sandwichsaint

Tories are in a very difficult place, they can now govern on their own wit hno LD concessions, but with a majority reduced from 70 to close to zero; their big-business backers are very much pro-Europe and moving out of the EU is generally seen as being bad for big-business/finance/city of London. The leadership will now be forced to squirm between their own big-business backers and their hard-line anti-Europe back-benchers. UKIP offered two distinct (but connected) policies, namely coming out of Europe and reducing immigration. I would suggest the majority of UKIP voters voted for the latter over the former. While Ukip clearly do attract voters from right across the spectrum including plenty of bright and articulate people (step fd our very own Lord D.) my, admittedly anecdotal, evidence based on what I've seen/read the last few weeks and living in Farage's actual putative constituency and having seen Farage and his followers canvassing down my actual street is that the majority of Ukip support is concerned first and foremost with 'immigration' and rather less with more peripheral concerns about sovereignty. I'm not sure you can take the Con's 36%? + UKIP's 10%? = 46%? of those that voted as a 'massive endorsement' (of ONE single policy)? For what it's worth I don't disagree with the first part of your post, the EU has clearly grown and become increasingly undemocratic with little say from the people, but that's the price of a parliamentary democracy, we elect people to make decisions for us, we don't vote on single issues and parties don't stand on single issues, and we don't (generally) have referunda unless it's on big one-off issues, the EU has been established through 'creep' over 30+ years. Clearly it is time for a straight in/out referendum with all sides agreeing to be bound by the result for a set number of years (20?); clearly in real life that won't happen, the side that loses will be back picking at it within 6 months (see Scottish devolution!) Probably like a lot of issues in politics 'Europe' is massively important, but to a relatively small number of people. The reality is a lot of people give it little thought and to all intents and purposes it doesn't impact overtly on their day-to-day life either positively or negatively (although of course in reality Euro law underpins a lot of day-to-day stuff). If you ask people in the street or pub or at work their concerns they would be more likely to say: health/housing/cost of living/immigration/education/local issues before they ever say 'Europe' Out of interest what do you think the split would be on an in/out vote? I'll go 55/45 in favour of staying in.

It's been my though for a long time but this election absolutely confirms it - they should ban publishing opinion polls from 60 days before the election. They add nothing to the debate; as we have seen (again) they are all froth and ******** but they are covered in depth as 'news' and 'facts' by the media. All they do is create a false choice for voters and add to the general terror, in an ideal world people should vote for who they want (in a fully PR system) but all they do in FPTP system is encourage tactical voting on what we now know to be very partial and selective information. Did the ConLab vote really split from 34/34 to 36/30 in 24 hours? Of course it didn't, someone somewhere is telling us a load of porkies, who those people are and why they would do that I couldn't possibly begin to speculate.

How weird ... I don't think I once heard the Tories say the election was about keeping Red Ed out of Downing Street. Oh, hang on, I don't think I heard 'anything' else from the Tories in the last 2 weeks of the campaign - the Tories started off negative and it went downhill from there. Their original tactic was to marginalise/ridicule Miliband and when people actually saw and heard him he started to gain some traction they just set out to destroy him, classic playing the man not the ball stuff. Tories played a blinder, over-cut in the first 2-3 years, got people used to the austerity narrative, then spent blindly on an inflated property bubble for the last two years. Didn't engage in much public debate, didn't particularly campaign on their record, didn't particularly have a view going forward of what they actually want for the country, backed into a corner by Ukip and their own 'looney right' into offering an in/out EU referendum, were allowed to float completely non-specific cuts of £12,000,000,000 to welfare, and then produced an astonishing list of un-costed magic money tree proposals right through the campaign (inheritance tax, extra £8b for NHS, right to buy, various tax cuts + threshold changes, extra child care) and the ultimate humiliation the Conservative and Unionist party reduced to pleading with Scots to vote Nationalist! Labour, again, have failed spectacularly. Their core strategy of getting 35% of people into their camp was blown away mainly by the SNP and UKIP, and surprisingly at least some of the ex-LD vote appears to have gone to the Tories rather than Labour. Labour have never recovered (and looking at the 'new' electoral arithmetic) may never rule the UK or the rump-UK again. They have paid a massive price for the lies and myths that have grown up around the 'great crash' and I hope the guy who wrote that silly note about running out of money feel suitably pleased with himself this morning. The most negative campaign we've ever seen in the UK and the most 'presidential' too, there were very few personalities on show (from any of the parties) and the more extreme (or the most challenging/interesting people depending on your point of view) were kept safely locked up and out of site for the duration of the campaign. Very few issues 'ran', it was the economy, economy, economy day-in, day-out. There was very little honest debate or vision about anything very much at all - health service, education, transport, all got tick box, sound bite type coverage but no deeper vision or analysis. Virtually nothing about 'internationalism', defence, environment, justice, social justice, future of the welfare estate, equality/inequality. People have voted out of fear, rather than hope, the mantra appears to be 'I'm alright today, and if people below me who are already suffering badly have to suffer a bit more for me to keep my place in the pecking order, then that's just the way it is, the natural order of things. Things probably won't get much better for me but if I can keep my place things hopefully won't get worse for me either'. Interesting times ahead, and the prospects for millions of people are about to get much harder, can you buy shares in foodbanks?

They'd kill for 17th place.

I wouldn't have expected him or the local paper to say anything else; having a PL football club in your city or region is 'massive' and they have certainly shown good fightability to retain this status over the last 6 games or so (and we haven't particularly, esp away from home). Doesn't mean that if it's 0-0 at HT or other results start to go against them then their crowd won't get anxious, all crowds do.

