Scottish Mag

New fertility legislation will make it illegal to use embryos with a known genetic abnormality in IVF treatment when ones without the same defect are available. Some deaf activists contend they do not have a disability For a long time, the debate about the genetic testing of embryos has focused on whether we should stop people creating the "perfect" person: blonde, blue-eyed, with athletic prowess and a high IQ. The Nazi spectre of eugenics has frequently been invoked. Now a deaf couple have turned this on its head: far from wanting a flawless child they actively want a baby which suffers the same hearing difficulties as they themselves. The couple have become icons in a deaf movement which sees this impairment not as a disability but as the key to a rich culture which has its own language, history and traditions: a world deaf parents would naturally want to share with any offspring. Moreover, they argue that to prefer a hearing embryo over a deaf one is tantamount to discrimination. But to others - both those who can hear and those who cannot - deliberately bringing a child with a disability into the world when one without could be born verges on the morally repugnant. Slippery slope? Tomato Lichy and his partner already have one deaf child, for which they are profoundly grateful. But they may eventually like another - and IVF, given the mother's age, may be the only option. Yet if the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill goes through as it stands, their chances of having a deaf child would be small. If they produced only deaf embryos, they would be allowed to implant one of these. However it would be highly unlikely that there would not be one without one of the deaf genes. If they chose to have their embryos screened, they would be obliged to to pick the embryo without the abnormality over the others. The screening would not however be obligatory, and they could take their chances in the hope that a deaf one is chosen. But the fact that they cannot give the deaf child preference over the hearing, Mr Lichy contends, suggests that his life as a deaf person is not one worth living. "Despite the fact that over time we have seen more and more rights for disabled people they are now seeking to establish a legal principle that deaf people are inferior - and there may be more laws once this gap opens." What message does it send to their deaf daughter, he asks, whom later they will have to tell: "We had a deaf embryo but the government said we were not allowed to have it". Rich world One of the beliefs he holds most dear is that deafness is any event not a disability. From his perspective, the inability to hear is an integral part of his identity, and it is those who are able to hear who are at a disadvantage in a world of deaf plays, deaf poetry, and deaf jokes. But his argument that he is not disabled is not one accepted by some of those who campaign on behalf of those who cannot hear. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People does not support the choice of deaf embryos over those who would not be born with hearing problems. "No-one should be forced into having genetic testing if they don't want it. But if they do, we would want the embryos without the gene to be implanted," says its chief executive Jackie Ballard. "Deafness is a disability and we have spent a long time campaigning to improve the lives of people who live with it. But it is certainly not a slight to the deaf to say it is better to bring a child who will face the least difficulty into the world, when there is a choice to be made." Storm in a teacup? Only a tiny minority of deaf or hard-of-hearing people in the UK see themselves as part of a community with a distinct identity in the way that Mr Lichy sees himself. Moreover, the current, increasingly febrile debate is about an action which has never taken place in the UK and is based on a couple who have yet even to seek IVF treatment. Research carried out at Leeds University found the vast majority of deaf people polled expressed no preference - and would be happy with either a deaf or a hearing child. In addition, IVF births - which are those at issue - make up just 1% of all deliveries in this country. Combined with the tiny proportion of these parents who would be both deaf and strongly desire a child who could not hear, we may not even be looking at a case a decade, experts say. "Given that we are looking at such at a very small number of people, I think we can afford to be quite liberal about this," says Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Centre for Applied Ethics. "Deafness is a disability, but it is not one that stops people having a life that's worth living - and if there are a handful of people out there who want a deaf child, they can find a doctor who will help them, and they are prepared to pay for it, then so be it." But regardless of how rare it would be, the government is thought unlikely to change its mind on this particular clause. If they do opt for IVF, Mr Lichy and his partner may end up with what they see as a "disabled" child: one that can hear

If Bolton beat Wigan next Sunday and Birmingham beat us, which could easily happen, we will drop to 17th and 1 point off relegation (18th if the mackems get something from Chelsea, which is highly unlikely). With morale already so low and the team showing so little fight I struggle to see us pulling ourselves out of it. Yes it seems we have been saying it for months that the next game is a "must win game" but Monday most def is...

Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan may be planning a Scottish transfer raid to bolster his struggling squad. Keegan told BBC Scotland: "I think you'll see more and more Premier League managers looking at Scotland because there is some talent here. "We're like any club - we will look anywhere for talent and, at the moment, Scotland's got four or five players. "Alan Hutton's gone to Spurs and there are a few others. Maybe that hasn't been the case for the last few years." Keegan did not mention any names but has been linked with Celtic trio Aiden McGeady, Scott McDonald and Scott Brown as well as Hibs striker Steven Fletcher. And Newcastle are sure to embark on a summer spending spree after a miserable season. Speaking at the launch of a new initiative for his Soccer Circus in Glasgow, Keegan also had words of encouragement for Scotland manager George Burley. "It's not an easy job, as I found out," added the former England boss. "But I think Scottish football is in good hands. "Scotland have really shot up the rankings in recent years and it looks like they have got a great squad together. "I won't give George any advice. He knows the easiest way to do the job well is to win football matches."

T-Keith is blatantly desperate to ban someone now that hes admin...

TRANSFER RUMOURS Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson is debating whether to send keeper Ben Foster on loan to Coventry. (D Mirror) Rangers will make a summer move for West Ham left-back George McCartney. (D Mirror) Newcastle boss Kevin Keegan has joined the list queuing up for Bolton keeper Jussi Jaaskelainen. (D Mirror) Barcelona's Ronaldinho has ruled out a move to Chelsea because they do not play attacking football. (D Mirror) OTHER GOSSIP Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson phoned referees chief Keith Hackett to complain after his side lost to Portsmouth in the FA Cup. (D Mirror) Ferguson and assistant Carlos Queiroz each face a Football Association charge for criticising ref Martin Atkinson after their Pompey defeat. (Various) Chelsea boss Avram Grant's side were beaten and embarrassed by Barnsley in the FA Cup and he faces the axe unless he wins the Champions League. (Various) Liverpool co-owner George Gillett has agreed to sell 49% of his stake to DIC. (Daily Telegraph) FA Cup semi-final ticket prices may be reduced to sell out Wembley after three clubs from outside the top-flight reached the last four. (Guardian) Inter Milan boss Roberto Mancini has warned Liverpool his side are ready to make a Champions League comeback from 2-0 down. (Various) AND FINALLY Cardiff manager Dave Jones has banned the bubbly for his FA Cup giant-killers until they win at Wembley. (Various)

Bollocks, not one recent scottish player would have been good enough for the the toon before keegan, let alone for £12m. Total fucking bullshit. Having attended both Scotland and Newcastle matches over the last couple of years with the shit we have been subjected too at St James Park I would quite happily see a few of them walk into our team.

My blog for my attempt at it... http://run-fatboy-run.blogspot.com/

A new sofa, a table and chairs, some pots n pans, home cinema system and Bully on the Xbox 360.

I am shit, I just like to kick people and shout alot tbh...

I will sponsor you Greg.. ...but there goes my chances of getting any donations now...

"Happy Faces Aunties House"?

Kevin Keegan has laid bare the biggest frustration of his return to Newcastle United – not being able to sign another Brian Kilcline. The clock was already ticking on the transfer window when he arrived at St James's Park in mid-January. With time against him, Keegan failed to bring in a senior player before the transfer window slammed shut. The 57-year-old was left to get the best out of a thin-looking squad, which was suffering a crisis of confidence well before his arrival. And the Premier League winless run of his shattered team – just three points clear of the relegation zone after Saturday's home defeat to Blackburn Rovers – now stretches to 11 games. Keegan has contrasted the situation with that in February 1992 when he arrived as manager first time around and quickly spent £250,000 to sign rugged defender Kilcline – then languishing in Oldham Athletic's reserve team – to shore up his back four and lift dressing room morale. He knows the lack of incoming players has left the club vulnerable, with many of the teams around United at the bottom of the table having strengthened their squads in the window. He told the Echo: "The biggest change from that situation to this, was that I could buy players then. "If I thought there was a problem somewhere, I could do something and improve the squad. "This time, we have got what we've got, and it's slightly different in that respect. "I fetched Brian Kilcline in to lift the dressing room, because I felt we needed a character like that. He wasn't my greatest signing, but he was probably one of my most important ones. On the pitch, sometimes he cost us games, but around the club he built it up. "He knew it wasn't a long term signing when he came, but he was a vital piece of the jigsaw to start us off – it was like finding an edge piece."

