sandwichsaint

I had a little chuckle at this when I got in at 2 this morning - the BBC match report had Saints 'two games from Wembley'.

From the Invincibles to the Untouchables, forever in Arsenal's shadow. There used to be a mong board down there, with apologies to Bill Nicholson.

Good grief, who worked all this out? You can only beat what's put in front of you. I'm driving over 400 miles on Weds night to cheer Saints on in small cup. Newsflash, the season is only 9 games old, if you win 6 out of 9 you will degrade your opponents score quite significantly. Enjoy it while we can, second in the not-EPL on merit and marching on Wem-blee. Where's Ottery these days, always a good poster and I've a very positive mental image of his Daughter! COYRs.

Cheers for info, now I just need that spreadsheet and I can start to triangulate what's on offer v what I can afford v what I like. Who'd a thunk treating yourself to a new car could be so complicated?

Does anybody on here do PCP to finance their car? Not something I've had experience of, I don't change my car a lot (we've had 4 cars in 20+ years) and have always bought a car outright with a mix of cash savings, bank loan and PX. Mortgage now done and we can afford the payments on something a bit reasonable and looking at PCP as one option. My car is prob worth 3k - 4k PX and we can rustle up a bit of cash as a deposit as well. Bewildering array of choices where to go from here: bank loan and buy outright, lease, PCP, HP, finance rates available from 0% to 15%-plus etc etc etc. Any tips on what would be the best way to go from here? We do quite high mileage (18-20k), it doesn't necessarily have to be a brand new car, ambivalent about keeping it beyond three years, would consider buying it after three years if it's value for money, though there is the issue of saving for or financing the balloon. Also thinking it could be expensive to walk away and start again. How accurate are the GFVs? Are we likely to have any equity in a car to trade on after 60k miles? How strict are they on fair wear and tear etc, I know what a car will look like after I've had it for 60k miles. Lease could be one way to go (some of the prices on that link are ridiculous, what's the catch?!) - one simple affordable payment - but no capital in the car and the day you stop paying you don't have a car and have to start again from scratch. Tempted to buy a low-mileage ex demonstrator or similar, they seem to be regularly available, often loaded with (expensive) options, for the price of not having a brand new car you seem to get a lot more for your money. (though finance seems dearer than on a new car, no 0% special deals available!) I'm sure I could work it all out on a spreadsheet based on total cost of ownership over 3, 5, 10, 15 years with variations built in on changing my car every 2/3/5/10 years ... but I really can't be bothered.... Any advice from anybody in the car game, finance game, or in a similar position scenario gratefully received.

Cup competition have ties - they are 'cup ties'. League competitions have fixtures. Either of these could alternatively be regarded as matches or games. Ties and fixtures are not inter-changeable (IMHO). The round of league games this weekend are fixtures, our game at Stoke next week is a cup tie. Nothing to do with Americanisms as such, just (young?) people not understanding the traditional ways in which the game has evolved. Don't get me started on 'EPL', American-derived or not that's just wrong on so many levels.

Is the shop title deliberate? Might as well conclude he is gay or a paedo as a rascist from that picture. I'm sure he's none of those things, but it's still a major PR gaffe methinks, though perhaps not. A lot of people seem to like this sort of thing. Casual racism and race hatred seem to be making a major and mainstream comeback.

