BalarnyStone

You're talking crap. I said don't listen to the moaning bastards claiming the Olympics doesn't benefit the NE, giving examples of why that's crap. I also said I can't see how a London based event is supposed to provide the lasting infrastructure/ammenities in the NE that someone seemed to think it should. No contradictions there I think you'll find. Your take on my words is just your attempt to backslide out of showing how the Olympics are somehow a bad thing for the NE, or represent something that miserable gits like yourself can justifiably have a good whinge about when completely unrelated news like this BAE announcement comes out.

Not what I was told. It sounded more like nearly 3 months pay for 2 weeks work, plus extra holiday and other benefits as well. Who's going to turn their nose down at that this year? If I see him again i'll ask for more details. Of course it won't make a massive impact, but I don't see what the NE economy was supposed to get out of a London based Olympics.

As opposed to the figures if the Olympics had never come, which would be..........zero, jack shit, nothing, nada, fuck all, diddly squat. But if you have a better idea for how a London based event can benefit the NE economy more than it has done, then let's hear it. I presume it's not based on some 1970s economic model where geordies are once again considered by the rest of the UK as nothing more than navvies.

How does a bunch of NE people getting a shed load of money for 2 weeks work help the NE economy? How does one of the city's biggest employers winning a high profile contract help the NE economy? Were these serious questions? And if you work in a call centre, worry ye not, normal services will not be affected (although you may notice your bus is a little bit older, as all the knackered withdrawn stuff is brought from out the back, to cover for all the shiny new buses delivered last year, being sent to the smoke)

I've started a dedicated thread if there's to be any more of these odd questions. If it's possible, perhaps the mods can move the previous ones there too and get this thread back on topic.

Rather than derail the BAE thread, if anyone's got any more bizarre questions for me, let's have them in here.....

I sense this might be a dissappointment, but I don't have any strong views on Mr Will.I.Am. All I know is he's on the Voice, which I don't watch, he makes his own cars, he can rap a bit, and for some unkown reason, someone let him run with the Olympic torch recently....The cars thing is about the most interesting thing about him that I can see, but it sounds like he's trying to be the Bono of the ghetto with that....

I wouldn't be interested in Peru, not if the NUFC side was also pretty shit (at a minimum I'd expect both Shearer and someone like Ginola to headline a Nobby testimonial at SJP). Does anyone have any idea how popular he is in S America? A continental select team would be very attractive.

Salt, vinegar and brown sauce. Cheesy chips is not human food, period. It's the preferred diet of vermin, obviously. Chips must be soggy with grease and/or half brown from being over-cooked. Dry chips are a hanging offence. Fish must be succulent and full of flavour, batter must be crispy, and preferred packaging is of the cardboard box variety not a polystyrene piece of crap that's sadly favoured round my way. Watery fish and/or soggy batter are also hanging offences. What relevance this is to BAE though is lost on me.

If he had the sense he was born with he should have avoided any mention of the title at all. For precisely the same reason iirc that Pardew never mentioned the top four in his opening press conference here. Instead, Rogers basically arselicked the bin dippers by giving them the false hope that they'll be challenging for it at the end of his 3 year contract, just because they're lolerpool, the world's greatest club, which is patently absurd all things considered. The scouse fans are only just coming round to the idea that they're not an automatic top four team any more, that's how delusional they've got - I've been reading RAWK for a while, and to a man, they're off their fucking heads.

A trophy's a trophy.....

Pfft. The long term benefits are obvious and not confined to London, so it's hard to take that sort of cynicism seriously. And you can hardly lay the blame for BAE not having any orders at the doors of Lord Coe, nor can you pretend their lot would have gone differently had we just cancelled the whole thing ages ago (bearing in mind we were lumbered with putting it on in these times of austerity thanks largely to Blairenomics, who also brought you record levels of incompetences and waste in MoD strategic planning, on whom BAE are so reliant). Coe is doing his best to put this country on the map, in true blue Thatcher style. Nowt to be ashamed about.

Well I'm all in favour of the Olympics becoming a distributed event in future, but if that's not going to happen, it's pretty impossible to see exactly what kind of multi-million investment in infrastructure or amenities is going to be done outside of any Olympic host city. And even if it was a distributed event, there will always be places that can argue they saw no lasting infrastructure/amenity benefits. The idea that something like the Olympics could see new thigns being built in every town and village in the country seems a bit too pie in the sky idealism for my liking. No Olympics has never been Great Leap Forward for any country, and I think that Lord Coe has a lot to answer for when it comes to raising people's hopes about legacy crap. But we're doing a hell of a lot better out of it than the likes of Athens. Ephemeral it may be, but there's no doubt about it, these Olympics will make a profit. Whichever way you look at it, that's not a bad thing for the NE at all. And we've done well to get the benefits of being one of the football venues, which is more than most areas will see in terms of direct benefit.

