ChezGiven

And you're clearly pissed.

Hitchens is not a 'blogger', he's a proper journo, and he's nearing a swift death from esophageal cancer. His columns are still going strong and he's been debating a bit too: he is debating Tony Blair on religion soon, should be fun. As for me, no booze, my religion - Shiite Islam - does not allow it. I know Christopher Hitchens you patronising tit. Just helped the analogy but if it makes you happy you were the 'proper journalist' to HF's academic allah-botherer.

Just that she was a pretty girl to say she was from Kent, but she should leave the football predictions to the blokes and I said I'd love say I hope you stay up but I dont and ended with a "bye x". Abused Grant too. Good, they thought they had turned the corner, they are more worried now than at any point this season. Hope its them, Wolves and Blackburn. Aye that would be nice. Stoke would be wonderful though really would. I like MMcC but hate Wolves so seeing them mouthy tools going down would be nice. Very pedantic I know but see when there's a live game on the Championship, it's got that mint song on You've Got The Love by Candy Staton, and last season the credits had the CCC trophy with Wolves gold and black ribbons attached to it, this fuckin year no black and white ribbons, why not????? The Toon are a very jekyll and hyde side at the minute though, we are so calm on the ball in away games and we were last night we play like a Spanish team away with our little passes, but at home it's like a hot potato. I like Jose and Jonas sometimes they dont care how many people are up their arse they pass under pressure and never panic. People criticising Simpson, have a word, he's just come back from a nasty injury. I was going to say Stoke but i dont think they are in any danger of going down. Played quite well second half today. More of an Allardyce thing with Blackburn if i'm honest. The home form book goes out the window next week, its Bruce's first derby too.

To be fair the two bloggers are perfect versions of HF and KSA, one an Islamic apologist and the other a drunken pale shadow of his former self.

Just that she was a pretty girl to say she was from Kent, but she should leave the football predictions to the blokes and I said I'd love say I hope you stay up but I dont and ended with a "bye x". Abused Grant too. Good, they thought they had turned the corner, they are more worried now than at any point this season. Hope its them, Wolves and Blackburn.

What did you text back Stevie?

I suggested playing Barton on the right weeks ago.

CT those growth forecaste use a different type of model to the ones which i am referring. These models say the impact of government expenditure increases or decreases is not that great, so the underlying trend (which is a predicted u-shape we have just been through the bottom of) will continue and the cuts wont affect economic growth. If your model says that after a recession, the growth curve kicks up, then the predicted data will show that, as these figures do. The reality is that the impact of the cuts will lag behind the data and so wont be picked up by these models for a few months yet. FYI on those who support your view, do remember that there were more and better economists signing up agains the cuts, the FT Economics unit came out against them. The 'markets' dont predict much, there are some bulls and some bears and most of them want to change the yields on their bonds so have a vested interest in reducing the 'risk profile' of govt bonds. The bears in the markets said the same thing about the Irish and have now been proven wrong. The IMF is typically for them calling for conditions which favour the international finance community it is run by and represents. The IMF want favourable market conditions and dont give a fuck about the social ones.

Thought Barton was excellent yesterday after his mistakes against Wigan, really put in a good performance. He does give the ball away, which is annoying and last week costly but he does attempt to play what you might call 'probing' passes. His first ball to set Shola off down the right channel which set up the space he exploited to swing the cross in for the second goal was superb. Nicely weighted, curving, split the defenders and with the outside of his boot. Also thought Jonas was great yesterday, as usual went down a few blind alleys and looked to pull out of anything that might bruise his shins but had some decent possession and managed to worry them enough to create space elsewhere.

Maybe that accounts for him looking slower than last season. He's looked as shit as I thought he'd be mind.