VFT has nailed it right there, very few of the candidates are 'local', most are parachuted in from central casting (for all parties) and are only after your vote to secure their place on the Westminster gravy train. A large number have no connection to the local area they are standing in and most don't appear to have an original thought in their heads, being content to either trot out the party line or more commonly to rubbish their opponents in a mud-slinging contest. Incidentally this is nothing new, I remember in 1979 Labour bringing down a young 20-something big shot, glitzy lawyer from Liverpool to stand in East Kent, Cherie somebody or other I think it was; she had no connection with the area and flopped spectacularly, or maybe we just weren't ready for Cherie Booth/Blair at that time? Shudder to think what this time will bring, we have Farage standing in our constituency (Thanet South) which should mean saturation media coverage, the Tories have lost a popular standing MP for family health reasons. Labour and the Tories have held the constituency about half and half historically though boundary changes make direct comparisons difficult though in similar vein to the national picture Labour appear to be a busted flush locally with very limited organisation or man power, not sure they even have a candidate yet (for next May!). I would expect the Lib Dems to be toast here after their performance since the last election, though they do have strong and active local supporters, as they seem to do pretty much everywhere, at least in the South of England. I guess they could pick up some votes here and elsewhere (protest, protest-votes?) through virtue of not being any of UKIP/Con/Lab, there doesn't seem to be much space on the ballot paper for any sort of modern/progressive/European point of view and the Lying Dems could surprise a few and maybe hang onto more seats than people are predicting. Can't see past a very solid Farage majority, people round here are predominantly white, small-town, small-minded and very much represent the left-behinds compared to their richer, better educated and more metropolitan city cousins. Farage will hoover votes from older right wing Euro-sceptic tories, retired people, and white working class voters who are totally disconnected from Labour. Nige might be a lot of things but he's not stupid, he will have done his homework carefully and will have found the constituency that best fits his demographic. Guess the only consolation now is that I will be able to genuinely say I didn't vote for NF. See what I did there? I won't vote Lib/Lab/Con, it is a wasted vote in this constituency and nationally too, the only policies that would appeal to me would be the Greens or an independent left field anti-war type candidate. My recipe for broken democracy and to get some credibility back into the system? 1 PR is a no-brainer for me, the next Government will be elected on the swing votes of probably 10% of voters in fewer than a 100 constituencies. Under the current system all votes are clearly not equal and large numbers of the voting public are never represented. FPTP encourages negative 'tactical voting', everybody should be able to vote positively for who they want to. 2 Fewer and bigger constituencies, probably multi-member constituencies, combine every five existing constituencies and streamline that down to 3 MPs. 3 Pay MPs more - but stop all expenses, completely including subsidised restaurants and bars etc. Tier the pay to cover travel costs and accom for those that need it. Effectively make each MP-ship into a mini-franchise which they hold for 5 years, pay them a fixed sum per year and they can organise themselves and pay what staff they need from their budget. They do a decent job and provide value for money they will be elected next time, a poor job and constituents can kick them out mid-term. 4 Introduce a residency qualification for all MPs, people seeking election should either have been born in that constituency, or have lived in it for at least 10 years of their life, or have lived in it continuously for the previous say 4 years. With an average constituency of c70,000 voters it is not unreasonable to expect every constituency to produce it's own representatives. 5 Lower the voting age to 16, spectacularly successful in Scotland recently and would bring some new thinking and might also encourage younger people into a life of citizenship. 6 Devo Max for Scotland,Wales, NI and England and a return to local Govt/local tax raising powers (in fact let's not reduce those Westminster MPs from 3/5ths of their current number, let's reduce them to 2/5ths and invest some of the financial and human savings in building up strong local structures). 7 Euro referundum with a straight IN/OUT proposition and the outcome binding for say 25 years and then get on with it! Happen to think it would be 60/40 Yes but it would be interesting to see what sort of a turnout that vote could raise! Those are some of the things that would get me interested in politics and voting again, but unfortunately bitter experience tells you that whoever you vote for the Government gets in, and then they just do what ever big business tell them to. Go Nige! you mold breaker, you hero, you!

In terms of 'memorable' they would have to go some to beat Channon's testimonial night as the second best.

We go to Samoens every Easter, Brit free, the way we like it.

Silly old public, putting the best goal first and the second best goal second.

I've never been more serious! I take it you do pay 40% tax (even thought it's not really 40%)? Considering you are in the top 15% of earners how much do you think would be a reasonable amount for you to be paying? Which areas of current Govt spending would you cut to pay for the shortfall?

