole new midfield this season. Finished 5th last year. The BBC's poll of pundits had us finishing behind Utd this season. If we're honest we rode our luck in some games earlier in the season and maybe that lucks rebalanced itself. Team making progress, third and a cup's a fine season - not the great one we dreamed of, but most fans would be happy with a season like that. It seems churlish and entitled to treat it like a failure.

I agree the last few managers at United have been fall guys for structural problems at the club. The lack of a strategic vision, which the director of football should oversee. There's a lot of short-term decisions to appease the fans on social media. Sack manager bring in an interim, he does ok give him the job. Buy a big name player at the end of his career who's good at first then tails off. United's current team are weird. They can be resilient and have lots of talent but they can completely lose their heads for ten minutes. Sometimes in the same game. Also what kind of football are they trying to play?

I'm not sure all Liverpool fans are "all in" on anything. I could say I wanted Alonso because of his history as a player and with the club. Because he was being successful in Bundesleague and Europe and played a style of football that I like and would favour our existing squad. And we know Jose wouldn't be great fit. But does anyone really know enough about the the Sporting or Feynoord manager? They might be ideal, but I don't know enough. Dutch managers traditionally - Van Gaal, Koeman, the current United guy - haven't been Liverpool type managers. But I'm sure Cruyff would have worked.

But they don't collect our recycling so we have to go to the tip with them. I'd rather Douglas's service.

It would occur less often than under the current laws. At the moment, the linesman doesn't flag when an offside occurs but lets play go on. Most time there isn't a goal and the lino then flags. So people get injured challenging when the play is meaningless. In Thommo's proposal the linesman would flag if he thought it was offside and play would stop. The challenge would only come in if there was a goal and if the linesman thought it was onside and the opposing team didn't (ie every time there's a goal!).

I can deffo see Pep doing that. I guess there could be a limited number of challenges per half and only after "a play" has come to an end. However even then a team hanging on in injury with challenges in hand could use them to disrupt the other team's momentum - like last minute substitutions are used.

It’s not necessarily even taken at the moment the ball was kicked and you can’t see where the Coventry player is either.

You seem to be right ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association_football)#Procedure See pts 12 and 15 I suppose the other team has the advantage of ditching their worst player. But "If a goalkeeper is sent off during the shoot-out, another player who finished the game must act as goalkeeper." So goalie getting sent off would result in a non-goalie going in nets and the worst penalty taker on their opponents not getting to take a pen.

It's not United specifically, just using it as a topical example. If you revisit my first post - I give TWO scenarios for how this would have played out without VAR, including flagging for offside before the ball ever went into the back of the net. Cov fans may have booed in the moment but it would be forgotten now. I can't comment on that Liverpool were playing at the same time so I've only seen the end of extra time and pens. But, in general the handball rule has also been messed up thanks to VAR and Wenger's Crazy Rule Committee. And that rule affects every level of football - what's an unnatural hand position for an 8 year old running around school playground? And this business of the yellow card count beginning again for a penalty shoot out. That's like a free pass for goalies to be unsporting.

Yeah but Hamas's psy-ops wing are playing Metallica to put them off.

They didn’t stop the game though did they? Nor have people celebrating unnecessarily, followed by deflation. Also we have the situation where play continues there’s a challenge and a player gets injured and then the linesman waives his flag for offside. An automatic near instantaneous system would work better but this business of drawing lines on a still image of a moving incident hasn’t removed human from the situation. He’s still making a subjective decision about when to select the still image. VAR has changed the rule at the top level away from giving the benefit of the doubt to the attacker. Was that the intention?

Yesterday was a good example of why VAR is bad for the game. In a non-VAR game one of two things would happed - the linesman would have thought the Coventry player was offside, waived his flag and the game stop long before the ball went in the net. Game would continue from a free kick. It would have been forgotten in seconds. OR he couldn't decide and would give the benefit of the doubt to the attacking player and the goal would have stood. To me, either option would be more natural.

The Government could attempt to renegotiate the common purse agreement. But I recognise that is a drastic measure. Is there an opportunity to return some VAT in certain sectors, if the Govt wanted it?

I was expecting them to just blame the employees getting paid an increasing the minimum wage. When it's more nuanced than that, which the statement recognises. Why? Whenever there's a hospitality business bemoaning the situation its presented that way. But that may be Manx Radio's fault.

That's a better statement than I expected them to come out with.

Well there's Disability Living Allowance and Housing Benefit on top (potentially) but your point stands.

I'm not sure where I stand on this, but playing devil's advocate, what is the role of the Art's Council? Is it - to support Isle of Man arts and locally based artists. to elevate the arts offering in the Isle of Man by supporting events and exhibitions etc. that would not otherwise be available on the Island. Or a bit of both?

No there's a Mission Statement.

If it makes you feel any better, I thought Illiberal Vannin was you until he posted the bizarre post about your bed. So now I know he's a different Nutter.

You wouldn't buy service station flowers to present to a queen would you. Like buying the crown jewels from Ratners.

Yeah it's interesting as a tool in the composition process. After all we use rhyming dictionaries and chord charts to prompt us. Certainly the skilled writer will create better prompts and act as an editor on the output. Be good if the music was generated as a midi file (or stems, even as sheet music /tabs I suppose) that you could import into a DAW and make an arrangement of. But often it'll be someone in a ad agecy or PR team and instead of selecting an existing song that fits their mood or commissioning one (and paying royalties to the creative) they'll opt for the generic AI one. Also the AI one is generated by drawing on the work of thousands of songwriters and paying them, which I suppose is ok if it's just being used as a novelty like we are. If Amadeus's tune became the official anthem of Douglas City and used in come to Douglas ads, that would be monitising other's work.

Stirring. "From Strang to Braddan, the stories are told, Of the lives that are saved, and the hands that hold."

I thought I'd have a go - The first one I just asked the machine to write "a punk rock song about how the Isle of Man TT is rubbish" and I got a NOFX song - https://suno.com/song/d5a6179d-807d-47ff-b82a-2922a42320ff The second time I followed Amadeus's method and got ChatGPT to generate the lyrics - https://suno.com/song/b2f7e6b5-8df1-49a4-b6d0-688514b67903 I think this is the best so far. But I gave it more ideas to work with. And did a little light editing of the lyrics.

I'm the opposite. It seems to me though imagination and originality are the bits it can't supply. Take the Douglas Council one - the could be about any council (at least any one with rivers) and there's a lot of talk about heroically defending the land from a nameless threat which is rather outside Douglas Commissioners' remit and not much on bin collecting. Ironically the most specific thing to Douglas is the cliqued Celtic strings at the beginning. It sounds like library music a daytime TV show would use when they do a show in Ireland. And that's because Amadeus used the prompt "Epic Celtic Rock Anthem". So the only elements that make this vaguely relevent to the actual Douglas Corpy where Amadeus's creative decisions to write a song about Douglas Borough's leaders and make the music Celticy.

I didn't know JK Rowling wrote for Next Gen.