Humphrey Appleby

They wave the last lap and chequered flags? That could of course be done with a digiboard these days, although there's probably still some need to make sure riders are lined-up inside their gates.

He wasn't entirely my cup of tea for various reasons, but you could never doubt his commitment to speedway. I think commentary, and particularly speedway commentary where there are long gaps to fill, followed by quick bursts of action, is a thankless task and fair play to him for not only stepping up but anchoring the role for a long time. His passing at just 52 is of course also very sad for all those around him. RIP

I don't know how many it times it has to be said, but speedway isn't football anymore than cricket is football. There's at least 4 different types of professional cricket match currently played in England lasting from 3 hours to 5 days (even if don't always know whether the last couple of days will actually happen), and even more formats if you take club cricket into account. Half the attraction of speedway for me is the different types of meeting, different formats, and that you can scale things to fit around the time / spectator attention span available. But it's not unreasonable to ask what you're actually getting for your money, and even just because you're an anorak is a perfectly acceptable reason.

I seem to remember 6-pair formats occasionally being run in open meetings, not to mention that it's been used in Poland and I'm sure other countries as well in the past. Pretty much every 3TT, 4TT, 5TT and pairs events of varying numbers format (certainly 6, 7 and 9) has been run at some point in speedway's history.

In fact this is a curious thing. Australia and some EU countries have much more relaxed visa conditions for 'working holidays' than the UK and Australia have.

That's a subset of the Commonwealth and still represents 60 million people. If "30 million Romanians and Bulgarians coming to Britain" were a Brexit issue, then how is 60 million (plus an additional 5 million from Hong Kong of course) not going to be? And the fact remains there would have to be reciprocity, and those countries only want the 'brightest and best' from the UK... Sadly, when it's all said and done, speedway makes no significant economic, social or cultural contribution to the UK and doesn't warrant any special treatment.

No more than Australia wanted to allow 65 million Britons to go to Australia ;-)

Doesn't fit with UN or EHRC law either. Discriminating against those of an accident of birth who've spoken against the policies of their country of the birth, is not only moralisticly wrong, but plays into the victimhood narrative of Putin.

You can come as a regular visitor for a sports tournament or event provided only expenses and/or prize money are paid. For paid employment over 6 months, a visa that will basically cost you a minimum of GBP 868 for a year and takes up to 3 months to process, is now required. I suppose you might get conceivably get away with claiming you're just on holiday, but if you've already got a pending visa application it's going to look suspicious. It used to be simple and now it's not since Brexit.

Well he didn't succeed with that, and now will be a target of the Russian regime. I think it's quite dangerous for high(ish) profile people to speak out against the Putin regime, and I think would not have been done lightly.

Boris Johnson was born in New York. Do you consider him to be American? Ben Stokes was born in New Zealand but plays for the England cricket team.

The Russian constitution prohibits the revocation of Russian citizenship from anyone born in Russia, assuming that some lip service is still paid to the legalities there.

Something must be done, and here is something..!

Even if that were true - which is isn't - it still wouldn't make it right. Russians representing Russian federations and in official Russian teams are being excluded from sporting events, and few would object to that. However, wielding the pitchforks against people simply because they had the misfortune to be born somewhere, is really not the way to behave regardless of the strength of everyones' feelings against Russia. We need to distinguish ourselves by our higher standards of behaviour.

The simple answer is that's complete nonsense. If someone has actually taken the citizenship of another country then you can't ban them simply because of an accident of birth. Otherwise you'll create different classes of citizenship within a country, and would be especially unworkable in a country with a largely immigrant population such as Australia. A citizen is a citizen with the same rights as everyone else in their (adopted) country, regardless of the rabble rousing sentiments. If there were going around vocalising support for Russia then you may not want them playing in your tournament (which is fair enough), but if someone is actually condemning Russia what more is expected from them?