'Interesting' angle but not sure I entirely buy it, I'm not sure a player would be considered 'fit' in one position and not in another (and I'm pretty sure Athletico wouldn't be over-joyed if they knew!). As for your DM v CB thing I'm pretty sure CB would be more stressful than DM on a potential dislocated/damaged shoulder - most risk would surely come from pushing/pulling/holding at free kicks and corners, landing awkwardly from ariel duals, falling over the oppo and crash-landing during a heading duel, ditto having the opponent land on top of you after a heading duel, getting cleaned out by your own keeper etc ... all more likely occurrences at CB than DM in my risk assessment. Equally don't buy the hamstrings thing either, if we wanted to nurse his hamstrings we could arguably do that easier at CB than DM too. It looks blatantly obvious from a number of selections/permutations that RK thinks that: Fonte+Yoshida and VW+Toby > Fonte+Toby and VW(or MS)+Reed , 'most' on here would disagree especially if you put KD in to the mix too ... but are ours is not to do, ours is to get behind the team as selected!

I had pretty much switched off after Saturday but I have just re-energised myself by buying a ticket, amazing how having a ticket in your hand turns you from half-empty to half-full in the time it takes you to say t-h-i-r-t-y-f-i-v-e-p-o-u-n-d-s. I'm not on the beach yet and I don't expect the players to be either. Entertaining draw for me, 2-2 or 3-3; I can't see a clean sheet all the time we refuse to play our best back 4, but I think we can score plenty* against a desperate team with an anxious home crowd on their backs. COYRs! * That'll be the Spurs Pelle and not the Sunderland Pelle then.

Triffic, the best idiot's guide to football finances I've ever seen. Must-read piece but allow yourself 20 mins+, I've just skimmed it in 5 minutes but will read it properly tonight.

I agree, it looks like we can remove those quote marks in the title then.

Pap, back in the day.

My youtube is blocked at work, who won it that year?

You wonder how far Brian Clough would have got in the media age, you would like to think he would have done equally as well if he had been able to tolerate the goldfish bowl all of PL football has become but no guarantee he would have been prepared to play their game. I don't have a problem with NP being rude to journalists, it just looks poor on him and his club but if it gets the job done then he's entitled to say he's done it his way. I guess his fans would see it differently to how others see it as outsiders, not sure WGS is half as funny as we all thought he was at the time. He could also come over as quite boorish and borderline rude to journo's but we all lapped it up, I'm sure others didn't find him half as funny as we did. NP was also a very good manager for us, he got the job done with a minimum of fuss and he would likely have carried that on if we had appointed him the next season.

Ye, but if Bournemouth are going to be the new Swansea won't they also be qualifying for Europe themselves by then?

Not sure the Queen gets to decide much these days, the leader with the most seats gets first go at forming a coalition that can carry a majority in the house of commons, if they can't get a majority then the second biggest party will be asked to try and form a workable majority - if they can't either then we're into minority govt/supply and confidence territory, and pretty quickly towards a second election. Not convinced that Lab won't make a more formal agreement with the SNP when the time comes, it's quite conceivable we could see something like Tories 290, Lab 280, SNP 40, and Ed being PM with fewer seats than the Tories.

Ed done good on the coalition question, ruled it out without completely ruling-it-out. Sturgeon came on a bit strident at that point, like a sexed-up Margaret Thatcher, I love a feisty bird me.

Read the link. doesnt matter if Labour get anhilated in Scotland , Lab + SNP > Con + Lib Con can only win if they take 20+ Con/Lab marginals and poling nowhere near that at the moment.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/16/in-the-election-numbers-game-the-odds-are-stacked-against-cameron Pretty much game over under FPTP, Ed just needs to play a straight bat for another 20 days and it's bye bye Dave, happy days!

Great spot, I fully expect to see this on MOTD or Sky before the end of the season.

Adrian Heath (lock this now!) Callum Wilson Ian Callaghan (skate, that's Jim not Ian)

I've never seen an advert for the Tories on my computer .....

Not sure why you are quite so confident on this? Bit of a chicken and egg for me. Saints have to nominate before the season starts, 7(?) games to be Cat A, obviously they go for the games with the biggest demand: 'top 4'-plus, Xmas games (if it's not already against big 4 teams, which both were this season), plus last game of the season would seem to make sense? When are away prices set? Before the season? A little way into the season? Some weeks before the fixture? Not sure how you can be so certain that the selection of Villa on the last day of the season (which we picked before the season started) reflects the high price they charged our away fans? Why would Saints base their Premium pricing home fixtures on the price that away teams charge us ... it only affects 2000-3000 fans either way (why discriminate against 28,000 home fans based on the price of the away tickets?). If Ipswich come up, and charge us £42 for away tickets, does that make them one of the 7 home Cat A games next season? I absolutely agree with Villa last game of the season being Cat A, I fully understand why they were Cat C last year, Saints fans got a bargain when Stoke were Cat C last game last season! I think most of us understand why Villa are Cat A this season, and it's nothing to do with the price of their away tickets!

Prob still working on it, but you would have to assume that there would be a limit to the times you can do it though, perhaps 3-4 times a year? Other clubs have had similar schemes established for a number of years, maybe check out how their's work? Excellent renewal prices, and a reduction in the corners, very pleased with this package all round.

Doesn't 'new' telly money kick in next season?

Nutjob nutshell, who-ever-you-vote-for-the-government-gets-in, or something like that.

Periscopes?