Matt

Tories, the party that puts business first! Labour, the party that puts Trade Unions first Libdems, the party that puts people 49% first but under AV re-allocates craving for power as over-whelming second choice.

He's certainly getting a few goals- but for some reason we think it better to leave Kuqi in the squad?

Tories, the party that promotes the family unit by enabling their income to be turned off like a tap, then telling them to up sticks and move hundreds of miles if they want to get a job.

Southport (pronounced /ˈsaʊθpɔrt/) is a seaside town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. During the 2001 census Southport had a population of 91,404, making it the twelfth most populous settlement in North West England. The demonym of Southport is Sandgrounder. Southport lies on the Irish Sea coast of North West England and is fringed to the north by the Ribble estuary. The town lies to the north of the city of Liverpool at 16.5 miles Yes- and they hate being considered as part of Merseyside. Now, have a think why that might be?

Birkdale is in Southport and the residents of Southport want no association with Liverpool or Merseyside. They even had a successful campaign to ensure that the Royal Mail recognised them as part of Lancashire when writing addresses.

Do 'speaking leassons' follow ones in spelling? Where you even begin with all that?

Who on here has lost their job because of the cuts? Thanks for the compliment? And I didn't say that nobody would be effected, the argument was about the lower classes being "savaged"......(as you know fine well btw). God you're thick. Your not being very complementary their.

Hang on, are you saying it's a good or bad thing to cast your vote purely in self-interest?

Clever electorate? According to David Cameron we are largely incapably of counting from 1 to 4 and should just mark their name with an X.

I'm glad someone is confident.

Cole is the expensive, shit decoy. Once eveyone gets het up about not wanting him and we sign someone cheap and mediocre, it is seen as 'not as bad' as opposed being first linked with a superstar.

Do we have the AV result yet? I expect it to be around 60/40 against it, thus right royally fucking up Clegg and his merry band of lapdogs. So something good has come of a rejection. AV result looks a foregone conclusion. What I found interesting was that among my friends, support for electoram reform in general was very high, even if the only step was through a rather flawed approach (STV is better). Perhaps it will come in line with much needed reform of the upper house. Tories played the AV well during the forming of a coalition, it's not something either side really wanted, but it became a token gesture to electoral reform. I'd like to think that reform will be back on the agenda at the next general election, but the best people to push the agenda (LD) have severely blotted their copybook.

I still can't believe we didn't try to sign him after the 2-2 at the end of last season. Aside from him giving our backline a handful, he tracked back all game and was probably their best defender as well. Sadly I think we might have missed the boat and the price is now beyond what we will be willing to pay- but yes I'd pay £10m for him.

Pardew says we're safe, pay-as-you-play midfielder suddenly out for the rest of the season.

Let's see how they get on with shifting the 'premium' areas and the corporate boxes, which 8-9 years ago represented around 50% of all ticket income.

Just as he was really spoiling us, too.

Their chairman has conveniently loaned them £93m interest free. No specifics about how he made his money, so makes you wonder.

It's a public holiday, rather than a bank holiday- I think by law you would be due a day in lieu.

Peston writes a lot of guff at times (though not nearly as much as some of his regular comment contributors) but I think this article is on the money- and should be the absolute focus of the IBC's report in September: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/ro...bsidy_wise.html

So Christians get Christmas off but others dont. Do athiests get to pick days of their own choosing? What about religions with the most festival days. Should the workshy convert? Public holiday are decided by central government and no-one should be obliged to believe or act in any way because of what has been decided. The fact that I've been gifted a 4-day weekend does not make me want to get out the bunting any more than it does praise the lord or dance round a maypole.

Do you love Jesus?

Would cost a lot of money because we'd have to pay for strengthening the foundations around the Metro Station. I'm nee civil engineer, but have been told it's not as straight forward as sticking the stand up. The East Stand is a no no unless someone burns those Georgian student houses down. It's a shame because 60-65,000 would be about right for us. That was Freddie Fletcher's old line, that we couldnt build out because of the Metro line. Fairly sure one of the guys on here debunked it, though.

It's more that governments give them the credance to dictate policy. Ratings are relative, ultimately the price of debt is governed by demand and supply of risk, which is why the whole paranoia over the UK's AAA rating is so comical.

The rating agencies were put under colossal pressure from the big I-banks to give their securitisation conduits good ratings. This was mis-selling on a global scale and securitisation gave the perfect cover to carry it off. The instruments were too complex to fully evaluate and too many supposedly complex institutions simply looked at the rating and swallowed it up. I'm still amazed that the agencies have manage to emerge relatively unscathed from the whole affair. They banked nice fees for what could well be argued as fraud. Securitisation itself is useful as a risk distribution platform and it's vital to keep banks flexible enough to adapt to the prevailing economic conditions- but what was seen in the last 10 years has simply been a massive con and in many cases the willing buyers are as guilty as the all-too-willing sellers. Warren Buffet said something along the lines that to invest in a bond, you should read the prospectus- that could be anything from 200-500 pages- to fully understand the risks. If you were investing in CDO-squared you would have to read 100x100 that amount, so how could anyone truly evaluate the risks they were taking? On Brown, he's a very intelligent man who held positions of great power. He has to take a great deal of the blame. Between the Chancellor and later PM, the chairman of the FSA and governor of the BOE- nobody could have perhaps slowed things down in the UK (albeit to our detriment at the time)?. It's not like you man on the street who was mis-sold an insanely complex mortgage product. These guys knew what was going on.

Google only throws up this rather dubious source- http://www.socialist.net/brown-light-touch-regulation.htm “I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers” This feller has been Chancellor and PM. It's easy to go along with things in the good times, but you can't then start pointing fingers. Brown wheeled out Paul Myners to castigate the banking sector- this a man who has made millions from- you guessed it- the heady days of 1980s banking deregulation! This wasn't a truly global banking crisis. Plenty of countries' systems survived. Some because they'd already been burnt in the past, others because they were fundamentally more prudent. The UK was making hay for a decade with banks, their shareholders, employees, the government and the public all enjoying benefits of bumper payouts and easy credit. Demutualisation brought about windfalls for building society members. As home to a global financial centre, the UK was always likely to be at greater risk, but had enjoyed significant rewards before that.