only2garners

As the person who has been writing up the Forum minutes for a long time I would be interested in knowing where it has been reported that the minutes are not an accurate account? This is what happens - I come home and write the minutes as best I can. Then they go to the club and some changes are made. Often these are very minor changes, sometimes more information might be added. Whilst occasionally I and the Chair might go back regarding these changes nearly always we are happy with the end result. It's important to note here that we may very well not be happy with what was said, but we are happy with the factual accuracy of what we were told. What the minutes can never be is a verbatim record of everything that everyone says during the meetings. That would be unreadable and provide no more clarity. What I think does happen is that the words on the minutes do not and I don't think can ever convey the full understanding of the level of debate. They are minutes, not a drama. Finally in the past we have sometimes been told some confidential things that I am not allowed to minute. John Williams in particular did it all the time. There was none of that last night.

I have just sat down at my screen to start writing the minutes up. I would hope to have them done inside 24 hours and they will then be passed to the club. How long that takes can be very variable depending on when everyone is oil and can get chance to review them. Then I like to give Forum members 24 hours to review them before they go up on the club website in case I have misrepresented anything. Ishmael was not there. in fact in all the years I have been on the Forum there has only ever been one manager who has attended - Gary Bowyer. In fact, in John Williams' day, any discussion of team matters was banned. The minutes are not sent to the EFL. They are of course published on the club website so are freely available for anyone to read.

Edit - the 24 games should of course be 14 games.

More than a bit of controversy here Den. Whilst Lancs have only offered 3 options for the future of the County Championship other counties have offered 5 options, including a 24 game one, essentially leaving things as they currently are. One thing that around 92% of county members across the country want but hasn’t been offered as an option is to play two Championship games in August alongside the Hundred.

I regard the 3 forms of the game now as different games and can enjoy them all in their different ways. The Roses games are frankly less interesting than games against the other teams. Around 20K at Old Trafford on Friday but about 15K were just there to drink and arse about. They don’t turn up to any other games, although some will no doubt be there for a quarter final if we get a home game. The Sky branding also ruined things a bit with me as for some reason one of the screens had a terrible score card on it and there had to be diff people on the commentary. This afternoon’s game was better. It obviously helped that Lancashire won but it seemed that the crowd were actually interested in the cricket as well. And a bigger crowd than there has been for the other home games.

As I said above I am expecting him, but there are no absolute guarantees.

We are never sure who will be turning up from the club for any Forum. Normally Lynsey Talbot and Christina Haines would be there and I am expecting that Suhail will be there too. At the last meeting there were a lot of the management team there as well so I would expect a good turnout. A number of years ago we used to hold pre-meets for FF members to set the agenda but they fell away and completely went with covid. There was a pre-meet for this meet though, although I couldn't attend.

I was at the Springsteen concert as well sat in the Kop. Christ, it was uncomfortable with hardly any leg room. It all has safe standing bars and you needed to keep standing for a bit to keep your legs working

The next forum is next Monday night 14th,

I meant to comment on this but on the train this morning reading the Observer reminded me. The sports section is quite different to under the old management but I prefer it. The Observer and the Guardian have never usually carried reports of sports games played the previous night, so no real change. There was always a good stats page but these days that’s all available quicker and in no more detail online. The new sports section is more like a magazine with a number of longer articles not necessarily about immediate news, which I find refreshingly different.

I also saw him with Los Straitjackets 2/3 years ago at Glastonbury, but this time it was just him and his guitar. Quite a contrast to some of the other shows on the Pyramid!

I don't get the chance to see a huge number of bands at Glastonbury but my highlights this year were Nick Lowe, who played another glorious hour on the Acoustic Stage to a crowd of about 200. More obscurely my son recommended that we see Duo Rout - a pair of Estonian women playing the same weird zither and singing fabulously in a small tent in the Green Fields. He wasn't wrong - they were sensational. I wish the BBC would just send a few cameras round everything else that is happening at the festival instead of concentrating on just 5 stages.

Here's a few: - Charli XCX - 32 CMAT - 29 Raye - 27 Matt Healy - 36 Noah Kahan - 28 Olivia Rodrigo - 22 It's just us old farts on here talking about people we remember from our youth.

