See you next time!
Thanks for getting involved today. Among other things you’ve helped us settle the ketchup in the fridge debate (or at least prove it’ll never be settled) and provided a three point plan for covering Donald Trump. Oh yes, and Jeremy Paxman seemed to lead your suggestions for the next Blind Date presenter – not one we’d thought of before, but perhaps it’s worth asking him?
We’ll be back soon with another opportunity to discuss the week’s news and views, and to suggest the topics you’d like us to cover more closely – however serious they may be. In the meantime, you can continue to talk in the comments or email me on matthew.holmes@theguardian.com or Sarah via sarah.marsh@theguardian.com with any feedback, we look forward to hearing from you!
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The key to a good night's sleep can be found in the great outdoors
I wrote about how spending times in the mountains of Slovakia helped me reset my sleep and cured insomnia this week.
It wasn’t necessarily the trip itself but more what it taught me, about the value of sleeping in complete darkness and also the value of spending time outdoors.
I’m interested to hear readers’ experiences of sleep? What has helped you with insomnia? Did anything change the way you see slumber? Share stories and experiences in the comments.
A couple of points on some of the things we’ve been talking about that might traditionally be aimed at our audience in the US, next – but, this first reader is right ... we are a global news organisation now. I’m still not going to use a “z” there though ...
Reading that American football bit made me understand how my partner feels when me and my son are talking about the away goals rule.
'The NFL desperately needs new overtime rules'
Sunday’s Super Bowl was a thriller, as the Atlanta Falcons pulled off one of the biggest chokes in sport history and the Belichick-Brady machine ruthlessly exploited every weakness to pick up the Patriots’ fifth title since 2001.
Atlanta had plenty of chances to wrap the game up and it’s hard to make an argument that they deserved to win, but it was still disappointing that the most important call of the game was the correct “heads” call by Matthew Slater before the start of overtime. The Patriots opted to receive the ball, marched down the field and won the game without the regular-season MVP, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, even getting to touch the ball.
There must be a better way to do this. The most obvious comparison and the most talked-about alternative is the college football system, in which extra periods are played with each team getting one possession from their own 25-yard line, with as many extra periods as are necessary until the tie is broken. It’s definitely fairer, but the coin toss still gives an advantage to the team going second as they then know whether they need a touchdown or whether a field goal will suffice.
Other methods have been proposed, including:
- Another full 15-minute period, repeated as necessary
- Carry on as though the game never ended, with the ball wherever it was on the field. First score wins.
- The college system, but the ball starts at some point closer to the end zone and the second team only gets as many downs as the first team needed to score
- The auction system, where one team chooses where on the field the ball will be received and the other team then chooses which team will receive it. First score wins
- A silent auction, in which both coaches make an offer of where they would be willing to receive the ball, and the furthest-away offer receives it first. First score wins
- A rugby-style penalty shootout
- A bidding system where the referee offers both coaches possession at their own 1-yard line, then 2, then 3 and so on until one coach accepts. That team then starts at that point on the field. First score wins.
Of these, my preference would be for the last one – it would be incredibly dramatic and hard to argue about fairness. But what do you think? Which of these would work, or do you have a better alternative? Or do you think the current system works just fine?
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Things are getting more serious in our below the line conversation, but you can still vote in our poll from earlier – so far decidedly divisive. Where do you keep your ketchup?
Go on, click it ... you know you want to ...
I really like that ketchup poll dial thingy.
Especially the wee ~boing~ when it settles and displays the results.
Bizarrely satisfying.
But do bear this observation in mind:
This reader sets out a three point plan for reporting on the president. What do you think?
My scenario to defeat Trump in the world of popular opinion:
1. Keep pointing out the lies. Devote whole news programs just debunking his lies if you have to, and you'd probably have to. Between Trump, Kellyanne and Spicer, the half-truths and lies are non-stop. They don't care, and I really don't think the news can keep up. But it's crucial to keep correcting the lies and not normalizing them.
2. Report much more on the campaign promises he can't deliver on: building giant walls, banning entire groups of people, rescinding Obamacare immediately, all half-truths and lies he can't deliver on. Hammer home on these broken promises every day.
