Ken Tone

No doubt they are aware that the phrase comes from Shakespeare, with 'we happy few' ;-)

Seems almost a shame to interrupt all the prejudices here with some facts, but: 1. The 5 training days were introduced by Kenneth Baker, in addition to the days school teachers were previously required to be at their place of work. Thus in effect they were taken from school teachers holidays, which are now 5 days shorter than they were before. 2. The dates of training days are set by the school itself. The local authority agrees with the unions the dates of 195 term days a year. The school then chooses which 5 of those not to teach. Most schools do place some of those days at the beginning or end of a holiday period. They could do that with all 5 if they chose, but prefer to put some in the middle of the term. Parents may well have a legitimate complaint if a school puts all 5 in the middle of a term. (That bit is opinion, not fact!) They are supposed to give at least the year's notice of such closure days. 3. Many teachers are not on school teacher terms and conditions. FE college staff for example mostly have 35 days leave per year, still quite generous by private sector standards, but much less than school teachers receive. But they also cannot usually take leave during term time, so miss out on off peak holidays and cannot take odd leave days off for eg Wimbledon, friends' weddings, away evening Saints games, etc 4. Legally all employees in this country are entitled to a minimum of 28 days leave. The sneaky bit is whether the 8 bank holidays are included in that, or extra to that. 5. Virtually every profession requires work outside of the time spent in the office/classroom/whatever. To think of teachers working 9-4 in term time only is like imagining all bank workers stop when the doors close to the public, or vicars only work on a Sunday. But it is a two-edged sword ... as some posters have already said many professions do involve evening and weekend work, not just teaching. 6. By the way, private schools generally have considerably shorter terms and longer holidays than state ones. It always amazes me that some parents will pay a fortune to see their children taught for less time by staff who don't even have to be qualified, and indeed frequently aren't qualified.

Quite. The reality is none of us know what the hell is going on, but whilst it is not reasonable to expect Chamberlain (or his Dad/agent) to respond to every rumour, it would not be unreasonable to expect him to say once this summer 'I intend to stay at Saints for now'. Instead of which all we have seen are reported statements from his father about wanting him to be at Arsenal asap. Simlarly the club could say once, he's on contract and is not for sale. Not encouraging. More generally speculation about signings is one of the ways that clubs build up public interest and increase ticket sales. I am not convinced Cortese's Swiss banking background has prepared him for dealing with a large customer base, where strict secrecy is not a major criterion for success.

Delap - a premier league regular and arguably his team's main attacking weapon - would cost more than £4 million now.

I was behind boycott in a petrol queue once. Genunely, it took ages for him to get the pump off the zero mark.

You know I intially read this as 'mini-kits for babes' . Amazing what difference a single letter can make to the mental image caused. ;-)

Recent research shows that AIDs was around in Africa at least as early as the 1920's, probably caught from a particular group of chimpanzees in which the virus had mutated randomly and naturally into something that humans could catch from its usual state prevalent in many chimpanzee populations. This makes nonsense of this video's claim that the USA 'invented' it in the 1970's, but then as I've said there is really little point in trying to show you what nonsense this is by quoting facts; you'll just dismiss them. If anyone else out there is tempted into half-believing Dune's nonsense, try listening to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011pldm/In_Our_Time_The_Origins_of_Infectious_Disease/

You know there was an interesting piece on Radio 4 recently, reporting some research into the phenomenon of conspiracy theorists. I'm paraphrasing of course, but basically it found that once someone has decided on such a theory, however absolutely, blindingly, obviously, nonsensical it was, any attempt to prove them wrong by use of facts or common sense always lost; the nutter just assumed that the facts, and the person giving them, were also somehow part of the conspiracy, and became even more paranoid. The only hope was to prevent loonies from hearing or developing such theories in the first place. I'm afraid you are lost cause, Dune. Euthansia is probably the kindest way forward now to be honest. I expect we could ask the people that really shot Kennedy to do it --they've not had much to do since Roswell and the faked moon landings.

So why isn't the floor transparent too? Wimps!

Meanwhile, even after the cuts, we are still the world's 4th highest spender on 'defence'. In both cases, Cameron seems not to have realised that we are just a small island off the coast of the rest of Europe ... not a world power.

This

No, it was last week that it was all going through ... no the week before ...no..... What I find so mind-boggling is that they appear to be seriously planning to try to sign players like Norris, who will only come to them if he is paid a pretty hefty wage. How/why are they STILL expecting to pay out at a level above their income?

Personally I think every potential new subscriber to the forum should be made to read all 40,000 or so posts, then answer test questions, before they are allowed to sign up.

Apparently he's got a new career as assistant to a children's party entertainer. Does impressions of various animals, then some kid takes him home and leaves him in a corner while he slowly deflates. Still. .. it's show business ain't it!

Lampitt needs to learn that phrases like 'kids for a quid' can be misconstrued in Portsmouth !

All together now .. he let the doctors down, he let his family down, and worst of all, he let himself down.

Are you a plastic man ure fan then? ;-) He's right about the grass round the fruit trees though , but less important once the trees are well-established. Mind you I simply can't be arsed to cut a circle round mine and keep it grass free! And toi anyoine starting growing veg, plant some spinach beet (aka perpetual spinach, or leaf beet). A single row say 6-8 foot will keep a small family in spinach all year. Do not plant true spinach as such ..it goes to seed as soon as you look at it.

Thought you believed in free market forces Dune? IMO this is the logical consequence of the free market in football. A few big boys get more and more greedy, maybe eventually strangling everything else, until only about 10 -12 teams are left, playing each other every few weeks. But actually I think your basic premise is wrong. Attendances are not dwindling as far as I can see. And they certainly rose during the last 10 -20 years following the post-war decline. Anyone got any definite figures?

A real shame. Was a promising youngster. My recollection is that he never really recovered from a bad injury? Thought he had re-built his career at Exeter, but if they are now releasing him that has to be the kiss of death for his career I'm afraid.

Not really. See for example http://pricegraphicarts.tripod.com/WorldWideTerrorism/id52.htm Mussolini's Italian fascists also committed major atrocities, especially in Ethiopia. And in any event anyone giving a fascist salute in modern times has to be aware that by doing so they are effetively allying themselves to the whole Nazi movement.

Yeah. What about me? I was really going to make it as a pro footballer. All I lacked was the speed, skill, talent, or a father who was a manager. Still hoping to make it as a rock god though ... only a matter of time

No, but one of the big differences between the various divisions is pace. Your average Prem striker is faster than your average NPC, who is faster than L1 etc. I do think that every NPC club wil have at least one forward with real pace. Jaidi's experience often puts him in the right place to make up for pace, but sometimes we rely too much on Fonte sweeping up after him. Remember those quotes about the academy scouting for youngsters with pace and strength as the main criteria, because you can teach the other aspects of football. But as I said , a 1 year contract ...fine, as long as we do bring on a long term replacement with speed,

He's awesome in the air, but I fear his increasing lack of pace will be cruelly exposed in some championship games. Imagine him up against some other club's Forte. Still a one year extension makes sense as long as we do bring on another CB who does have pace.

Do you know, I almost thought you were being sarcastic for a moment there.

Yeah .... fair enough And Millwall's "No one likes us" (I'm stilll for us singing ' the wheels on the bus' personally)