Scheduling of these international fixtures is the big problems. The fixtures schedule is generally already congested enough and is made even more complicated with the accomodations that need to be made to allow club competition to continue.

To be honest, whilst I can enjoy club football in empty stadiums - and it needs to progress to keep these clubs from going under - international tournaments without supporters sounds awful and really boring. Until they can run a tournament with supporters present (even if it's a limited number) they shouldn't proceed. Uefa make enough from UCL and UEL anyways.

Good topic Buzz and glad to see this brought up in a good way.

Systemic racism isn't just about laws, it's about baked in socio-economic disadvantages that due to historical reasons do tend to cut along racial lines. As you mentioned whilst you may have grown up poor the environment you grew up in meant there was still fewer potholes or off ramps that could badly affect your future life, statistically for black people - both in the US and other western countries - that isn't the case. So it's about how do you address that imbalance - which is where you get stuff like affirmative action.

Folk then complain about actions like that saying they are unfair because they mean person X may get certain opportunity because of the colour of their skin but the fact is these measures are taken really as a way to try and rebalance the scales but it's a long process to reap the benefits.

That said, perhaps it would be better to tackle these issues along class lines and racial lines at the same time. So that no one is left behind.

Not much to say but +1 to this.

A lot of these threads could do with the temperature being cooled down and folk checking the way they just write in general so that it's less confrontational and hostile. I'll admit as well I am not always perfect.

Sinn Fein don't take their seats. They are Irish Republicans so that's why.

We have two major political parties: Labour and Conservatives. They are like your US parties but with a colour swap.

We have other parties too, some are UK wide and some only stand within one of the four nations. For example, In Scotland the SNP are dominant and have been for almost 13 years.