ChezGiven

Fuck knows how you're posting on here if you've got swine flu. I couldnt move for 48 hours.

I completely forgot to post this. Its a must read for anyone (around 3 posters) interested in this thread. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine...mp;ref=magazine Its caused quite a debate, further editorials in USA today (yesterday) on the back of it.

I used the dog being slapped on the nose example as i knew you'd be able to relate to it.

Rents, one of the insight is something like this (approximately); 'a clinical trial is a social representation of the biological process of evolution; assumption, experiment, falsification, adaptation' Dog assumes he can piss on the carpet, dog experiments by pissing on carpet, end of nose becomes sore from slap and original assumption proves to be false, dog adapts by pissing outside, nose does not get slapped, continues to piss outside. Thats an n of 1 trial but you get the point. Like any form of biological adaptation, it is the acquisition of knowledge. Its how Popper defines that knowledge that is quite profound.

Go to the pub after work quite a lot but just have 2 pints then go home for my dinner. Wont drink again that night. Or i go home and have wine with dinner, bottle between 2. If i go out for dinner, i'll drink wine. At weekends, i'll have 4 or 5 lagers on a friday, maybe more or less on the saturday. Our lass thinks i'm an alcoholic as i'll not have a drink, once, max twice a week.

I love Ben Goldacre but i wouldnt rate him as a scientist, he knows how to communicate evidence based medicine to the masses though. If you are really into the subject, read Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, its insight is almost as profound as religion and will leave you running round thinking you've discovered a secret.

I think it walks the line well. No-one could call those first 5 nominations SloopJohn-like in ther pretension. Which five?

Get a grip.

Their opinion is as i'd expect it. Get rid of the inequitable and inefficient tax break for the rich, i.e. increase tax revenue by removing a badly designed incentive. Not exactly 'free market'.

Nice work Rents, you'll love it. My empire is expanding! Mwahh hahahah.

Yeah but the Secretary of State for Health and Joseph Stiglitz are on mine. February 25, 2009: AMY GOODMAN: And healthcare? [Obama has] called for universal healthcare, but he does not call for single-payer healthcare. JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think that there are some fundamental problems in the efficiency of our healthcare system. And what we’ve seen is that the private healthcare insurers do not know how to deliver an efficient way. AMY GOODMAN: Do you support single-payer healthcare? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think I’ve reluctantly come to the view that it’s the only alternative. You know, we’ve tried a lot of other things. And we’ve been—you know, I was in the Clinton administration, and we debated a lot of alternatives, and I’ve watched things as they’ve emerged and, you know, evolved over the last twelve, sixteen years, and I think there’s a growing consensus that the private market exclusion is not going to work. Source To paraphrase Alfred Marshall, one healthcare system's use of market forces shades imperceptibly into the next. Meaning that the degree to which you employ market forces is a highly variable factor with many shades of grey between a planned top-down NHS and a free market. However, "single payer" does not mean a system like the NHS. France is a single payer (if you ignore the smallish private market), Germany is a single payer, Spain is regionalised into 15 authorities but again is ultimately a single payer. So, what is Stiglitz saying by supporting a single-payer? More like the UK? More like France? You will have to look at how he believes healthcare finance should be raised. The UK raises it through general taxation, most of the rest of Europe raises it through hypothecated tax rates direct from income and encourages profit-based 'mutuelles' who fund top-up care for those in middle income jobs. This is what i proposed in this thread, the move away from funding through taxation to a form of social insurance with the ability to top-up your cover with profit and non-profit 'mutuelles'. This is virtually a single payer model with market forces used to a. Link funding to income more directly b. Introduce competitive forces through the providers of social insurance The deals on the table in the Senate at the moment wont be far away from this model and reflect that the US was far too far to the other side of Marshall's spetrum. From this weeks The Economist.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2350390,00.asp Gameboy (1989) - 118million sales Playstation (1994) - 102million sales Playstation 2 (2000)- 140million sales Xbox 360 (2005) - 30million sales PS3 (2006) - 22million sales Surely a better indicator of the health of the computer games industry would be sales of games not consoles?

Where is ferp anyway, downloaded himself into second life for a 2 week holiday?

Thats another question, all depends on the finance iyam.

I'm not weighing behind their bid or anything like that, i just disagree that a conglomerate of 15 business divisions, with retail brands in each division markets themselves like that. It goes against every rule of channel marketing. I'm only going on my experience of working in and with marketing, not because i have a view on this lot in paticular. The first question has to be 'why'. In the bit i've highlighted you talk about looking to expand their portfolio, so why use a generic umbrella of the investment group when they sell actual brands. If they are not looking to sell their consumer brands but actually get into football ownership, it doesnt make a lot of sense to say their PR over 'getting into football ownership' is just PR, since thats the whole objective. Or are you saying this is to raise their profile as agents of footballers? Again, i'd say PR associated with handling players would be more effective. i'm not convinced either way, just highlighting things that seem illogical to me. Because this is free advertising? because they are a company that deal in this kind of thing and therefore probably need to be seen to be bidding even if they're not. Even if they are interested in buying a football club in Britain but not us, going down the route of announcing that they are serious here will raise their profile for when they do actually bid for some other club. As a global brand overall they want to raise their name and this is a cheap way to do it. Publicity is publicity, I wont ever understand the advertising world, for instance what do BASF get from their adverts on TV? its not even a product, in fact the only product anyone can name of theirs is tapes and nobody uses them anymore yet they spend a fortune showing some fucker climbing a mountain and dont even give us a product to buy? Surely they'd be better advertising in "chemical buyers weekly" or some other related way? http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA6380 Its not 'free' advertising though is it? First of all its PR, which every marketing organisation devotes budget to. Second, this is taking time and effort from the company to get the story in the press, with the right messages. This takes a comms team a while to put together. If its fake, then this effort seems a bit weird. Think of all the effort that goes into a NUSC statement, the to'ing and fro'ing, the attempts to get people on board etc. Secondly, if they want to sell more of what they do, a more effective way of doing this isnt some bizarre fake bid to buy NUFC but actually advertising what they do, isnt it? Thirdly, the idea this a fake bid to increase their profile for future bids is feasible but not that plausible imo. If the finance is there, then they go for it. If the finance is not there, then they focus on what is making them money, not some grandiose bizarre bid that is mainly playing out in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. The only thing i can think of is that they are using this to attract finance from potential investors. Those potential investors are however, not likely to be swayed by seeing the name associated with a bid for NUFC, as you suggest above. They have far more complicated and stringent criteria. Then again, this is the far east...

