And surely the moral of the story of the last page or two is... is you want to remain friends with people, then don't discuss politics with them...

I recall playing for years for my sunday football team... best mates and people i'd played, drank, and (to our discredit) sometimes fought alongside, for many years... One day, for a variety of reasons, i decided for a change and joined another team, who happened to be ran by a couple of Sikh brothers, and had a healthy contingent of Sikh players... the tirade of abuse i received from my 'mates' for "playing for a paki" and "wearing a burka in your next match" was beyond ignorant, and although i'm still friends with most of them, i'll never see a few of them in the same way again...

Similar goes for this forum... Stolly has been on this forum much longer than me, and on the couple of very brief occasions we've crossed paths on the Haworth Hobble, has come across as a thoroughly decent chap... however, crying-off a running forum because of disagreement with the views of a minority of member's views (on a non-running subject) does smack of throwing a tantrum because people don't agree with them...

For my view on the Dianne Abbott matter... in my view she is an utterly abysmal politician with a wealth of crackpot views... any desire to see her used as "taget practice" would be solely based on that fact, and the fact that she is either black or female has absolutely nothing to do with it... i also fail to see how a light-hearted throwaway comment that an image of her could be used as target practice, means people advocate the murder of politicians... when i was a youth, i often had an Aston Villa poster strapped to my dartboard in the days after yet another derby thrashing. That doesn't in any way equate to me backing the actions of that tosser from Birmingham City running on the pitch and whacking Jack Grealish.

I'm a member of a couple of football and music forums (although this forum is by far my favourite and the one i use most). There are undoubtedly some ridiculous views held by 'leave voters' that do leave me scratching my head. However there is a general undertone across all forums that leave voters are stereotypically thick, ignorant and racist northerners... i find this equally ridiculous.

Right... i'm back off to the Today's Training thread...!