pap

As others have said, flying is not really the problem. It's everything else. I was back and forth from Northern Ireland for a few years, and while I'm happy to have logged those years in the career, home life became something quite weird and undefined. The girls tell me that from their perspective it always felt like I was just visiting, and that's what it really amounts to - you end up visiting your own life. I've been back for two years now, and am glad to be so. Travel is now an occasional thing and enjoyable when I do it. I much prefer things this way around.

I find it a bit odd that having got a better financial offer from Southampton, Vitesse would accept offers from people offering less. When we renegotiated our offer, did we go in at the same level as the other clubs or lower?

I'm not sure whether this fella is any good at football, but if you wanted the campest signing ever (on basis of name alone) and were prepared to overlook footballing ability, I defy you to come up with someone better.

Brighton currently giving our arch-rivals a birruva spanking ( copyright: Cilla Black's Essential Guide to BDSM ). 5-1 right now. Ouch.

Who would be considered a camp signing, though?

Right, I've written another letter! I've politely thanked them for the return of my money, but indicated that I consider all time spent in pursuit of this cash to be a direct result of their incompetence. Updated my invoice to reflect time spent today, and off it'll go

Yaargh, matey! They've paid the final £152 back. They're not too keen on paying for my time though! http://frigsociety.com/2012/07/24/europcar-the-final-countdown/ Looks like they're on the ropes to me. Reckon it's worth pursuing them for "my time" still?

I admire your strong articulation of your position, but I think you're off the mark. Football Manager is not football and no-one is suggesting that it is. It's am imperfect model of the football universe, and absent massive leaps in processor power (and perhaps Turing-compliant AI for the manager interactions), it's always going to be limited. That said, the makers have modelled the game so that clubs can have multiple rivalries, and that those rivalries can have different levels of intensity. There is a stat called disliked clubs. It's a percentage. Here's a list of our rivals from FM :- I don't think those principles are too far from reality, are they? How many teams are rivals with Manchester United for example? Real Madrid's main rival is Barcelona, but they have a dormant rivalry with Bayern which erupts whenever the fixture comes up. There are plenty of mechanics in Football Manager that you can look at and say "yep, they haven't got that right" - and you'd be fully justified in saying it isn't remotely comparable. The whole team talks / dealing with players side of it is just bafflingly unintuitive. To be fair to them, that's an aspect of the game that'll take years (and perhaps a couple of big processing jumps) for anyone to get right. Or you could just look at the universe-altering mechanic of reloading previous saves, and that'd be fair enough. The bit you've picked on is a bit more clear-cut. It's crude, and it's never going to model very specific cases "I hate Spurs because a Spurs fan spat in my sarnie!", but it pretty much covers it. We do hate Pompey 100%, don't we?

You know what, Bearsy. I've seen this extra 's' lark a couple of times and while I am not as precious as you about such matters, I do now feel it appropriate to outline my next steps should this disturbing trend continue. I'm just going to keep adding more letters to your name. Maybe not just one either. We could start with "Bearsey", just for old times sake. Next move is "Beardsey". Gotta be, and it wouldn't go amiss if you could actually grow a beard. That leads directly to "Beardsley", and inexorably, after several letter additions, to:- "I am the love child of Peter Beardsley and Janet Street-Porter (but was taught everything I know by Tim Vine)". As you can see, it's a slippery slope.

Same argument can be applied to healthcare and prisons, Andy. How'd you get repeat business in those industries?

Do you think he uses that volume of voice all the time, then? What does he do to direct players on pitch? Nip over and have a quiet word in their shell-likes? I'm fully prepared to accept I might be talking crap on the ol' bellowing bit though This is an interesting read, McCoist bigging up Davis' captain's credentials. Seems you might be right on this evidence. More of a "leads by example" captain. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/scottish/davis-leading-rangers-team-by-example-says-mccoist-16042812.html

Just when you thought that this farce couldn't get any worse. According to the linked Guardian article, G4S has been cheating on the training for its security positions. Trainees were given as little as 20 minutes training time on x-ray scanners, allowed to answer the same questions multiple times until they hit upon the correct one. They were also allowed to confer with other trainees. 20 minutes training to determine whether something has a home-made bomb in it. Bang up job, G4S. Are we feeling safe, Britain?