http://www.profitablegroup.com/partners-group.aspx Those links work too, am sure HSBC, Dell etc would sue if they realised.

Sex, Drugs and Remote Controls?

I'm not weighing behind their bid or anything like that, i just disagree that a conglomerate of 15 business divisions, with retail brands in each division markets themselves like that. It goes against every rule of channel marketing. I'm only going on my experience of working in and with marketing, not because i have a view on this lot in paticular. The first question has to be 'why'. In the bit i've highlighted you talk about looking to expand their portfolio, so why use a generic umbrella of the investment group when they sell actual brands. If they are not looking to sell their consumer brands but actually get into football ownership, it doesnt make a lot of sense to say their PR over 'getting into football ownership' is just PR, since thats the whole objective. Or are you saying this is to raise their profile as agents of footballers? Again, i'd say PR associated with handling players would be more effective. i'm not convinced either way, just highlighting things that seem illogical to me.

Some thoughts on this, as obviously got no clue about this lot at all. The profitable 'brand' itself isnt in the retail sector, so they have nothing to gain from exposure of the brand in highly visible consumer media. If they had something to sell then you might be right but what they have to sell, according to their website, is expertise in these sorts of deals. Are you proposing that this a practice run for a later deal in football, as that would be the only reason for doing this that would make sense. Which in itself doesnt make a lot of sense. If you know marketing, you'd find the idea that an investment firm wanting the investment firm's name known through outles like the Chronicle or The Sun is laughable. Take for example The Profitable Group's Property Division and its Villas in Phuket. Do you think placing an article (in the Chronicle for example ) that exposes the Profitable group's name as an investment house will draw attention to their property services or instead do you think a carefully placed ad next to a paid for story about Phuket in a travel magazine might be better? Think about it. If they want to buy a football club, they will bid for one. They wouldnt bid for it so they can sell more cigars, Thomas Pink shirts, red wine etc (seriously, thats what they sell in Malaysia). PP's post is funny but its view of the business world is a bit warped. I love Thomas Pink shirts. PS They've got little of no money, so not sure what you're on about. They have gained positioning in the national media (Times, Guardian, Telegraph) with this club sale tie in it doesn't really matter if they're in the Croydon gazette or whatever. Who knows the mind of Steve McMahon I certainly don't. Source for the first bit of that to justify the second bit is...? I'm just trying to analyse whether they are serious and whether claiming this is just PR has any credibillity. Not that its that important to be clear on these thing of course

If i had my time again, i'd do a degree in Jingle Writing.

Some thoughts on this, as obviously got no clue about this lot at all. The profitable 'brand' itself isnt in the retail sector, so they have nothing to gain from exposure of the brand in highly visible consumer media. If they had something to sell then you might be right but what they have to sell, according to their website, is expertise in these sorts of deals. Are you proposing that this a practice run for a later deal in football, as that would be the only reason for doing this that would make sense. Which in itself doesnt make a lot of sense. If you know marketing, you'd find the idea that an investment firm wanting the investment firm's name known through outles like the Chronicle or The Sun is laughable. Take for example The Profitable Group's Property Division and its Villas in Phuket. Do you think placing an article (in the Chronicle for example ) that exposes the Profitable group's name as an investment house will draw attention to their property services or instead do you think a carefully placed ad next to a paid for story about Phuket in a travel magazine might be better? Think about it. If they want to buy a football club, they will bid for one. They wouldnt bid for it so they can sell more cigars, Thomas Pink shirts, red wine etc (seriously, thats what they sell in Malaysia). PP's post is funny but its view of the business world is a bit warped.

What, they should be so politically sensitive that no-one should mention the club imploded and got relegated, just because the buyer might get upset when reality is pointed out to him? Do they have experience? Yes but that makes no difference to the average Joe, Keith Harris was the Chief Executive of HSBC until 1999 but he's still a 'stupid cunt'. I cant believe you're of such a critical mind that you found something to have a go at in those McMahon quotes.

Me and andrew are going to jack ours in (well all 6 of us are jacking 2 in but whatever) since we are just going to pick and choose games. There will be plenty available.

Drawing herself a protective wall, what else? The little kid in pink is funny too.

Newcastle were worth 450m not so long ago Yeah but that was before Fat Ash, what you're proposing is to hand the money to him and hope he doubles it? No it will allow MA to walk away, and someone to come in with no debt. Are you Patrick Barclay?