Frank's cousin

1. Scientific 'beliefs' do not evolve - Science is not about beliefs - its about tested hypotheses and when a hypothesis has been tested so many times independently and found to give consistent results it becomes a theory - other hypotheses may come to replace it - as you say oits always about moving FORWARD not being stick at any one point - How many religeons can say the same? None, unless you invent a new one like say Scientology? 2. Creepy when someone is telling you how to ediucate your kids? give over - the Government does that all the time with the national curriculum... This point was about how its important to teach children all aspects not just one side. 3. Chrsitian values - its only christians that have claimed ownership of 'values' in this way - the values you mean, of kindness, honesty, graft, charity etc the good things are not exclusive to christians - but to any decent human being - relgions have 'adopted these values because to those old philosophers they were the right way to ensure a civilised and ordered society - I find it a bit insulting when Christians claim ownership of simply good values that they did not invent....

The biggest irony of them all! Like you say, it wa snot Lowe's ideas or vision that was wrong, just not having a pot to **** in to make it work and a reluctance to compromise his position for the revenues/investment that would have supported it.

True, but was an era when you could get the twice EU player of the yaer for wages of £140k a YEAR - (approx £10k a week in todays terms) - now you need maybe £300,000 k a week .... so to compare what we might achieve in the Sky era to that historic period is never going to be totally fair

Will fall on death ears I'm affraid - Most reasonable fans see his failings for what they were - but also credit where its due - the problem is, prudent financial policy and being happy to invest 2mil a year in the academy rather than first team etc - were the antithis of waht was being spouted by those that just saw him as toff with no place in football. It became so ingrained that even though the plain fact is that prudent finance and academy investment was the way forward, most wont even acknoledge he got that right now. What many dont appreciate is that the previous era when clubs like saints brought through players was 'A DIFFERENT' era - at that time local lad joined as apprentice son 5 bob a week and polished boots and all clubs did the same - and like all clubs we had duffers and good uns. But as we headed towards the sky revolution this as already begining to change as income and attendances were falling - all seater stadia saw to that, and academies became an expense too many - or were given little investment - what Lowe did was accept it was necessary to SPEND a large wedge to buold it up again - 2mil was a lot less than other bigger clubs, but as aproportion of our revenue it was higher and he set up Bath, and brought in continental coaches as in Prost etc - this was GOOD stuff, but naturally some saw this as 'expense' at the expens eof the first team as a luxury we could not afford and as an idicator he did not know what he was doing. Toff, arrogant, duckshooting rednosed plonker - probably, but still astute when it came to the way football would need to go for clubs of our size - his biggest 'crime' was not having the resources to progress beyond the odd good season at a time when resources was the only way to success.

I know the examples make it look like its mocking or trying to make thso eof deep faith appear silly, but its only because they illustrate the argument so well - Belieth or faith in something you cannot provide any evidence for, has no rational basis, IS no different from kids believing in the Easter Bunny or Santa - they are told to be good or Santa wont come, and as they grow up they realise its not true - With the concept of God, the teaching of young children to the 'indoctrination' levels of some religions is abusive as its often teaching through fear of what happens if you stray form a set path... is that right? How many of thos ethat have 'faith' do so because of that upbringing?

ahr ... I would say that this is more down to teh individuals involved form mother teresa etc - a wonderful human being, who I believe would have been that compassionate without religion - and there are many who would argue that even though the money of the church enable her work, that the missonary' purpose was not driven by compassion, but by recruitment - it takes nothing away form those who dedicated their lives to helping others with health, education, sustince etc, but teh chruch was not just doing this for compassionate reasons.

Thing is its not about trying to ridicule or mock faith, but to maybe challenge the need for it? I respect everyones right to chose the life they want to leed, but given that most religeous doctrine includes a huge amount about 'spreading the word' and usually accompanied with 'fill the coffers' - I dont see why relgion should have the exclusive right to spread their word - and demand that their children only hear one side and are forced to beleive when they they do not have access to all opinion. Thing is science and evolution CAN and does explain life - and all the emotions and behaviours we witness in humans - its just that the explanation leaves many very cold and thining 'there msut be more to it than that' - but why? The 'miracle' if you like is in the wonder of the univers and in the science itself - how each one of our cells has 'engines' that began as parasitic bacteria - our mitochondria - theis is facinatiing and amazing in itself... Its naturally important to differentiate between blind faith of the organised political monstrocities that the religions have become and those who have genuine faith that they say helps them and guides them - I will not be one of thos ethat says they are stupid or idiotic for believing in mumbo jumbo, but I would ask teh question of why they NEED this faith - when the wonder, beauty and and down right jaminess of having been born to a dody that can think, reason, love etc should be more than enough to spark an interest and love of life.

Thought that might cause a few ripples

Great post - I only wish I had the prose or intellect to write so eloquently on the subject! I am an atheist - comming to that conclusion after a Catholic childhood and the liberation afforded by science, knowledge and hopefully reason. As a biologist with a strong evolutionary bent, science provides the rational for how belief and 'faith' could become so important to early society - not the usual simplistic view that fear of the unknown drove imagination of superior beings or some sort of order directed from above or below, but right back to the simple concepts of Natural selection and anisogamy - Anisogamy descripes the difference between male and female gametes or reproductive cells (sprem and egg). It is because of this that we have evolved so many of our behaviours and emotions - given that our genetic 'virus' we carry is hell bent on reproducing itself, females are limited by the number of offspring they can carry in a life time, Males by the number of females they can impregnate! (not that this is an excuse worth testing out with the Mrs - may fall on death ears:scared:)... but because it takes many years for children to reach maturity and pass on your genes themselves, and that in teh early years it wa sclear that these offspring stood a better chance of suvival if two or more adults stuck around, like other animals we evolved pair bonding and the emotions that come with it - move on a geological 'years' and we have ecolved into societies and given this combination of biological driver (need to reproduce) juxtaposed with our emotional needs - you can see that some sort of order might be necessary for it to work harmoniously - and give you genes a chance of a next generation - eg you survive, your kids survive, are not murdered or maimed or reduced in in genetic quality through 'inbreeding' etc - The best thinkers recognised these issues and drew up rules by which a society would function - a philosophy if you like - and whilst natural selection does not work at society level, only on the individual, (although some have since argued this point) - the benefits in organisation for all individuals paid dividends - I suspect that thos eearly law masters felt comelled to add a bit of mysticism to the 'rules' to ensure the points were made - afterall 'gods' law was probably easier to reinforce than an old mans, especially when backed up by examples of how angry He could get if they were not followed as they pointed to the erupting volcano! .... the rest as they say is history, but it is interesting that IMHO the seeds of religion, are based on the philosophy you describe, itself based the need for an organised and chaos free society... which in turn was driven by an evolutionary pressure to ensure maximum survival of the genetic material... nice little anecdote for when next in discussion with the creationists I always find.

THIS - nice article and in total agreement

Lost man hours today? Productivity down? Why the feck do we get so wound up by a freckin signing? - we are all mad fools...

... we have only bought in a couple of players so far... and had we not can you imagine the out cry on here about lack of ambition. I would rephrase what you said as successful promoted side spends stupid money on 10 new players and creates new team and gets relegated - still looks like we have the core of the promo winning side which needs to evolve to be cope with the higher level. As long as we bring in quality and bring it in slowly, I dont think there will be any issue - if we get relegated it wont be bvecause of what we spent, but most likely on what we didn't.

Aye, but would be more awesome if after 38 rounds of fixtures that was still the case!

Poor come back effort, expected more form you

Just for you uberfanboy (sounds nice and 'manly' which should resonate with your 'style') - They are staying away - Since you have become such a vibrant internet 'personality', most know they cant compete with you 'neat strides', fine attire etc - they are intimidated by your status as the ultimate smartly dressed fan, which as you have stated (so it must be true) is so important - afterall if we had any deep seated insecurities we might actually give a flying feck what other fans think of us.

Fair points, but we have to acknolwedge that we are now going for a standard of player that have opportiunities are arguably bigger clubs - historically in teh prem we have only gone for Delaps and Telfers (in the modern era) and this has meant its been relatively easy Now we are in the 7-15mil bracket, these are GOOD players that more clubs are interested in and once we have had our interest plastered in teh media, usually by the players agent, it alerts others and we are suddenly in the pack being played - I dont think it will be to our disadvantage TBH, as we have indicated we are prepared to pay a reasonable fee and wage - so if anything, the agent/player ****ing around is a good thing as it will filter out those who are not really our type of signing - we want hungry ambitious pros who dont see us as merely a stepping stone but as an opportunity to be part of something - if they dont get that, do we want to compromise this and sign them anyway? We are alsways going to need a side that is GREATER than the sum of its parts and egos and mercenaries wont fit into that model - look at Rickie Lambert - hes to me is waht is so great about our squad - not his goals but his attitude it makes it so easy to support us right now - we are a decent side - as in decent blokes and I'm pretty glad we dont want to change that.

Gotta keep trying matey, its my purpose to reason him into submission - naturally I have to assume he has the adequate neural capacity for this - evidence is slim, but dont want to prejudge - afterall I am informed he has a nice line 'smart gear' an obvious sign of the superior intellect

Nah, that post is way too naive re the spending and 'you get 50mil' (without acknowledging that as with most clubs most of this now dissappears on wages). FF is cleverer than that and despite having a strong opinion on he community elements of football clubs, has been quite supportive. He's always more reasonable and not affraid to put his name to a critique.

I'll give you your due, you sure know the right buttons to push to demonstrate the WUM mentality - not sure what twisted pleasure you get form it, or more to the point what's missing in your life that you need it... but that's another issue. Suspect you have insecurities - the need to use this tio somehow boost your ego as often as possible by **** taking and trying to belittle others opinions or thoughts - well if it makes you feel all manly and grown up, good luck to you. Wigan Attendance - will be close to sell out - August bank Holiday weekend and current climate does not help, but traditionally we have not sold out these early games - but WTF does it matter anyway? You seem to get more pleasure out of finger pointing and sn iggering than you would from a 10k ST waiting list... whatever floats your boat... quite sad though really

''look at me, look at me... ...'' Give it a rest FFS sake, how old are you?

...and the winner of the most predictable thread laced with sarcasm goes to....

Sounds like a good night! Just had a 'moment'

Classic! LOL. BUt oh so true

Was thers something about a hefty sign on 3mil or something?

Nah - its the secret strikers on teh mound we should be looking at. Oswald really should just have got the assist