I was there for most of Rod's set and 3 stars would be generous in my book. The wonderful grainy, gravelly voice he had in the 70s has gone and the general show appeared pretty shambolic to me. Now I start as someone who believes that he hasn't done anything worthwhile since Every Picture Tells a Story so I might be biased but the general view from people I spoke to afterwards was an overall meh - so the Telegraph seems fair to me. The Guardian also gave 3 stars and the Independent 2. I guess that it probably didn't come across on the TV coverage but the screens that the vast majority of the crowd watch the show on mostly showed some "arty" videos rather than what was happening on the stage. Right at the end when Lulu came on (after Rod's false introduction the number before) the screens showed Rod in various football shots for half of the song rather than Lulu. Anyone who wanted to see what a proper slick production looked like just needs to watch Olivia Rodrigo's headliner show. I can't personally warm to her voice which seems too harsh and shouty but the bit of the show I watched live in a break from my shift showed what could be done as a spectacle. For me it was also pretty painful to watch Proud Mary being sung (while Rod did a costume change) barely 24 hours after the guy who wrote the song had done it on the same stage. Also I doubt that there were more than 100,000 there tops. It was some way from the biggest crowd at the Pyramid stage and the biggest crowd of all was for Charli XCX on the Other Stage.

Just had as good an evening as I’ve ever had at Glastonbury at my 15th. Had a break from my shift to catch most of John Fogerty’s set, followed after shift by Pulp and then Nick Lowe. Just relaxing on a sofa in the crew bar behind the Acoustic stage waiting for my wife, son and several friends to get up after Neil Young.

I bet we have to play all the teams home and away. It’s the same every bloody season.

If it helps you feel a bit easier he has dual nationality with Cape Verde.

Andy Zaltzman has a fascinating stat in his Observer column today. Across the world and in England & Wales except Headingley runs per wicket have been greater in the first innings, then 2nd, then 3rd and then 4th, as you might expect. At Headingley it is exactly the reverse - the best innings has been the 4th.

Sorry to be an old fart, but this reminds me of seeing Genesis at the Amethyst Club in Preston. A quick google search tells me it was 30th September 1971 - no idea how much I paid but something online tells me that Genesis were paid £75 for it. My memory thinks there were only about 20 of us there. The Amethyst was a Thursday night residency at the Hibernia club on Avenham Lane and all sorts of other bands also played there around that time. I also saw them earlier that year at the Floral Hall in Southport with Lindisfarne and Van Der Graf Generator - the latter were top of the bill. Ticket price 50p.

A genius indeed. The first record I bought with my own money was Good Vibrations in late 1966 as a 14 year old. I’m not sure whether it was prescient to buy one of the best ever pop songs at such a young age or a curse to realise that it was all downhill from there. I was privileged to see him several times from 2005 when he finally got his life back and before dementia caught him. To paraphrase one of the great lyrics - “I might not always love him, but as long as there are stars above him”.

I’ll be seeing the Boss again at Anfield on Saturday night. Third time for me, plus his cameo with Paul McCartney at Glastonbury a few years ago.

The Polestar's list price is a lot more than the MG5. Two years ago the MG5 was a shade under £31K and the Polestar that I'm ordering now is c£48K. But the monthly lease cost for the Polestar is less. It's £96 a month less, although the majority of that is because I am paying a bigger deposit than I did for the MG5. I don't know but guess that lease costs in general have come down and there may be incentives for electric cars to encourage sales. Although I don't know how that works with a company like Polestar which only makes EVs - maybe there are cross costs with Volvo?

I like our MG5 and, if MG had not discontinued it I might have got another. I am the very opposite of a "petrol head", seeing cars just as a useful means of getting around and I have no interest in them beyond that. So the Cyberster does absolutely nothing for me. Two years ago when we replaced our Zoe for the MG5 I would probably have preferred a Polestar 2 but the wait then was over 9 months so it wasn't really practical. Now the Polestar is coming in early June on a 3 year lease (at less cost than the MG's lease) so hopefully it will deliver.

To be fair I had forgotten that you were in NZ and there is no clue apart from the oblique user name reference. Having been to NZ three times I have once or twice looked at the practicality of hiring an electric car if we go again. It's obviously more of a challenge in a place like the South Island with large distances and only 1.2m people. Any long drive, especially down the west coast would need careful planning but a quick look online now suggests it would be doable.

If by that you mean that there isn't a sufficient answer for those who can't charge an electric car at their home I would agree. Otherwise there really is enough infrastructure now. It still needs to grow as more and more electric cars are sold but unless there is a sudden explosion in sales what is available now in terms of public chargers is fine.