Newcastle are looking at highly-rated Greek international Vasilis Torosidis. The Magpies dispatched one of their scouts to watch Olympiakos in action at the weekend and it is understood Torosidis was their primary target. The 22-year-old is an attacking right-back and is rated as one of the best young players in Greece having impressed hugely for Olympiakos this term. He is already an established member of the Greek national side with ten caps to his name. Newcastle are not the only side to have taken an interest and scouts from Juventus, Monaco and Atletico Madrid were all believed to be at the Karaiskaki at the weekend to watch Torosidis. Earlier in the year Rangers were also said to be keeping tabs on him.

They had it pre-order on Amazon for 19.99 the other day. Managed to get an order in but I don't know if they will honour it.

Nope

Not as good as Irn Bru bars

Blatantly wanking to Girls of the Playboy mansion....

Well hes not going to score many playing in our first team either then...

The summer we only signed Bowyer is a good shout, but 12 months before that was not any better IMO. We had just finished 3rd in the league and instead of strengthening the team we added Viana and Bramble for the best part of 15 million...

The situation at Newcastle United is without precedent in world football. Nowhere else and at at no other time has a body of supporters persisted in returning to a football stadium in such numbers and at such cost as we do currently. Nowhere. Never. Not Man Utd, Celtic, Rangers, Liverpool or any of the other alleged bastions of support in football. Not in Barcelona, Real Madrid - anywhere. Let no-one have one word of criticism for the Newcastle United support and certainly not the likes of Joey Barton, whose purpose at our club is what exactly? But it cannot be expected to continue. Over the last decade we have finished more often in the bottom end of the table than the top and you don't need me to tell you about our cup winning exploits. The current shambles of a football club cannot expect to be sustained by the hard-working people of Tyneside and beyond who are providing the cornerstone finance for the whole shooting match. If Ashley and Mort believe supporters will continue to turn up to watch their football club humiliated in the manner of Saturday night and drift further aimlessly then they are sadly mistaken. The club will always have its hardcore who will turn up to watch eleven NUFC shirts blowing on a washing line but there are others who have put up with too much for too long. Ashley and Mort should beware for it is a chill wind that is blowing down Barrack Road right now. Not that I or any others expected Newcastle United to do anything on Saturday. I don't know which is the sadder, the statement of grim recognition at our reduced status or the status itself. No-one is kidding anyone. We are on the shit. Relegation is not a fanciful prediction of the pessimists amongst our number, it is the reality. That we are not in a worse situation illustrates the paucity of quality beneath us. The lusty roars in my pre-match boozer when the scores came through that Portsmouth and West Ham had scored their winners against the SMB and Fulham illustrated perfectly our current mindset. We're in a battle against relegation. Fucking hell, man! The Man Utd game? Well, we knew we'd get nothing. Just like the trips to Arsenal. We knew we'd get nothing there either and I rather suspect there are those who have written off the trips to Portsmouth, Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham as well. Our games with Reading, Fulham and The Mackems have taken on a massive significance. If we don't win those three games then the mood on Tyneside will blacken. Should we not win on Saturday at home to Blackburn then I believe huge questions will begin to be asked as to whether Ashley-Mort-Keegan have a clue about what they are doing. There are those already amongst our number who are questioning KK as some kind of marketing stunt rather than a serious football appointment. Again and again I am hearing proper, time-served Mags of the type that have never sent an insane text to The Comical or phoned up the daft bastards at Century to talk shite for 5 minutes, openly question bringing KK in as a replacement as manager and compare the decision to dismiss Allardyce at that point in the season to the worst of Shepherd's manoeuvrings in the past. Those questions are a whisper at the moment but they are becoming louder. We were humiliated by Man Utd. We know they are much better than us. In fact it is embarrassing to be honest that two teams with such a chasm in quality between them are even in the same division. But they don't win every home game 6-0 or their aways 5-1. Teams go to Old Trafford and give a better account of themselves and are