The Brown stimulation package was a one off, the Obama package was a one off and the Chinese package was 2 individual stimulation packages. They were incremental to the long term fixed expenditure plans. They weren't annual commitments but one offs. The debate in the US is whether the Obama package wasnt big enough but the WSJ etc claim it failed. Krugman claims the US recession 'would have been worse without it'. All tricky arguments to make when the sample size is one and there is no control arm for the experiment.

http://www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr402.pdf

Not that hard to grasp really. Where in a recession, in debt and interest rates cant be reduced any further to encourage consumer spending and the banks are reluctant to lend to small business looking to invest. What do you do? Stimulate the economy which will pay off the debt in the long term, or slash spending to gain a more favourable rate from the bond market to keep financing the debt anyway? The models used by Nobel prize winning economists suggest that the former is better. The proof will be in the pudding but if employment doesnt recover next year, then we could be looking at a situation similar to Japan in the 90s. How will we get the one million job losses back into work if the economy isnt growing? Answer is, with great difficulty. Its not a straightforward choice between policies and quite rightly, the public sector should reduce in size as the economy has shrunk. The private sector contracts with the economy naturally, the public sector isnt governed by market forces so someone needs to decide to reduce budgets, to employ less people etc. A degree of this is correct. What the Chinese do is to ensure money they are spending is done in a co-ordinated way as part of an economic plan, building roads and transport links between manufacturers who are hierarchically linked in specific markets, using regional development agencies to ensure favourable lending rates to high potential local firms with export potential. The governor of the BoE was in Newcastle in 2009 when he announced £30m of money to One North East to subsidise a scheme for local manufacturing to establish networks in hierarchically linked companies in Europe. This was one of the first areas Cameron (a self-proclaimed one nation Tory) targeted for reduced spending. Its that lack of coherence in Tory thinking, coupled with the aggressiveness of their attack on our welfare state that concerns me the most.

Rationing at the petrol pumps, maximum 30 euros per car. Not sure if thats national or just where there are supply problems.

This morning they forcibly broke the blockade at the refinery just outside Paris. According to the map i saw on the news on weds, its the areas outside of Paris that are suffering the most from fuel shortages. If you are getting a ferry over, check with the operator about jerrycans of fuel being carried on board first.

A less inflammatory article but just as interesting for me. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/eu...iht-letter.html

He's miles ahead of the fish though. Never seen him against Nani or N'Zogbia so i'd reserve judgement on that one for now.

They're a good watch even though we lost mate, eurostar not an option? Still 1500 tickets left for the game for any part timers looking in, on general sale too. Think i've seen it before when it was on TV. Eurostar is an option, they are running at virtually full capacity, as for the rest of the place, its like St Petersburg 1917 at the minute. You've got to hand it to the french, if they don't like something they do something about it. I think they'd actually be better suited to being communist, I remember Ginola saying when you go to Monaco, the French are so impressed by these multi million pound yachts in the marina who belong to foreigners, but as soon as they see one owned by a frenchman they spit on the ground in front of them. Sounds about right, i often say its the last bastion of communism in Europe this place. I'll be signing up to the right wing party if my flight is fucking cancelled.

They're a good watch even though we lost mate, eurostar not an option? Still 1500 tickets left for the game for any part timers looking in, on general sale too. Think i've seen it before when it was on TV. Eurostar is an option, they are running at virtually full capacity, as for the rest of the place, its like St Petersburg 1917 at the minute.

Going to have a watch of them later, nice one Stevie. Tickets arrived yesterday, just hope this strike doesnt fuck up my flight.

30 Year old far left scottish shock jock attacks tories....... and in other news....... This such a shabby article that is so flawed it is the sort of stuff I would expect Adrian Durham to come out with on talk sport. Its too late to take it apart and quite frankly its so poor that Im sure most learned political followers on any party can see it for what it is. No its not. Thats the view of Krugman and Stiglitz, as the journalist points out, Adrian Durham is not remotely close to being an analogy and make you look like a fucking idiot. Its an excellent article but could be improved by citing the Eggertson's (2009) neo-keynesian model which predicts a multiplier effect 3 to 4 times that under normal circumstance when the interest rate is at the zero bound, or an in depth look at the two huge 'keynesian' stimulation packages provided by the Chinese governement since 2008. Apart from that its historically and factually correct.

Wasn't there a Mr Rahman who used to advertise 'trouser and zip at special price, westgate road' on metro radio?