Rodgers is totally buying into the Liverpool 'biggest club in da world' delusion it seems. Those arrogant bastards don't deserve it, if it is indeed genuine and not just patter anyway. Prediction: Promising start but will finish 8th after a second half backslide as opponents find it pretty easy to defend against a team of Hendersons passing it sideways, with the inevitable stream of late winners against them being put down ot the same bad luck that Kenny's shit and disorganised tactics, motivation and communication skills were all blamed on by his disciples this year. Rodgers will be gone by this time next year, put your house on it. FSG have already back tracked on their footballing model they said they would implement when they shot bambi, they've clearly got no guts or self-belief whatsoever.

Villa? come on.... If I was Hughton, I wouldn't see either of the other two as a step up from where he could be if he got brum promoted next year. Big if though.

Difference being, I'm sure there's not one person who can even imagine Gazza ever coming out with something like that disgraceful "nice to see you home fans booing you" comment, no matter how badly either he personally or the team had played, or how much grief the crowd had given them. Rooney got arrogant and arsey because deep down, that's probably the kind of asshole he actually is in real life, the product of a generation who, unlike gazza, expect to be lauded and monied to the eyeballs simply for being good at kicking a ball. In the unlikely event that Gazza was part of a team that even warranted booing, I'm sure he wouldn't have been anything other than totally embarrassed for letting the country and the fans down, and the only thing he'd have to say on it would be that he was busting a gut to go do better next time. Because unlike Rooney, that's ultimately the kind of guy he was. As this advert shows only too well. Gazza was if anything a victim of the celebrity/money culture that engulfed football beginning with the likes of George Best ironically enough, whereas Rooney is 100% a product of it. A truly unlikeable cunt, even when he's playing well. As for Hart, he seems like a nice guy, but way way too serious in interviews, and not like that at all in private apparently. Lighten up you action man looking fucker.

Just a top top bloke. Criminal that he got the shitty end of the stick while the likes of Rodgers & Lambert are gettiong top jobs off the back of 1 decent pl season each.

It's about 20 drivers actually, just from the 2 depots in the toon. Stagecoach also has depots in shields, the village of the damned, hartlepool, etc. As for 'billons', only half of that comes from central govt, the proportion of which comes from NE taxpayers is obviously small. The revenues from the football alone will be significant.

The best example is a Stagecoach bus driver I know - he's being paid an obscene amount just to go down and transport athletes for a couple of weeks, with bed and board and a daily food allowance. As are apparently hundreds of other drivers from all over the country. He's laughing his way to the bank by all accounts. He doesn't even have to take fares, so being away from home aside, it's actually easier than his day job up here. Other people are staying here but are getting work/contracts for all sorts of Olympic related stuff - marketing, the tourist tat, all sorts. Someone I know in IT even actually got a bonus for a rush job rectifying a mistake by the original contractor, some London based knob head who over-pitched the original job.

And unbelievably, today's show is set in the Toon.

Come Dine With Me. I dismissed this as yet more reality TV shite at first, but through sheer laziness ended up watching it the other day, and now I'm hooked. It's addictive Big Brother style car crash TV, but you can also sometimes get some good cookery tips.

From a purely historical perspective, this is really shit. But at the end of the day, the whole BAE / MoD model is a disaster waiting to happen. When you can't even persuade India to buy your stuff, even though they are in commercial terms probably your biggest export prospect outside of the disgustingly corrupt oil funded markets, then you know you fucked up. Add to things like the protectionist Buy America policy (that says you can't get any US federal funding for anything not built in America), and there's pretty much no viable long term export market for British made military vehicles any more. And for better or worse, the British Armed Forces of 2012 certainly has no need for continually running military production lines. But I hope there is someone out there who can make use of what is a brilliant site It would be excellent for literally any kind of large scale industrial manufacture. Even, god forbid, for making wind turbines. We certainly don't need any more poncy waterfront flats, or any more cultural shit. Levelling it to create an NEC type exhibition space wouldn't go amiss, but that would require vision in the local authority that simply isn't there. For anyone who works there, I'd say don't lose hope, firstly because you're getting a hell of a big advance notice here, and second, because despite what people claim, there are manufacturing jobs all over this region. As for all this rubbish about the Olympics, I personally know quite a few people directly benefiting from it, and that's before you even consider the revenue from the SJP fixtures, so don't buy into that line of depressing North-South Scouse type victimhood shit either.

And as a ps, Kermode didn't even name it as his film of the week.....(Star something instead)

This arrives in the city on the same evening as England's second group game. And I'm still not that motivated to actually go in and see it.......

Could have been worse....