Yeovil Saint

Though if you stop TBH's tax and NI and don't pass it on (because paying tax appears to be optional) Pompey will not have to pay as much.

Here's my email to Supporters Direct I know that I shouldn't believe everything in the newspapers but the Daily Mail are reporting that David Lampitt has been offered the vacant CEO position at Supporters Direct. As his past experience at Portsmouth FC was to participate in the "wealthy benefactor" model of club ownership with the added twist that it was the general public, various suppliers and stolen charity that was unwittingly funding the club can it really be right for SD to appoint him? It's not possible to know what Mr Lampitt's involvement truly was, but either he was too incompetent to stop the theft of tax payments and charity money or he was complicit in it, either way, he shouldn't be chief executive of a whelk stall. If Mr Lampitt becomes CEO of Supporters Direct can your organisation really be trusted any more?

At less than 100 posts in six seasons at SaintsWeb I'm claiming the Tommy Forecast role. That means I'm going to sit on the bench for another year, you can't get rid of me yet!

What on earth are these "impossible decisions" Lampitt's talking about. If you collect £8,000 for charity then the decision's pretty clear, you pass that £8,000 on to the charity. If the finances are so bad that every penny is being held onto by the banks (which it can't be as they were still paying the wages in October-December) then you stop collecting the charity money. How did Lampitt get a job as CEO if he considers this an "impossible decision"

Southampton City Council's gone red, Labour needed six gains on the 2008 elections, at the moment they have gained Bargate, Bitterne, Coxford, Freemantle, Peartree, Sholing and picked up the Peartree by-election (caused by a Lib Dem elected in 2010 resigning). That gives Labour 25 seats, Tories 15 seats, Lib Dems 2 seats with 6 results still to come.

Surprised that no-ones mentioned Southampton yet. Currently the council consists of 26 Conservatives, 19 Labour and 3 Lib Dems, but the Conservatives will be defending 15 seats and Labour merely 2 as the Tory landslide of 2008 all complete their terms. A repeat of the 2011 results* would see Richard Williams become the new leader of Southampton City Council with a decent majority. But will the Tory councillors first elected in 2008 have built up enough of a personal vote to overcome the national swing against them. * 2011 results were Labour won 10 wards (Bargate, Bevois, Bitterne, Coxford, Millbrook, Redbridge, Peartree, Shirley, Sholing, Woolston), Conservatives won 6 wards (Bassett, Bitterne Park, Freemantle, Harefield, Portswood, Swaythling)

To be fair to the small creditors it does seem that most if not all of them voted for the HMRC amendment, it's just that UHY and Portpin outvoted them as the votes are weighed on the amount of money owed. We know that CSI and Portpin are owed about £29m and given that some creditors won't have been represented, it's easy to get 50%+1 to block the amendment. But to agree any CVA they need 75% of the vote.

How deluded are the few? From the live text on Skate News: Comment From Sam auld Next term our Pompey spirit will shine through and were blow league one away! Pup!

Bloody hell, hope they go pop before the fishy pollution makes it to this town.

I've lived here for all the six years he claims to have been a ninja and I've never even heard of him before he turned up on Channel 4. He must be a very very stealthy ninja.

Gunn was sacked after the next game, a Carling Cup 4-0 win away to Yeovil. Does this mean NC = Delia Smith?

Cortese doesn't think like a football man and he doesn't care that we've won 4-0 if the other two league matches have resulted in 1 point against teams that aren't performing very well themselves. Without the win over us Plymouth are on 1 point out of 9, without the 1-1 Leyton Orient on 3 points out of 9. I agree with the posters above who suggest that we must be replacing Pardew with someone better, that's why I don't think it can be Zola as the stats show he is a worse manager than Pardew is.

Andy, I don't think it's clear that Laws was entitled to the allowance. The Green Book (the MPs guide to what they can and can't claim) says this about PAAE (Personal Additional Accomodation Expenditure, otherwise known as Second Home Allowance) David Laws has said himself that he had a relationship with James Lundie since 2001. His argument on Friday was that he didn't consider James to be his partner which may be true - we don't have all the information to judge and we await the report of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Personally I thought that Laws had a complete right to stay on until the IPSA report and then carry on if cleared, but he's decided to quit now, that's an honourable thing to do and if he is cleared by IPSA then he should be able to return to Cabinet - he's easily the brightest MP I know and he would have made a fine Chief Secretary. You can download the Green Book to have a look at the rules yourself at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-finance-office/greenbook.pdf

I'm absolutely sure that if this had come out prior to the General Election then Yeovil would still have re-elected David Laws. On a personal level I feel sorry for the guy, I see him every so often and he's always very pleasant despite us having different political views. But for a millionaire ex-banker to take money that he's not entitled to while overseeing the job losses of hundreds of thousands public sector workers and forcing down the wages of the lowest paid just wasn't going to be politically tenable.

Dune, you need to remember that your boys in the Tory party supported the increase from 7 to 14 days and the increase from 14 to 28 days. They would have supported the increase to 90 days if they hadn't realised that enough Labour MPs were being honourable enough to rebel against it. Only eight Tory MPs had enough balls to realise the cost to our freedom.

I went to Bevois Town First School in the late 70s which had a predominantly Asian intake (what's the area like now?). I grew up with a lot of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh friends and I'm not scared of Muslims like the EDL kids seem to be. Most EDL supporters seem to be those that grew up in predominantly white areas close to areas with lots of Muslims but not close enough to actually know them.

You can't take the results of elections held under one election system and extrapolate them to a set of results under another set of results. If we had PR then people would vote in different ways, we might even have different parties.

How about Tories, you can be a Blue Tory and Bungle can be a Yellow Tory.

You only vote for the person in STV elections, you don't even have to vote for the party, imagine that you're a Tory, but one of the candidates for election you really don't like, don't like Labour but one of their candidates isn't bad and you want the UKIP guy to be elected but you don't think that he could get in then you can vote for something like this. 1. UKIP candidate 2. Tory A 3. Tory B 4. Labour A 5. Lib Dem A 6. Lib Dem B 7. Tory C 8. Lib Dem C 9. Labour B 10. Green 11. BNP Then if UKIP doesn't get their candidate elected, your vote isn't wasted, it goes to the Tory you like most. At the other end of the ranking you would be saying that you prefer anyone to be elected ahead of the BNP candidate.

Ireland manage it very easily, they vote on Thursdays as we do, I think they don't count overnight, but start on Friday morning and by tea time 99% of the results are in. Don't know why you think we would be more useless at it.

