trousers

BBC Newsfeed 1334: "We chose to pick up the ball and leave the pitch before the game started", according to Lord Kerr, Britain's former ambassador to the European Union under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major. He told the BBC that he found it "odd" that Prime Minister David Cameron had chosen not to negotiate on the new treaty, saying it is "conceivable that the management of the Conservative party was a factor in his thinking".

Louwieke DeVos, in Amsterdam emails: I am not surprised at Britain's decision to not sign over any control over her finances in an effort to save a currency she does not use. It should only apply to the 17 eurozone countries. I am surprised though that six to eight other countries not using the euro would sign up.

BBC Newsfeed 1346: An editorial in the French newspaper, Le Monde, is not surprised by Britain's position: "Let's be fair. The British have nothing to do with the euro crisis. They are not responsible for the inability of the eurozone leaders to resolve their sovereign debt problems. It makes sense that the British resist a move towards greater economic and budgetary integration. They don't believe in it. They do not believe in the idea of the European Union. Britain, which joined the then European Economic Community in 1973, is interested just in one thing: the single market. They [the British] are indifferent about the rest of the European project, when they are not hostile to it."

Rob Schwarzenberg in Munich, Germany emails: I am sick and tired of the UK. You guys only care about yourself and whinge about Germany all the time... where would Europe be without the German taxpayers? My message to the Brits is: European Union... love it or leave it.

1356: The majority of BBC News website readers in the UK who have been getting in touch with us today believe David Cameron made the right decision - here is a selection of your views

Which makes one wonder why Farage isn't happy too...

Yeah, but don't forget casual fans aren't proper fans so they don't deserve to go anyway.... ;-)

Quick.....call Mr Cortese now to tell him his (supposed) staduim expansion business plan won't hang together...the SWF sleuths come to the rescue again....

How else do you expect people to dress when participating in a thread resembling a circus? ;-)

Who said anything about needing to fill it "regularly"? (from the viable economics perspective) Depends what you mean by "regularly" I guess.....once every three months is "regular" (as is once a fortnight)

I usually arrive about 2 hours before kick off and the away coach typically arrives within the next half hour. So, between 2 hours and 1.5 hours before the game roughly

I have absolutely no idea....which is precisely the point people are trying to make....we don't have the evidence because we're not the ones coming up with the business plan, ROI model, etc. Once we've seen those cost models we can then have an informed chat about it on an internet football forum... Cart. Horse.

Ok....the "ridiculous" gift notion aside....how will the £36m be funded? You'd have to agree to needing to know that before coming up with a payback model....no?

"Zero evidence"? And there was me thinking Cortese would at least have looked into the economics before splashing out on an extension...

But the point I believe people are making is that "casual fans" are just that....they're casual about it. If they can get a ticket on an ad-hoc basis they will, if they can't then they won't. And because they are casual about it they aren't the type to get in a hissy fit about it on an internet message board or join waiting lists etc. I've no idea what the anecdotal stats would say, but I'd be surprised if there aren't a significant number of people in any part of the country that wakes up on a Saturday morning thinking: "Hmmm, what shall we do today.....ah, I know, our local prem side are playing Liverpool today....I was thinking of going to that.....shouts to the missus: "Hey, doll, what we doing today?"....the missus: "Nothing honey bun"....."Ok, my little love petal....OK if me and the boy pootle off to the footie in that case?".....Wifey: "No problem my lurver, see you at 6 o'clock when I'll have a nice steak and kidney pie ready for you" If someone like the above phoned up the ground to be told they were sold out, they would simply shrug their shoulders and take their family bowling instead.

Exactly...yet another variable to add to the hitherto unknown equation...

What if a percentage of that "£36m" was financed by a gift from the Liebherrs (rather than loaned)? Or indeed was already provisioned for in the fund that Markus has supposedly left in trust to the club? Or....what if part of that "£36m" is to be covered by a long term stadium renaming sponsorship deal? Until one knows where the "£36m" is coming from it's impossible to come up with a strawman model of how long it would take to pay back.

Ah....great minds.....this ^

Yes. But for every person getting one "earlier" there's another person trying to get one "later"

Has anyone actually got the figures that back up either side of this "debate"? In other words, how many games per season would we need to sell out in a 44,000 seater stadium to cover the cost of expanding from a 33,000 seater stadium? How many games? 5? 10? 20? Perhaps if we knew the ACTUAL economics of the situation we'd be in a position to have a sesnible discussion about it.... There again, this is the Saints Web Forum....

I also struggled to get "last minute" tickets for the bigger games in the premier league. The less glamourous games were OK though. QED.

BBC News: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, which campaigns for the UK's exit from the EU, said Mr Cameron could have obtained concessions by threatening to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership. "It's quite untenable for us to remain in a union alone, on the outside, having laws made for us, [while we're] in a permanent voting minority. "This is the worst of all worlds for the UK."

Sssshhhhh.....not allowed to say that....