often undone by a moment of genius, a tired mistake or favourable refereeing decisions (that looked a good shout for a penalty for us when Owen was felled in the box and its now within the gift of Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand to bring incidents to the Referee's attention that were not picked up by his assistant and have Faye booked) but Man Utd murdered us on Saturday night - 5-1 but it could have been a lot more and for long spells of that game they were playing well within themselves. It did not seem to matter to our players that we were conceding a fourth or a fifth goal. It was utterly shameful. It was cowardice. They are not fit to wear the shirt. There has to be a big question asked about the character of the players on the pitch on Saturday night but also some of them who, we are told are "injured". Not for the first time, in fact its a feature of this team that heads drop and we chuck it in. There is a lack of fight and there is a lack of professional pride. It looks like we have a load of bad heads at the club. Again. As for the "injured" players. Well, frankly, there are those amongst our number who don't believe certain players who aren't in the first team picture maybe aren't doing enough to earn their corn and are happy to pick up their fat contracts and have absolutely no commitment to our club. Players, Manager and coaches (do we bother with them any more?) should know, the supporters know more about what goes on in training grounds, treatment rooms etc than they might imagine. You also have to question the coaching set up. I know its early days for KK but I looked at our bench last night and you know its just not right. We're told Chris Hughton is on his way to takeover as first team coach but whether this alone can add to the know-how at the club remains to be seen. Too little, too late? But all of this has been in the post for a long while. In many ways, the chief architect of our inexorable decline is out of the firing line. Freddie Shepherd was at our club for a decade as Chairman and the infrastructure is woeful. We have no youngsters coming through, the scouting set up, although being addressed, is a joke and we have a squad which is painfully small. The story is we have a small number of quality players but I'm sorry, who are they exactly? They are just names, players living on reputation who have done nothing for us. Fat and over-fed. Under Shepherd, the club made one disastrous decision after another - managerial appointments, player purchases and inertia behind the scenes. Over the last two years, the club has barely strengthened and last year's forays into the transfer market resembled more a re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic than serious team-building. Allardyce told us at the time he had misgivings about the players he was bringing in - particularly foreign defenders and Jesus, how right he was. Roeder's team-building the year before was pitiful as well. Don't get me on about Souness and Shepherd for whom much of our ills needs to be credited. Where we are now is the culmination of successive bouts of incompetence. But Ashley and Mort need to take some responsibility also. Until there is serious money for team-building allied to the strategic work they are telling us they are undertaking then they will be vulnerable to the shit-stirring that they are carpet-baggers from London out to turn a quick coin. Although the players can't be bought until the summer, the deals can be set up as of now. We need to know the preparation is going on now. And of course the national press love it don't they? If they can make a bad situation worse then the braying pack of hyenas will do so with relish. One thing is for certain, the press have us pencilled in as the club in crisis, the club to be destroyed and to be fair we're making it easy for them. Kevin Keegan wore the air of a man at breaking point in TV interviews after the Man Utd game and much as we respect the man for his integrity, his commitment for our club and his achievements, I'll make no apologies for saying, Newcastle United comes first and it did not inspire confidence. Sadly, he resembled the forlorn figure we saw in the last days of his Man City tenure rather than the ebullient young manager whose teams played some of the best attacking football any of us have ever seen from NUFC. If this continues we are in the realms of a heartbreaking conclusion. But KK is the man who has to lift these players ahead of Saturday. He is the man who has to influence certain players that its better to be out on the park giving everything for a football club that gives them so much rather than skulking in a treatment room nursing not very much in particular. Nothing else but a win this Saturday. It really is make or break. Keep On, Keepin' On ...

