pap

Excellent result - hope it's nothing too serious with Lambert and Lallana. Top of the league. Again. Amazing away result.

Rickie Lambert, Southampton's goal machine! Told you we had nothing to worry about.

Good lad.

Yes! Get in there Rickie! More please.

Surely there is a massive conflict of interest here. Part of any Commercial Manager's remit will involve selling shirts and scarfs

I spent ages trying to convince Ms pap to watch Wrath of Khan. She's on a proper Trek tip now. Started rewatching TNG. First season is a bit hit and miss, but I'm actually very impressed with how well it holds up. They did a great job on the sets, so it's only the occasional space special effect that looks a bit dodge. Incidentally, this is the show that really turned me into a geek. Used to be on in my mate's house on BBC2 back in the day. Saw "Best of Both Worlds" ( the one where Picard gets turned into a Borg ). Was rather exciting. "When's the next one on?" "Next year" "Mwah!" First ever cliff-hanger, and it worked, the b*stards!

Spot on.

A couple of thoughts on this. First, the salary levels for bankers are ridiculous, particularly when they reached those levels on false pretenses, namely that the economy was going to boom forever and ever, and that these guys were doing the business. As it turns out, they weren't doing a very good job. I am unsure why those salary levels should be sustained, particularly with those banks that are majority-owned by the tax payer. "But pap! You deluded person! We have to pay these guys top whack or they'll go elsewhere". You're probably right, but I have a questions to ask. 1) What ever happened to a sense of public duty? 2) Where's the performance related incentive to succeed when bonuses are paid out anyway on the back of massive losses? I'm pretty sure that these bankers have been promised massive things if they manage to drag the country out of the mire, and I have no problem with them getting a massive whack if they pull it off. Cost of doing business. I'm somewhat less enthused about 375M being paid out of the public purse when the ship is still leaking.

That's not entirely accurate. I've only got 2 kids, and to be honest, most of my time goes on work, family, Star Trek, Saints and buying One Direction tickets for my temporarily deluded daughter. Making comparisons about the relative merits of watching Question Time on a Thursday night versus discussing the implications of a middle-manager leaving the club on a Friday night is just a side-gig.

I cannot believe that Turkish has a go at SaintAndy666 for spending his Thursday nights watching Question Time. Because, y'know, arguing the toss over why a Commercial Manager and a Head of Catering might have left Southampton FC is how all the cool kids spend their Friday nights.

Do you still bear the scars of jack-booted security, trousers? No further questions your honour

...but is still going to pay out 375M worth of bonuses. Don't know about anyone else, but if I'd performed that badly at work, I'd be marched to the gates and given a small kicking by security. Guardian link

I see a Saints win all day long. Can't see the form of last week disappearing just because of a change of location. The head honcho at Sports Interactive, makers of Football Manager - is a Watford fan. He had a little moan about the crowing of Saints fans on Twitter after the 4-0. You know who to gloat to, then

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this. I've checked the "peeved-meter" and it has gone down a notch.

I really can't abide local commercial radio. Most of the DJs have a crappy DJ voice, and oddly, this doesn't seem to change much when you go further afield. If I want Radio, it's Radio 4 all the way for me. If I want something that Radio 4 doesn't cover, I find a decent podcast - and if I'm after music, I have plenty of my own. Good stuff too* *not according to Ms pap.

You would be surprised. A big part of my work involves using computer tech to identify shortages for a discrete manufacturing firm. An unfortunate consequence of that is I've found out more than I ever wanted to know about supply chain. One thing I can tell you is that it isn't all about the cheapest headline cost. Lead times have a big part to play. It's all well and good being able to order stuff incredibly cheaply from the Far East, but on some components, you're looking at a 3 month transit time for maximum cost effectiveness. Then you need to consider the inspection routines. When building something, especially for the first time, you'll need to put it through a rigorous inspection process to ensure that the goods are up to spec. There's no getting around it, either - there are civil authorities ( FAA would be a good example ) that'll essentially close your business if you're not making the grade. So you order your parts from the Far East, get them in, and find out they're not up to scratch. What do you do now? Well, you either send them back to get reworked by the supplier or pay someone locally to rework them on contract rates. Either way, the entire proposition is not looking so cheap anymore. One more thing that'll result in the same problem are engineering changes. Bills of Material for discrete manufacturing change, and change often. If your stuff is already on a boat, and in transit - you've got to rework it on-site so that it fits the new specs. So it's something of a fallacy to assume that it's cheaper to source everything from outside, especially when fabricating complex or uncommon stuff ( I think we can safely put ships in that category ). A good 60% of the vendors we use are in Britain or Ireland. Incredibly short lead times, responsive to change, speak the same language, and are in the same time zone. So, yep - cost is ultimately the driver - but a lot of firms are starting to realise that the bargain-basement prices you get from the Far East come with a hell of a lot of add-ons.

And that's fair enough. Another thread for this anyway. However, your thoughts ("why the hell shouldn't people work for their benefits?") kinda sums the problem up. On the surface, how could anyone disagree with you? In practice, what actually happens is that the amount of paid hours disappears from the economy and more people end up staying on benefits. Sounds great on paper. Utterly counterproductive in practice. Same thing with these orders going to South Korea. Superb, you might say. A bargain. Problem is, you're not only giving the order for the tankers to South Korea. You're giving away the supply chain, and those that depend on the supply chain, many of which will be employing British workers and therefore British taxpayers. I'm sure that the Conservatives will paint this as good value for the economy, but it really isn't once you start applying the merest scintilla of common sense to it. If we're going to continue with this capitalist lark, we need to put demand in our economy. Sending large orders to the other side of the world seems nonsensical in that context.

Have to disagree. For an 18 month old, this government has a disturbing amount of previous for ill-considered policies. Look at the jip they got for their crude idea for means-tested Child Benefit, rightfully in my opinion. It's not even a great Conservative policy. I don't see how, on the one hand, they say they believe in families - yet on the other, their policy hits the traditional ( perhaps now archaic ) notion of having a single bread-winner in the house with a full time parent. Or the neat idea to give massive corporations millions of hours of free labour. Or the 158Bn budget over-spend. This government doesn't really know what its doing. Can't see how it'd be any different here.

Absolutely spot-on. Some people don't realise the true cost of a cheaper quote. We've had this problem for decades.

Rolls Royce engines mostly have a good rep.

It is part of the future, not all of it. We need to manufacture as well. Design will feed the few people with exemplary design skills and whoever hangs off their coat-tails. Manufacturing has the potential to feed a lot more.

Pretty good summation, imo.

Literalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, which started gaining prominence in the early 20th century. It is utterly bonkers, and many of the people who claim that they believe the Bible is the literal word of God just cherry pick it. The part about giving all your money to the poor, for example. They're just literal when it suits them.

We have a taker.

Only 5 more posts before the 300. trousers will be happy. Keep up the good work, lads.