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Apparently, The Donald said he might make an exception for him so long as he says nice things about him!

Or, as it is popularly known in the UK, 'The Daily Fail' !!!

The guy is so crude and vulgar and ignorant of what's really going on in the world that it beggars belief that Americans would actually elect him to be their president! He is riding a populist, nationalist anti-establishment bandwagon screaming, "Take me. I'm different. Everything will be different and better if you ignore them and take me!" Where have we heard this kind of talk before? Shades of Hitler riding a similar populist nationalist, anti-establishment bandwagon in 1930s Germany or Mussolini in 1930s Italy. A key aspect of their policies was stirring up hatred and discrimination against unpopular minorities and it was all couched in the most violent and vulgar kind of rhetoric. Anyone who disagreed was to be crushed, destroyed or, in Trump's words, "Get 'em out, get 'em out!" Yesterday's Jews, Communists, homosexuals, gypsies and the like are today's Mexicans and Muslims. The names change, the ideas and the rhetoric are depressingly familar. Not so long ago, a republican president visited Berlin and called upon his Communist adversary, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" 30 years on and another prospective republican president promises his supporters, "Let's build a wall and divide our country from those guys we don't like south of the border!" The irony is unmistakeable. Like many of his nationalist, bandwaggoner predecessors, Trump rides the politics of fear and promises everything will be alright again once those pesky minorities and foreigners have been dealt with. Hitler wanted to restore Germany's greatness after the humiliation of the First World War. Trump wants to restore America's greatness after the humiliation of being in an unfavourable balance of trade deficit with the Chinese and other pesky foreigners. He admires Vladimir Putin and intends to rule America in the same way Putin rules Russia. Opposition will be dealt with in similar fashion if he has his way. "Get 'em out, get 'em out!" Dr. Johnson recognised this kind of thing all too clearly more than 2 centuries ago: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" I just hope and pray the majority of Americans will wake up on election day, finally smell the coffee and send this particular scoundrel back to his tower in New York, where he belongs!

The biggest non-story of the year!!! Why should the British public who are only really interested in maintaining their standard of living and making sure the economy is running well care two hoots about the Tory Party's weird obsession with Europe? Have any of these Brexit fanatics come up with a convincing case for how and why the UK would be better off by breaking the Treaty of Rome and unilaterally wandering off by ourselves other than to feed their own narrow and, I suspect, strongly xenophobic obsessions? I realise it's not much of a choice but if I HAVE to decide whether to trust the political and economic instincts of Cameron as opposed to the ramblings of Boris The Buffoon, there's not much doubt where I would pitch my tent and I can't understand why any other sane and clear-headed UK citizen could ever decide differently!

Obviously, in the wake of 2 terrorist incidents in the city in the space of a year with one of them taking place just outside the proposed Olympic venue, Paris will have to carefully re-think its security strategy in general and not just for protecting big sporting events. I just hope that none of this will result in a weakening of the 2024 Olympic bid but rather act to strengthen it to make sure that the terrorists are not able to claim 'victory' by causing it to be abandoned!

Doping has to be tackled head-on but, all the same, it would be weird not to have any Russian representation in Rio. I just hope the Russian Olympic committee moves to deal with this matter in a satisfactory way in time for next year's Olympics!

Great pictures! It really feels like the 2024 Olympic race is already underway!!

Quite a ringing endorsement from the city council following the collapse of the 2020 bid! What a difference 3 years makes and yet the city's financial shape is not significantly better than it was 3 years ago. Rome is ideally the one candidate best placed to give Paris a run for its money if its latest bid fares better than the last one!

Delicious irony! I don't think Lee has lost any bid he has ever worked on so that's yet one more card to pile on top of the many other cards already stacked in Paris' favour for this bid!

Hallelujah indeed but what a farce! He just got himself convincingly re-elected only a friggin' week ago and now he's finally smelled the coffee and decided to quit? What in the name of all that's holy does this say about FIFA that it convincingly re-elected a deeply, disgraced figure who has now done a bunk and may yet end up in prison? I don't envy the poor sod that takes over. Who the hell would want to sort out this gigantic mess? Only a very brave and courageous soul, that's for sure!!!

I wasn't talking about Coe fronting the bid, just helping behind the scenes. At least that's what I assume he meant.

Apparently Coe offered his services to help with Paris' latest bid, or so I heard. I wonder if anything will come of this or will the Paris organisers be too proud to accept help from the guy who cost them their last bid?

The people of Paris have said yes, the President himself has said yes, surely it is but a mere formality for the CNOSF to now say yes and submit a bid to the IOC for what would be Paris' centennial Olympics! Exciting times ahead!

Faster, I assume you will be giving your full backing to Paris if it decides to go ahead with a 2024 bid?

Thanks for that! I'm looking forward to the 2024 bids more and more now that it seems likely Paris will put in a bid after all!

I have some sympathy for Lee's position. Sensible suggestion: Can we please have a complete ban on any more threads and comments about Tony please! If he's done something that contravenes the rules of the forum, then its up to the moderators to take action against him. If he hasn't and you just don't like him or his opinions, then just ignore him! I came here to talk about Olympic bids and sport related issues and discuss other topics of interest and amusement, not stumble across endless threads and postings about one particular teenage Londoner whose only 'crime' as far as I can tell is that he seems to have an over-excessive if slightly misguided enthusiasm for his native city and country! Is that unreasonable???

As I'm sure Baron will be the first to remind you, it's never too soon to start planning your opening ceremony! No kidding.....

I can't help feeling that all this negativity from French posters about Paris' chances for 2024 are, at least in part, still fuelled by lingering bitterness about what happened to the city's previous bids, especially the last one, hence this 'we don't want it, we don't care about it, nobody really cares about it anymore anyway' masochostic mantra that seems to me to be like some sort of self-inflicted revenge for the failure of past bids! Chill out Frenchies. Where there's a will, there's always a way! A positive and enthusiastic bid for 2024 will put Paris automatically as the favourite. Now we know being the favourite doesn't always guarantee selection but I highly doubt the special circumstances of 2012 will occur again. For one thing, there is no Chirac around any longer to upset potentially vital swing votes on the eve of the election by making disparaging remarks about their cuisine! Who knows what might have happened if he had only managed to keep his trap shut?

"The phrase originated from the swear words "sacré bleu", a Marian oath, referring to the color (i.e., "sacred blue") associated with Mary, mother of Jesus." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrebleu