Unpopular opinions or views you hold

That makes no sense. The entire point of the troubles was to prevent the Catholics from having a better standard of living

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Labour’s proposed VAT on private schools will have a detrimental effect on education in the UK

Messi was a footnote in the champions league for his final few seasons.

That’s a niche one in fairness.

It is but it’s one of their flagship policies going into the election.

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Why do you think that?

It’s not a simple as getting a billion plus money from it. Not every private school is an Eaton or a Westminster which is what people are thinking.

There a lots of private schools in the UK that are Special Educational Needs schools that parents send their children to due to a lack of provision in the state sector. These offer residential respite for families. Some pay for it 100% but others get scholarships to it funded by local councils. Local councils are already on their knees finding wise so if you add VAT on to fees, a number children won’t get the provision that they need.

Then you’ve the parents who scrape together everything to send their child to a private school because they feel that’s the best education for them. That’s their choice but if they need to pay 20% more then you’ll see high number of children back in an already “full” state sector where there’s not enough teachers at the minute.

Then you have the knock on effect for some private schools. If they lose numbers , then they come under threat so you could have a situation where private schools close and you’ve more children back into the state system as above.
Schools might need to close things like swimming pools to save money. Swimming pools that are regularly rented out for public use for lessons etc. so if they go, children won’t be getting lessons and in some case that pool might be the only pool in the area due to councils cuts as mentioned above.

Finally, the 1.7 Billion pound mentioned will barely touch the sides for a sector that’s been criminally underfunded for 14 years. The SEN provision is fucked, school buildings are falling down, there’s a teacher retention crisis, some schools have moved to 4 day weeks because of a lack of funding and school budgets have been cut every year for the past 14 years.

What they’d be better off doing is funding the state sector and bringing spend per pupil on a par to private schools not the other way round.

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Informative

To go a bit further, some parents send their kids to private school because the state schools in their area aren’t great or there’s not many. Where we live in Birmingham for example, the provision for Boys schools is awful. Our nearest school which is across the road has an awful reputation and the next one up the road has had some issues with leadership. We’re lucky in that we’ve baptised both lads so they’ll get into the catholic secondary school. Birmingham also has a grammar system , where you sit a test in Y6(6th class) and then can go to one of those. At the minute our best options are Catholic secondary, Grammar test or private school. They definitely won’t be going to private school as it’s very expensive. But a lot can change.

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https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1789277013234094163

Munster hurling is a great spectacle. Big crowds, big tradition, entertaining stuff.

The style of play now is completely backboned by no defending. Add in injury time, we have an 80 minute game, and allowing for stoppages, injuries and subs, we had 60 scores in the game. The amount of games where players shoot unnopposed after a couple of passes, or what quite often happens where a team works a score, the opponents arent marking up, so the resulting puck out just goes straight to an unmarked player who hits it over. Dont bother marking, get a quick puck out, score. Rinse and repeat.

Entertaining and great scoring, but defending optional.

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There’s been two distinct styles of hurling in each championship for over a decade now. So much so that tessio recognized it and turned us from a county of tippy tappy hurlers to heavier and better in the air but slower. But that was needed to compete with Kilkenny, Dublin and to an extent Wexford. Munster would require a totally different type of player. As always Munster-itis kicks in this time of year but the facts are outside of this once in a lifetime limerick team galway and Kilkenny have had no problem beating all the other Munster counties regularly. So there’s no evidence yet as a whole Munster is streets ahead, it just looks that way looking at the scoreboard.

A big problem for leinster is the crowds are way smaller than Munster, that’s in part because the two most centrally located venues, portlaoise and tullamore no longer feature. The home and away doesn’t work great when the aways are Belfast Wexford and galway the furthest points in the country from each other. Plus the product is dour and the hurling match attending populations in leinster counties less than each Munster hurling county.

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We had two excellent football provincial finals yesterday.

The first, with the obvious gulf in class between the opponents, saw a tremendous effort by Louth and an impressive disciplined trust the process effort by the Dubs.

The Ulster final - well it was an Ulster final. Intense beyond intense. No quarters asked no quarters given. So tight with the drama of a penalty shoot out at the end.

:clap::clap:

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All 4 Provincial Finals competitive affairs, with an average margin of 3 points.

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Very unpopular one but…
The current gaelic football format is as good as were going to get.
Very competitive leagues and teams are starting to realise that these have a very direct impact on championship especially for D2 and 3 counties.
Provincials are most peoples main bugbear but as you see on TFK they have loads of supporters too and there were 4 half decent finals this year. They offer 4 cups and it would be hard to get rid of them. They also offer the chance of surprise teams in Sam Maguire due to the luck of the draw and on balance that’s a good thing.
The groups are another huge issue for people but they offer a guaranteed home match for each team, they mean everyone plays the same amount of matches from this point on and there is the chance for real jeopardy within them as seen last year in a dramatic final round of games. Coming top of the group and even second rather than 3rd is a real advantage too with less matches or home venues.
We then get a very competitive 10 or 11 knock out matches.
The Tailteann Cup then is absolutely 100pc needed as a competition and again the format of that is ideal with three routes out of it if you are determined to do so - league, a good run in the provincials or win the thing. Everyone starts the year with a theoretical chance and in most cases a very real chance of being in Sam either. that year or the following one. Probably needs three tiers though.

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Sliotars are too light these days.ball is out of play too much.be it a score, wide and line ball…constant game of restarts.goalies being able to launch puck outs into oppisition full back line does not excite me.i miss the puck outs landing in mid field…some of the best games i watched finished up 13 points to 12…shootouts are fine but we are sacrifing other aspects of the game and the amount of time the ball is in play.

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I’m sure the Munsters would love to reply here but i doubt any of them have watched the Leinster championship by way of comparison. How’s it going this year anyway?

Congrats @gman

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With the obvious exception of limerick, Munster teams have really struggled against Kilkenny & Galway once they get out of Munster. Style of play is very different. They probably find themselves being marked and pressure being put on a scoring opportunity. Of course there may be a number of other factors for this. But the results speak for themselves.

Also worth noting that these are two very average Kilkenny & Galway sides. Particularly so in Galway’s case.

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The crying and whinging about GAAGo is getting a bit silly.

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