You are wrong to target individual Russians who are resident outside of Russia and have no connection to the Putin regime, whether it's sport or any other job they're doing. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, most have nothing to do with Putin and it's a fair bet many if not most oppose his actions. Most of us are outraged by the actions of the Russian government, and frankly I've been outraged by its behaviour for a number of years even if there were a number of apologists for it in the West (and on here) until just over a week ago. You need to make a distinction though, between the Putin regime and the Russian people (even if many have naively support him thanks to the propaganda), and whilst sanctions do have to be put on the country and its residents, believing that exerting pressure on expat Russians will somehow enable Putin's overthrow shows a total lack of understanding of his total control of its state apparatus. It's all too easy to get out the torches and pitchforks against anyone or anything Russian, but history (including two World Wars) has shown it's counterproductive to automatically assume 'enemy aliens' will take the side with their parent country. People often leave their countries because of some dissatisfaction or disagreement with political and/or economic conditions there, and Russians are really no different. This quite aside from the fact that by penalising totally innocent expats, you are far more likely to alienate them against your cause and reinforce Putin's rhetoric that Russians are victimised by the rest of the world. Or put another way, much of the world including most countries in Europe opposed the invasion of Iraq which the UK participated in. I don't recall any British sportspeople being banned from anything, and would you have considered it reasonable and proportionate for British expats to be expelled from all the countries they were living and working in?

And I think that's correct. Individuals are officially representing Russian and Belarus teams (regardless of what they're called) so should not be allowed at the Paralympics.

They'll be more preoccupied with the body bags coming back, and the future additions to the Paralympic team...

It's actually Motorsport UK, but the motorcycle version is the ACU. Motorsport UK have not actually banned Russian competitors, but Russian-licensed competitors. I think it's academic about Mazepin anyway, as Haas have pulled Daddy's sponsorship, he's a poor driver, and has had other off-track issues that will make him unpalatable if he's not bringing any money. Moreover, his family is likely closely related to the Putin regime, so it's not quite the same as for other Russian sportspeople.

Whilst it's easy to draw parallels, Iraq's regime had already invaded two other countries, had in the past used chemical weapons (against Iran and the Kurds), conducted ethnic cleansing within its own borders, and was largely kept from further bad behaviour through ongoing sanctions and no-fly zones. Now whilst various Ukraine governments have undoubtedly been a bit corrupt and to various extents pursued nationalist agendas, they're certainly not amongst the worst in the world and have never actually invaded anyone nor been involved in state-sponsored atrocities in the past 75 years or so. To be very clear, Putin has long used the invasions of Iraq and the NATO interventions in the Balkan conflicts to justify his behaviour (e.g. annexation of Crimea and establishment of puppet regimes in parts of Georgia and Moldova), but two wrongs don't make a right.

It will not encourage anything of the sort. The average Russian has no chance of overthrowing Putin who controls all the levers of power including the security forces. No more than Saddam Hussein could be overthrown by Iraqis. All you will do is reinforce Putin's rhetoric that Russians are being victimised in the world, and turn innocent Russians who don't support Putin against you. The only way Putin will be overthrown is when his inner circle, the oligarchs or the Russian military leadership decide enough is enough. There is a strong argument for other countries to make travelling in and out of Russia very difficult, or prevent Russians in Russia from doing business with the rest of the world. It is very wrong to target Russians who already live and work in other countries unless they have some connection to the Putin regime.

And I like I said, are you going to be banning every expat Russian from working, even though most have nothing to do with Putin's regime? We're not talking about Russian teams or riders officially representing Russia - we all agree they should be banned. It's about individuals being allowed to work and earn a living, even if that's riding in the SGP.

I don't know what that has to do with Russians resident in other countries being allowed to continue to work. I'm fully aware it's an appalling situation - not least because I was talking to some people in Ukraine most of last night - but that's not the fault of every Russian. All the Russians I know, including my office mate who's lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years, are appalled by the behaviour of Putin. Why should they be denied work or even worse expelled from the countries they may have lived in for many years, unless they're somehow connected to Putin regime? Let's not start any torchlight pogroms which will just play into Putin's victimhood complex and give him an excuse to invade countries on the grounds of 'protecting Russians'. We should never repeat the appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians, or German Jews who'd sought refuge in the UK during WW2 and had every reason to support the Allied effort.

Yes, that's the way it works. People should be able to do that if they links to more than one country.

The statement as issued by the IOC Executive Board says exactly that, if you could be bothered to go and read it on the IOC website which is surely the authoritative source. I quoted part of that statement verbatim, so not sure what the confusion is on your part, but you can read it for yourself here... https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participation-of-russian-and-belarusian-athletes-and-officials No, the link that Grachan posted did not say that, because it was an article in the Gulf Times that left out the important detail.