ChezGiven

Wacky, Acid and then me went with Nolan before alex had posted in the thread. I would have included Parky but he had too many spelks in his arse.

Going to say Enrique but Nolan's form has been better over the latter part of the season. His leadership has also been a big factor all season. Enrique's link up play with Jonas has been one of the highlights of our play and his defending has been classy at times.

Thought Barton was very good last night, not amazing but that pitch looked like it tough to get the ball to sit down.

Is it just Liverpool fans you have a problem with or does your xenophobia stretch to all fans who aren’t Newcastle fans? Our foreign fans wouldn’t have been able to get there last night, so what? West Ham only brought half their quota and many LFC fans started off for Madrid yesterday morning if that helps. I wouldn’t mind the attendance staying at 37,000 for a season or two, it would mean that all the locals who aren’t prepared to spend hours on the phone trying to get a ticket for their home town team would be able to go to as many matches as they want.. One of my mates who isn’t an STH has to pay 30 quid to be a member of the PTS scheme, which allows him to spend anything between 30 minutes and two hours on the phone applying for a ticket. It wouldn’t be so bad if being a member allowed you to drop in to the TO and buy a ticket from there but there are no window sales anymore. Don't all fans think they're the best in the world? Your view is so full of bile it ceases to have any real meaning. Stevie is excersing his Nietzchean erasure and the result is that muppets don't get his post-Hegelian dialectic. Hope this helps. Vince Clark in lederhosen?

Good video on CDOs for those interested. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display...uncorking_cdos/

GS were not the only players, of course. http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-...-housing-bubble

How come you have to queue for 2 hours on the phone if there are only 37,000 in the ground? Surely the fact that regulars are blocked or made other plans, frees up tickets for those desperate to get in? Apart from the Norwegian tickets obviously, they were already sold.

and invariably loses.

Do you find you have become a risk assessor? Whenever I walk into someone's house with Sam I'm scanning for potential danger. Ornaments, fire places, pets, cups of tea, tv stands, all that kinda thing. I dont even like shouting at the bairn, but at 2 1/2 he is at the age when the word "no" is used all to easy. He goes in the huff and all sorts now 90% of the time he is good as gold like, but that 10% he just seems to know how to tweak every button My cousins came round our flat couple of months back, they've got 3 kids. They started straight away with "you'll have to sort those wires out near the telly, those plants will need moving, don't put this here that there etc". It was exactly what she said, you start doing risk assessments of everything. Surely the trick is to be at the point where the threat of a smack is enough and working out how to never let it escalate beyond that? I got smacked a a few times but that was probably fully deserved.

Apart from a stutter and an involuntary twitch if someone raise their hands next to me, didnt do me any harm.

If we were playing Liverpool on the last day of a season where they won no trophies and didnt qualify for Europe would we make a banner to take the piss out of them? I'd laugh of course but lets not get carried away whilst enjoying it, otherwise we'll end up looking like boring brummie mugs with an inferiority complex.

"disgusting country, disgusting footballing style, disgusting tactics, disgusting players, disgusting war record, decent food" How many countries can we apply this statement to?

I think the use of anecdote to promote an idea of a broken society is shit trick to pull on people.

http://j.mp/aZVR8D

Happy Face, you are slipping mate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8625931.stm Massive move from the SEC.

Some bloke paid 3000 notes to get a taxi from Norway to Belgium so he could get a ferry back to England.

He's on about the NHS IT / information system project that is billions over budget, even with the consultant (accenture?) bearing the brunt of much of the over-run. Been going on for about 8 years. Fucked up shit. I know what part of the modernisation stick he was using to beat on the government. But what does Clegg intend to do to cut beauraucracy? Start another IT project from scratch? Go back to the way it was before? Both would only increase waste. Neither would cut beauraucracy any more than the system being rolled out (slowly and over budget I agree). All major IT systems have teething trouble, and the accenture one was the biggest outside of the military. An excellent point. Not going to score too many political points unfortunately. The NHS information strategy and investment may one day pay for itself if they get it right. Imo.

