Jesus. A few points that I hope you’ll understand from my perspective.
* nobody shut anything down - I can’t even remember the last hidden post in this thread.
* This is a football forum. A place where people come for football and other banter. Intense heavy discussions do seem out of place for a forum like this, surely. Keep it at least vaguely light.
* On that, because of the often controversial nature of the topics that keep coming up in here, as a moderator I do have to at least skim read through it all. It’s not that I dont agree with it politically, it’s just fudgeing draining.
* For the most part it has been an at least vaguely civilised discussion, which is surprising given the subject matters. But it does tend to be dominated by a small number of posters - which is thread domination.
* I think it was Hard news who said a while back, the media read these forums. Anything that crosses a line will get picked up on, and it’s not the anonymous posters that get asked for comment, it’s those whose faces appear on the “about” page. So if one of them suggests taking the chat about intense and at times controversial topics elsewhere, I tend to respect that call. Apparently there is form in this area too.
* This thread has been turned permanently serious, whereas it actually started off as a light hearted thread. It’s not that serious topics can’t occasionally be discussed in here, I think Hard News is just saying maybe give it a rest for a while.