Of all the players we've signed or been seriously linked with, this one is most exciting. That's not a dis on the other players we've signed. I'm actually excited about the prospect of seeing Lens play with them. In Sharp and Lambert, you've got players who'll create opportunities out of scrambles, deflections and half-chances. Right midfield has been an identified weakness from the start of the window. Lens looks capable of creating an insane amount of trouble for the opposition. Good fit for the berth, from all accounts.

He's a great player but he does come across as rather softly spoken in interviews. I think the rest of the team might be slightly more scared of a bellowing Northern Irishman.

Was going to start a new thread on this, so I'm glad I searched. I reckon Steve Davis will be our captain. He captained Rangers, captains NI. Gotta think that the subject came up when they were signing him.

I watched a few episodes of "Line of Duty". Been in the mood to watch a British crime drama for a while now, and have enjoyed the three episodes I've watched so far. It focuses on AC12 - the anti-corruption unit, but also has a wider canvas of a police station to draw on. I'm enjoying it a lot. Like The Killing, the whole series is focused on one case. They're going after the copper of the year, who they suspect is "laddering" ( creating multiple charges out of easily solvable crimes and silently putting the harder cases on the back burner). The series delves quite a bit into the bureaucracy associated with police-work, stuff like rapid response teams filling out risk assessments on the way to an operation. I'd actually be quite interested in the views of our resident coppers on this; it's clear that the writing staff feel coppers waste a lot of their time on bolox tasks. Have any of you seen it? How "on the money" is it? For everyone else though, I'd recommend it - especially if you enjoy immersing yourself in a nice slow burning drama. Certainly doesn't hurt that Vicky McClure of This Is England fame is in it

This may well be the intent.

As far as Red Dwarf goes, just think it's a real shame Norman Lovett left the show. Dispute over wages apparently. Wanted to be paid the same as the other actors. Fair enough too, I reckon. Comedy is often alchemy and as much as I enjoyed some episodes from later seasons, I always think they would have been better with the original Holly.

Surely Hypo's ex-missus is in the running, if only for loyalty. The way she jumped on here in his defence after his ban was as remarkable as it was touching. Hats off, I say.

There's very little that Cameron says now that attracts any credibility. Completely agree with your points as well, and would add that this is another symbolic own goal. As many have pointed out, people do love the Queen but I think even the most ardent Royalist would probably admit that she'd manage perfectly well without a giant 80M yacht.

This your attempt at currying favour with TDD, Alps and the like ? Far too clever. Just stick to "bin dippers", etc. Involves less maths - I think you'll have more success with your audience.

How many houses would 80M buy, I wonder?

Just back from seeing this. As a bit of a Batman nerd, thought I'd share my thoughts. It's interesting. Anne Hathaway is probably the most authentic version of Catwoman to hit the screen. Thought she was excellent. Bane was an excellent villain. Tom Hardy really put on the beef for this role. Looks brilliant - like most Nolan renditions - a good fusion of the original character style with enough realism to feel authentic. The switch to him being fed anasthetics instead of venom was a smart one. There are some choices that could have been better. Michael Caine's Alfred has little to do but moan at Bruce or blub, and to a certain extent, you could argue that too many of the main characters spend too long out of the game for respective portions of the movie. The Batman himself appears for about 25 minutes tops. That's cool enough with me though. Even in the comics, not just about the time he spends in the suit. The movie could have benefited from having a more tightly edited theatrical version, but in the long run, it really doesn't matter. The three movies together represent a stunning anthology, something that seemed inconceivable in the dark days of Batman and Robin. Not everyone will get on with Bale's rasping Batman, and I daresay some will even miss the camp "Biff!" and "Pow!" signs from the camped up sixties series Best live action version of Batman for me though. Feel like watching the first two again.

Like this?

Rivalry comes in different strengths though. Our rivalry with Pompey is at the extreme end, but surely you don't have to be at the posting turds through the letterboxes level for a rivalry to exist in some form. Even Football Manager models gradations of rivalry - I'm sure MLG feeds them the "Disliked clubs" information. Personally, I think any team you get a kick out of beating, just because it's them and especially if there's a bit of history between you, is a rival. Appreciate other views may differ.