He's on about the NHS IT / information system project that is billions over budget, even with the consultant (accenture?) bearing the brunt of much of the over-run. Been going on for about 8 years. Fucked up shit.

Ideology no longer separate the two parties, instead they just differ in their assumptions about behaviour. When you plan a policy, you need to know how people will react and how they will respond to the new set of incentives that face them. Tax credits, marginal changes in income tax, VAT reduction, additional govt expenditure are all broadly in the Keynesian framework. The govt has a role in managing recessions - something that became de facto policy of right and left when money supply control was no longer feasible with base rates at 0%. The differences now are based on which incentive mechanism is the best one, given the policy objectives. Most economist believe Brown called the policy changes, the new incentives if you like, correctly. New Labour / 3rd way politics was all about setting policy goals that balanced the efficiency/equity trade-off. The free market ideologues believed only the market delivers efficiency and the socialist ideologues would not accept social inequalities. What Labour did was say, lets look at our social and economic objectives on a case by case basis and analyse individual incentive structures to understand how to balance economic growth versus social objectives. New labour re-callibrated British politics and replaced ideology with pragmatism. Blair knew a fundamental economic truth, you have to create wealth before you can re-distribute it. His legacy for me is this new politics, which leaves very little room for alternative approaches to managing the country. One comment in the thread i want to respond to, seen it in another election thread too, is that Labourhave had 13 years to sort the problems out. Very stupid way of looking at the world to think that today's problems existed in 1997 and that the UK's current social and economic climate has been dependent on the current government. Another phrase used above was that the 'banks were callling for change'. Beautifully euphemistic. They were lobbying for change. What this usually involves is a lobbying position carefully crafted by 1000s of man hours of expert work which predicts increased profitability for the business on one side but carefully avoids presenting the real response in behaviour of the industry. The banking lobby were the drivers of change and the politicians were unable to predict or analyse the long term implications of the change. C'est la vie.

There was a rumour it was all the empty seats being cleaned at the riverside. #simonbird @youaremyboro

What would constiute this ambition then? Saying 'we want Newcastle to push for a European place next season' in interviews with the national media? Or purchasing some decent players? Even if he does spend (i admit, its not yet certain he will spend anything) 20m for example, i still see that as just getting the first team up to bottom tier of premiership standard. We could buy Milner back for 12m, then what?

The value of preserving premiership status all depends on the cost base you generate getting there.

What does that mean? That everyone goes around saying it? Pointless. You mean you want Mike to spend the sorts of money that would get us 10th rather than 17th dont you? So, how much would that be then? As a good poster etc which you are Chez, I won't make an issue of "Mike"............but it isn't a case of spending money to finish 10th rather than 17th, its because he has sold players who could have put us in the top 6 anyway with a little more money and quality added. What is the cost of his sales ? I would accept the financial position more readily, and any reasonable constraints, if he hadn't shown himself to be a total idiot in the vast majority of his actions already. Not sure what sort of issue you could make seeing as i backed you for years against the idiots who used daft names to refer to Shepherd yes I know that. I actually don't wish to him spend 60m quid or whatever either, even though I agree with your last statement. I would like him to show me that he understands what it takes to be successful. To do this we need to bring at least a couple of players who step straight into the team and pay the rate they may demand. That will do for the moment, along with not bringing in cheap players who have not proved themselves in the premiership and/or are too old to do it now. And he must keep Enrique, Guittierez, and Carroll if someone tries to buy them. Then the same again next year, unless he has sold out by then. Question. How much do you think preserving premiership status is worth ? [i'm not saying this as a target, just wondering if he will actually sit and work out that it is worth keeping this time instead of gambling with it] Completely agree, i dont think he can resolve all the problems so bringing in a top quality midfielder and striker have to be the priority. If you want to see the value of investing good money in the latter, look no further than Bent. We'll see if he has learnt anything, fucking hope so.

Forest to come up. Pompey to win the cup. Messi to boss the CL final. Arsenal to win the Prem. Us to go unbeaten and hit 100 points.