A member of Scotland's RBS Six Nations squad has failed a drugs test. The Scottish Rugby Union have called a press conference for 11.15am at Murrayfield, where the player's identity will be revealed. Also present will be Scotland team doctor James Robson and international administrations manager Gregor Nicholson. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12333_3193081,00.html The way the Egg Chasers play it must have been fecking valium he was on as it certainly couldn't have been a performing enhancing drug...

STEVE Harper insists that Newcastle United must do all they can to ensure their Premier League destiny remains in their own hands with the Magpies still just six points above the drop zone. The Geordies were on the wrong end of a 5-1 drubbing at the weekend as a Wayne Rooney-inspired Man Utd closed the gap on Arsenal at the other end of the table to three points. Harper was a half-time introduction during Saturday's game, making what was a consolation 100th appearance for the club in the process. And, with the Toon stopper standing a good chance of starting next weekend's home clash with Blackburn, Harps admits that United have to start getting points in the board with just 11 games of the season remaining. "We've got Blackburn next week and it's a massive game," he said. "We're under no illusions just exactly what the task is, we're not looking at the top six. "We're not daft as a bunch of players. We know the longer we go without getting that elusive win the harder it's going to be, so the priority is to get back on the training field and do everything possible to get three points against Blackburn and bring this run to an end." Harper, despite two fantastic saves in the second period, was forced to pick the ball out of the net on three occasions as the clinical Red Devils ran riot after the break. And the 32-year-old conceded that morale was low after another heavy defeat. "It's another demoralising defeat," he added. "We started quite brightly, probably the best we've started at home for a long time. "But against top teams you can't keep shooting yourself in the foot and we keep doing that week in, week out at the moment. Until we eradicate that we're going to have problems. "We keep saying what if, what if, but you can't keep doing that. We've had a couple of great weeks' training, intense, really high tempo. "Everyone's been out there and it's really perked up, the mood in the camp was good but Saturday was a knock-back. "We need a win. We need momentum, nobody's kidding ourselves, we knew it would be tough. "It was an encouraging start, but at 1-0 down we gave a poor goal away when we went to sleep. If we'd got to half time at 1-0 who knows? "They got the killer goal at the start of the second half. If we'd got the next goal it would have been game on but we gave Ronaldo the freedom of the city for the third and we're 3-0 down against a team which could well become champions of Europe this season. "We had a decent response with a goal back, but it's the same old story. Just as we give ourselves a bit of a lifeline they got a great goal from (Wayne) Rooney." But Harper is still backing Kevin Keegan to turn things around on Tyneside, adding: "When Kevin came in, yes, we all got a lift. "But nobody expected that first win to be automatic. You could compare it to last time when he came in. "It was a massive task and his job this year is to get us the points necessary to put this season behind us and build in the summer. "I'm sure he'll get the backing to rebuild this squad and this club but we can't think about the summer. "We've got to think of the immediate priority to get the points to put this season to bed. Nobody's kidding themselves that we're going to be up there in the Champions League soon. It's a massive job at a massive club. "People say he knows this club inside out and he will know more than anyone what needs doing. The immediate aim's to get three points and on the right track."

God knows if Ashley is going to dig deep into his pockets in the summer to sort this mess out (though if those ITK are correct he will have a fair wedge to spend). If you were KK and had 50 million to spend, who would you like to sign?

Don't get me wrong I am all for signing Championship players with potential (at the right price) and I am not saying that there have not been successful players making the step up, as proven by the last few posts, however I think we clearly need a balance of both proven established players and young potential. As for every Davies, Lescott, Jagielka etc you can have an Earnshaw, Nugent, Chopra, Koumas, Ambrose etc...