Where did I say the bit in bold? I have stated absolutely nothing even resembling this, a pure contortion on your part. Cite direct quotes where I have claimed that women had only been subjected to tyranny in Afghanistan and nowhere else. If you can't do that, then stop being an divvy and misconstruing my words, as I have asked you to do several times now. Wind your fucking neck in with that shite, or'pipe down' as Stevie would say. I was highlighting the difference between crimes against women in the U.K vs under a Taliban rule when I responded to HF, as he had brought up cases of acid attacks and so on in Britain. I haven't even read the Mail article, I glanced over the pics to see if the chick was bangable: she passes the test just about, good for her. "If it had not been a military failure and a moral disaster then we would not have the daily mail printing pictures of Islamic plastic surgery disasters. Whether all that i just said is right or just some of it is irrelevant, the 'shocking' picture in the daily mail isnt 'shocking' at all, its depressingly predictable." You talk as though this article in the Mail is somehow evidence that the campaign in Afghanistan has failed. That's rediculous hyperbole, similar to the brand that the paper in question produces. If this is the sort of logic you apply in life, good luck with the macaroni-economics, you'll need it. If the conflict had been a military and moral failure as you claim, the Taliban would still be in charge. The two goals I stated have been achieved to some degree, the first one we can safely call a success. to disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan to degrade their ability to launch international terrorist attacks. - Success. The Al Quaeda forces have been absolutely decimated. The international terrorist threat from Afghanistan has been reduced. RE stable government, Karzai is there till 2014. Given the difficulties in establishing a government in a failed state, compromises have had to be made. One of these compromises is putting up with the corruption within the Karzai government, or at least proceeding with a government that had significant elements of corruption. He won't be publicly criticized for diplomatic reasons, but efforts are being made to deal with the corruption in its various forms. It's a start, and while the Afghan people are naturally fed up of conflict, the vast majority do not want to return to Taliban rule. Certain things are hard to measure because the concurrent war in Iraq has had such an affect on the Mid-East region, though I would happily speculate that Afghanistan/Pakistan are more stable now than they would have been had the situation been left alone. As for the effectiveness of the campaign, this is prone to constant fluctuations in any war; it is inevitable in one where the strategy has had to change from dealing with an initial crisis situation to a prolonged counter-insurgency battle. There have been many problems: anyone who spoke Arabic languages was treated with suspicion in the CIA, and there has been a lack of translators as a result; the British had forgotten the lessons learned from Northern Ireland about counter-insurgency, and they had well publicized problems with equipment and funding; the terrain has historically presented severe problems in all the Afghan wars; IEDs were poorly dealt with to begin with; the Iraq invasion had negative effects on the mission in several areas. The conflict has presented a constant barrage of ever-evolving problems, we intervened in a desperate mess and this was always going to be the case. I would say this basic axiom holds true with regard to war: you don't achieve anything if you give up at the first sign of struggle. If we had done so it would have been a great victory for the jihadists. The mission is now to provide stability in Afghanistan and this means training the Afghan army and police force. Does this represent the moral failure you speak of? What would have been more palatable for you, if we had pulled out after the first civilian casualty and left the country to be gripped by Taliban forces once again? Given your highly emotional responses to this topic, I wonder if your opposition to the NATO mission was a blind one based on a severe mistrust of Bush/Blair, and a squeamish attitude towards the inevitable atrocities that occur in war. That goes for the rest of you too. I have yet to see a compelling or even remotely plausible case be made for inaction. For those of you who agree that intervention was necessary but it has ultimately failed, I have yet to see any of you make a case as to why you believe this, and what you would have done differently. I have to say my feeling is that the lack of public support for the conflict now is mostly because people are so uninformed about it. The 'I don't know why we even went in the first place' crowd appear to be the largest in numbers, certainly the loudest. Here's an interview with Gen. Jack Keane from the 19th, he has worked with Gen. Patraeus and is close to him: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11252 Slate also have a journo embedded in Afghanistan at the moment and he's doing multiple articles during his stay: Here's the latest - http://www.slate.com/id/2270855/ Here's a list containing the other ones so far - http://www.slate.com/?id=3944&qp=44788 I said 'as though this is the only country in the world', not that you said it but that it could be inferred. Thats my judgement and its a shame for you that it incites such anger. I can infer what i like and pass comment on it, get used to it. My point about the article is that we would not see these sorts of articles if the mission had been successful, thats a counter-factual argument and as such just an opinion. I consider it propaganda aimed at appeasing the Mail's readership. I agreed action was justified, my point was that the shocking pictures would not be in our newspapers if that action had been deemed a success. Thats a matter of opinion only the editor of the Mail can truly answer, not you.

Fucking must do if he goes to a hotel for a plate of chips. I'm guessing the irishman having chips in a hotel in nottingham was more than likely staying at the hotel. Howay Sherlock.

To be fair, I reckon ewerk knows his potatoes.