3. In a press conference, if a reporter asks a question and is shut up or ignored by Trump, all other reporters should ask the same question until answered.
I think this 3 step plan would change minds and erode confidence in him tremendously in a very short time.
A couple of views from readers on reporting Trump after Martin Belam talked about covering the US president.
Trump? I suggest you use him as an opportunity to take a step back from your current path of encouraging strong UK-US relations and focus more on domestic issues and our nearby neighbours in Europe. The US, while I have no problem with the majority of the Americans I've had the pleasure to meet and work with over the years, has a horribly toxic form of politics which I am convinced is the root cause of the sad collapse of our more European-style post-war consensus as well as leading us into several catastrophic international encounters which have served neither us nor the countries we've attempted to 'help'.
So just ignore him and his ridiculous statements. Our nation's interests would be much better served keeping mr. Trump at arms' length.
Don't go over the top with Trump reporting. Play neutral.
The man is a complete idiot and will dig his own hole quick enough. Throwing spades at him will damage you more than him as people will feel sympathetic.
To factcheck or not to factcheck
I wrote a piece earlier this week looking at the dilemma that Donald Trump’s White House poses for journalists. When he issued his much derided list of under-reported terror attacks, journalists around the world, including my colleague Claire Phipps, scrambled to factcheck it.
But does that mean we are just being pushed into playing his game, on his terms?
The hours spent by many news organisations looking into his ludicrous list – which included such major world news events as the terror attacks on Paris and Nice – were not spent looking into other aspects of his administration, like the attempt to repeal regulations on banks introduced after the financial crash. The list took away the attention of both journalists and the audience.
I worry that for his committed supporters, it isn’t the facts of something like the terror list that matter. And that for the people who don’t support him, they never believed the list was true in the first place. Are we in the media collectively wasting our time debunking his pronouncements? How do you think news organisations should approach reporting the Trump administration, when the White House itself seems content to push “fake news”?
The BBC did, it appears, beautifully troll him over it, which at least gave me a wry smile in the midst of all the worry.
The BBC trolling @realDonaldTrump - absolutely brilliant pic.twitter.com/dRBJz0DAEv
— Paul Singh (@Paul1Singh) February 7, 2017
A couple of you have been talking about what you’d like us to talk about up here – as well as down in the comments. Here’s a couple of starters – anything else you would be interested in discussing?
With Trump in the Whitehouse, Brexit, Wales v England tomorrow and we're discussing Blind Date and ketchup?
It's quite fun isn't it.
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Hater… is a new dating app that matches people on their dislikes a good idea?
Speaking of dating – as we were earlier – here’s Pete Cashmore on an new app he’s been trying
I’ve now been an eligible bachelor on Hater, the new dating app that matches singletons according to what they dislike, for 60 hours. Disappointingly, despite being a bottomless goldmine of petty dislikes, I’m still single.
My excuse is that the app-provided list of things I’m supposed to find irritating, but I don’t really care about them. There’s no Nicole Scherzinger Muller Lite ads or alt-right middle class teenagers. Unforgivably, there doesn’t even seem to be a Trump option.
I’d love to meet someone as relentlessly testy and nit-picky as me but my abiding impression is that Hater needs to draw its gallery of irks from its active users or face becoming just another dating app that dies on the vine. As it stands I, ironically, just find it a bit annoying.
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We’ll put our top reporters on this one
The great 'ketchup in the fridge debate'
Whether its for top class political debate making sense of the news or topical issues that are at the hearts of our lives, thousands of you come to the comments every day ... And on Wednesday this week, it was certainly a conversation with gravitas that caught our eye.
After a supermarket did a poll and found around half its customers put ketchup in the fridge, around half of you were pretty confused. Why would you do that? The numbers were actually 53% in the chiller and 47% out, but, that’s their customers ...
This is the perfect opportunity for the Guardian to do it's own poll.
A good point, Pidgeonfancy – we hear you: can we find out whether our readers are in tune with customers of that particular supermarket? Do you feel passionate or are you sort of in the middle? Maybe this causes fights in your family? Is any of this statistically significant? Who knows.