If the Lib Dems hold the balance of power on Friday morning, electoral reform will be their main demand to join a coalition government. Single Transferable Vote (STV) is hideously complicated to explain in the abstract, but pretty easy (if longwinded) to explain in practice. So here's a real example, the Dublin Central seat in the Republic of Ireland General Election 2007 Dublin Central elects 4 Deputies so each party could nominate 4 candidates, but in practice parties only nominate the maximum that they think they could get elected. So the candidates were: Christian Solidarity: O'Loughlin Fathers Rights: Beirne Fianna Fáil: Ahern, Brady, Fitzpatick Fine Gael: Donohoe Green: McKenna Immigration Control: Talbot Labour: Costello Progressive Democrats: Hannon Sinn Féin: McDonald Independents: Gregory, Perry Ahern, Costello and Gregory were incumbent deputies, Fitzpartick's father was the 4th incumbent who was retiring. Fianna Fáil normally put up 2 candidates in Dublin Central but with them running high in the polls decided to try for 3 seats this time. Each voter could rank the candidates in 1, 2, 3, etc order, they don't have to rank all candidates, as we'll see. First Count Just as in our First past the post elections the votes are counted, only the first preferences matter at this stage Ahern (FF) 12,734 Gregory (Ind) 4,649 Costello (Lab) 4,353 Donohoe (FG) 3,302 McDonald (SF) 3,182 McKenna (GP) 1,995 Fitzpatrick (FF) 1,725 Perry (Ind) 952 Brady (FF) 939 O'Loughlin (CS) 260 Talbot (IC) 239 Hannon (PD) 193 Beirne (FR) 116 34,629 valid votes were cast which made the quota 6,928 - that's because if 4 candidates each received 6,928 votes, the most a 5th candidate could get is 6,927 so 6,928 guarantees election. Ahern as leader of Fianna Fáil easily got elected with many more votes than he needed, so the 2nd count is to reallocate his surplus vote. He needed 6,928, got 12,734 so each vote for him is now counted as 0.544 of a vote. The remaining 0.456 of a vote gets reallocated to their 2nd preferences. Second Count - reallocation of Ahern's surplus Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) 5,453 (+804) Costello (Lab) 4,793 (+440) McDonald (SF) 3,471 (+289) Donohoe (FG) 3,441 (+139) Brady (FF) 3,342 (+2,403) Fitzpartick (FF) 3,087 (+1,362) McKenna (GP) 2,116 (+121) Perry (Ind) 1,058 (+106) O'Loughlin (CS) 269 (+9) Talbot (IC) 253 (+14) Hannon (PD) 226 (+33) Beirne (FR) 202 (+86) As expected Ahern's surplus benefited his party colleagues Fitzpartick and Brady although all the candidates got some 2nd preference votes from Ahern voters. No-one's reached the quota now so we start knocking out the bottom candidates, normally you would only eliminate the candidate with the least votes, but in this case even if O'Loughlin ended up with all the votes of Talbot, Hannon and Beirne, he would only have 950 votes, not enough to avoid elimination himself. So the bottom four candidates are all excluded at this stage and their votes passed down to the next preference. If someone had voted Hannon 1 and Ahern 2 then that vote would pass on to a 3rd preference. If someone had voted Ahern 1 and Beirne 2 then that vote is still only worth 0.456 because 0.544 of a vote was used up getting Ahern elected. Third Count - Transfer of O'Loughlin, Talbot, Hannon and Beirne votes. Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) 5,622 (+169) Costello (Lab) 4,870 (+77) Donohoe (FG) 3,548 (+107) McDonald (SF) 3,519 (+48 ) Brady (FF) 3,510 (+168 ) Fitzpartick (FF) 3,236 (+149) McKenna (GP) 2,221 (+105) Perry (Ind) 1,133 (+75) Out of that count, 52 votes weren't transferred because they had run out of preferences. The distribution of the minor candidates didn't change much and Perry is the next to be eliminated. Fourth Count - Transfer of Perry's votes Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) 6,062 (+440) Costello (Lab) 5,028 (+158 ) McDonald (SF) 3,744 (+225) Donohoe (FG) 3,600 (+52) Brady (FF) 3,510 (+44) Fitzpartick (FF) 3,330 (+94) McKenna (GP) 2,294 (+73) 47 of Perry's votes weren't reallocated, and McKenna didn't do well enough to avoid being eliminated at this stage. The fifth count will be vital to Brady and Fitzpartick because one of them might end up bottom where they probably have a lot of transfers to each other. Fifth Count - Transfer of McKenna's votes. Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) 6,799 (+737) Costello (Lab) 5,809 (+781) McDonald (SF) 3,948 (+204) Donohoe (FG) 3,896 (+296) Brady (FF) 3,616 (+62) Fitzpartick (FF) 3,447 (+117) 97 of McKenna's votes weren't transferred, the Green's 2nd preferences went mainly to the Independent and Labour candidates (interesting that the Greens ended up forming a coalition with Fianna Fáil). Fitzpartick ended up being eliminated which was great news for Brady as we'll see in the sixth count. Sixth Count - Transfer of Fitzpartick's votes Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) 7,385 (+586) Costello (Lab) 6,073 (+264) Brady (FF) 5,608 (+1,992) Donohoe (FG) 4,147 (+251) McDonald (SF) 4,120 (+172) 182 votes were not transferred. Brady gets a boost from voters that presumably voted Fianna Fáil 1, 2 and 3 and now looks favourite to get elected. Gregory passes the quota. Normally when a candidate passes the quota this late they only pass it by an amount that won't change the outcome but in this case the gap between Donohoe and McDonald is so small that re-allocating Gregory's surplus could matter. Because Gregory only needed 6,928 and he's got 7,385 votes 0.062 per vote can be reallocated. So if you voted for Perry 1, McKenna 2, Gregory 3, Costello 4, your vote ends up being 0.938 for Gregory and 0.062 for Costello because neither Perry or McKenna could be elected. If you voted for Ahern 1, Gregory 2, Fitzpartick 3, Brady 4, then your vote has already helped get Ahern elected, so your vote counts as 0.544 for Ahern, 0.428 for Gregory and the remaining 0.028 can't go to Fitzpartick because she's out, so it goes to Brady. Seventh Count - reallocation of Gregory's surplus Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) ELECTED Costello (Lab) 6,205 (+132) Brady (FF) 5,764 (+156) Donohoe (FG) 4,216 (+69) McDonald (SF) 4,178 (+58 ) 42 votes weren't reallocated, McDonald didn't get enough transfers to overtake Donohoe so she's eliminated and her votes transferred. Eighth Count - Transfer of McDonald's votes Ahern (FF) ELECTED Gregory (Ind) ELECTED Costello (Lab) 8,018 (+1,813) Brady (FF) 6,348 (+584) Donohoe (FG) 4,556 (+340) 1,441 of McDonald's votes aren't reallocated because they have run out of preferences - out of the original 13 names on the ballot paper there's only 3 left that can be allocated any votes. Costello's easily elected but his surplus wouldn't be enough for Donohoe to overtake Brady for the 4th seat so Donohoe's eliminated and Brady gets elected as the last candidate. That is all very long-winded but the result's fair. Fianna Fáil got 44.4% of the first preference votes and they got 2 out of the 4 seats, Gregory and Labour got 13.4% and 12.6% and they each got 1 seat, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin got 9.5% and 9.2% and just missed out. Overall the Fianna Fáil voters just prefered Brady to Fitzpartick so he got elected, the voters wouldn't have that much power in a list election.