So, where do you keep your ketchup?
Just one more comment to get you going, with the original numbers ...
well if 53% want it in the fridge that means everyone has to. No debates. Even the 47%ers must realise that the 53% won so they should shut up and get on with using the fridge
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Just a last handful of your suggestions for the new Blind Date host before we move the conversation above the line here on a little ...
Or someone more serious?
Who should host the new Blind Date? Paxman, obv.
"Are you seriously suggesting that this young lady should choose you to take on a date based on some sort of puerile double-entendre answer to a question about what sort of ice cream flavour you would be, and why? Is this what you think the viewing public deserves?”
Jeremy Paxman should do it in exactly the same delightful manner he used when they started making him do the weather.
Fresh from The Moorside ...
A couple of calls for this comedian:
Dear ITV,
I'll even sit through the ads if you let Jerry Sadowitz do it.
x
But finally, an observation ...
In the days before iPlayer et al., it seemed to me that there seemed an element of irony in a show that is about finding a date while sat in front of the TV on a Saturday night.
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Photos of the week – Obama on holiday and a family gathering
Picture editor Joanna Ruck takes us through some of the most memorable images her and colleagues have seen this week.
The standout photo this week has to be the one of Barack Obama on holiday in the Caribbean. Looking healthy and somehow still smiling despite all that’s going on.
The family gathering to end all family gatherings happened in China this week. They managed to gather all 500 members of the Ren family together in Shengzhou City – and needed a drone to take the photo.
Ukip campaigning in Stoke have taken to carrying umbrellas, not for the rain, but the flying eggs.
What images stick in your mind?
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A couple more of your suggestions after Harriet Gibsone asked who you would like to see host the returning Blind Date.
There have been a few votes for comedians in character...
But not many women, we note – perhaps nobody can match Cilla herself?
Clearly, Blind Date should be hosted by Cilla Black.
As portrayed by Leigh Francis in a rubber mask.
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Who would you like to see on Blind Date? Here are some of your suggestions so far ...
THERE IS ONLY ONE CHOICE: the great Miriam Margoyles to host Blind Date. Incidentally, the revamped version which Grundy's did in Australia made the contestants sign a waver that stated that if they caught a venerial disease as a result of the encounter, the production company could take no legal responsabliity
Hmm ... nice. What about Ricky Gervais? Or, even better ...
This next reader has a point
Finally, for now ...
If that last one makes no sense to you, check out this quite disturbing video by comedian Adam Buxton ...
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Who should host the new Blind Date?
31 May, 2003: the day terrestrial television bid a fond ta-ra to Blind Date – the one stop shop for love and a lorra lorra laughs. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s, 18.2 million tuned in on a Saturday night to watch as a selection of lonesome singletons with enormous perms wrestled with food-based innuendo.
This week it was announced that the show is making a comeback. It returns in a very different cultural climate, however. Perhaps the end of Blind Date marked the end of innocence itself. It existed before one could hook up with the nearest ankle fetishist within a 10cm radius within the click of a button. Before you could flick on the TV and see a row of brazen penises on display (Naked Attraction, not The Grand Tour).
Of course, key to the success of the original series was queen matchmaker Cilla Black, with her catchphrases, chintzy charm and cheekiness. So is there a beloved figurehead worthy of replacing her in 2017?
So far Geordie Shore’s Vicky Pattison has been rumoured, as well as trilby’s Olly Murs. But I think we can do better than that. Let us know who you’d like to host the return of the revamped dating show (and for a bonus point, a new Graham too).
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Hello and welcome!
Welcome to our weekly social, where we discuss the week’s news and comment with our readers. We’ve got lots of great things lined up today (including some comments on the return of Blind Date. Very exciting). Share the topics you want to discuss now below the line. Look forward to chatting, thanks all and great to be back.
Personally I'm a bit fed up with Trump hogging the headlines. He makes me angry, and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'd rather not have to read about him. I appreciate that The Guardian is now a global news organisation and has an obligation to American readers, but I'd be grateful if you could reduce his exposure on the UK version of the site. I'd prefer to see UK stories headlining the site, with American news placed in a section of World News further down the page.
Thanks :)