Classy guy on one of the Pompey boards about Hull. After all they've been through, and they still think like that. That club is truly shameful.

There's nothing wrong with such a system and it's already used for European Parliament elections here. In the South East Region there were 10 seats available Conservatives 34.8% (4 seats) UKIP 18.8% (2 seats) Lib Dem 14.1% (2 seats) Green 11.6% (1 seat) Labour 8.2% (1 seat) BNP 4.4% (0 seats) But there's two bad points to such a system, first is the local representation, you have 10 MEPs, which one do you contact if you have a problem? Second is say you don't want Daniel Hannan (who was 1st on the Tory list) to be elected, the answer is basically tough, if the Tories got about 7% of the vote then they probably get Hannan elected, 9.1% would guarantee it. I wouldn't make it a partisan point though, Peter Skinner was top of the Labour list, even as badly as Labour did, he's still got a seat in Brussels. In fact of the 11 MEPs that South East England elected in the first PR Euro Elections, 6 are still in office, 3 have been replaced by colleagues from the same party, 1 lost out when the representation was reduced from 11 to 10 and only 1 seat has changed hands.

The way I look at it is if you imagine this sort of scenario Tories 36% 287 seats Labour 31% 254 seats Lib Dems 27% 86 seats Others 6% (9 DUP, 5 SF, 3 SDLP, 3 Independents, 2 Respect, 1 Green) Then any Tory-Lib Dems coalition would have to have a programme of work that was about 80% Tory and 20% Lib Dem based on the strength each party has in the House. It's not the case that Clegg has to support the largest party, but morally he does have to try to reach an agreement with them. In that scenario, the British electorate won't have given Cameron an absolute majority so he will have to give up something in order to form a government. If both parties can't form an agreement then it might be easier for the Lib Dems and Labour to agree on a programme. One trump card could be that they could offer Clegg the top job as he's personally more popular than Gordon Brown. Off on a tangent, but am I the only person who doesn't want Vince Cable anywhere near the Treasury. Don't know why but I don't trust him one bit.

Lib Dems continue to poll well, all four polls out so far have us in hung parliament territory. ICM/Sunday Telegraph Con 34% Lab 29% LD 27% ComRes/Independent on Sunday Con 31% LD 29% Lab 27% BPIX/Mail on Sunday LD 32% Con 31% Lab 28% YouGov Daily Tracker Con 33% Lab 30% LD 29% Average of the four Con 32% LD 29% Lab 29% Interesting times and makes the 2nd debate all the more important.