I would have thought it was self-evidently a problem that 1% of a society take nearly 20% of the output? Where would you draw the line? Would you be happy if the 1% took 30% or 40% or 75% of the available resources? There must come a point where their position in terms of any sort of civil/ democratic/ consensual society becomes untenable? How do you think the 1% have doubled their share of the pie in the last 40 years if not through their own actions? They keep a firm grip on power, property, land, politicians, the media, law and big business, and all in their own narrow class interest, this hasn't happened by accident or chance. Warren Buffet, one of the richest individuals in America writing in 1995 'There's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class that's making war, and we're winning'. That was written nearly 20 years ago, and they haven't stopped yet.

Couldn't agree more - tax, who needs it? Need a policeman? £150 call out fee and £200 per hour or part of. Health service? Call the help line, only 38p a minute or join the online interactive service for just £12.99 a month. You want to see a real doctor, £100 for a 15 minute consultation, prices start at £250 for them actually doing anything. Hospital admission, £100 a day plus treatment. Maybe you could cover it all with private insurance if you could afford it? You could if you wanted to be like the USA which has the most expensive medical system in the world and the one with the most unequal outcomes. Education? A place at a bog-standard state school will set you back around 5.5k per child per year, plus extras (small bonus here though as the majority of families couldn't afford this so lower class sizes yippee! Though there might be an economic downside to withdrawing universal education and only educating those who could afford it?). Roads? Road pricing should do that ... Mway 75p mile, trunk roads 40p mile, urban driving 50p mile hey, no queues but an enormous add-on to the cost of anything you want to buy, sounds good to me. Benefits? No benefits at all, not child benefit, not unemployment benefit, not sickness benefit, not disability benefit, no nice tax reliefs. Pensions? No, none, provide your own or work till you drop. Forces? None, just private security firms available to the highest bidder and those that can pay. I think you need to stop and have a little think about what your tax actually pays for, most people in the current situation would think themselves extremely fortunate to be in a position to pay 40% tax .... you do realise that being in the 40% tax bracket puts you in the top 15% of earners and 50k puts you in the top 10% of earners? (and you don't pay '40% of what we earn', you have a tax free lump first, and then a lump at 20% too before you begin to pay 40%).

What happened to Germany's 1% after 1998? Nice graphic BTW, good to see that the French, German and Aussie 1% have managed to rub along on a broadly similar share of GDP for the last 40 years. Only in the UK and the USA have the bestest deemed themselves to be worth more than twice as much now as they were 40 years ago. On this graphic the remaining 99% of Brits shared about 92% of the national pie 40 years ago, nowadays the 99% get by on just over 80% of GDP. If you see Sid tell him.

AL getting rave reviews on RAWK this weekend, if Tadic moves to a top 4 club can I be the first to say he wasn't all that anyway?

Been there, done that, twice. UKC c1977/8 Canterbury Odeon + one year .... two storming gigs.

Pretty much this for those who are saying 'he contributed nothing'; he's pretty much dedicated his life since he was 8 or 9 years old to being a professional footballer, I'm sure his family (brothers/sisters etc.) have made massive sacrifices to support this. Everybody wants to do it, some people even think they could it, but it's given to very few to have the right combination of talent, support, opportunity, luck and above all determination and hard work to make a go of it. He's moved on, we've brought in Gardos and Toby with the proceeds and freed up a permanent place for Clyne, and with something to spare too - what's not to like? If I had been there last night (gutted that I wasn't) I would have panto-booed him every time he went near the ball and then given him a clap when he came over at the end. And that's it now, done.. I can't stand the way Theo and Ox come over after every game and we (some of us, not me) cheer them more than we cheer our own players, weird.

Watching Lambert at the moment is like visiting an elderly relative, painful. I'd like to remember him in his prime, smashing in Roy of the Rovers goals and encapsulating everything about the wonderful journey we've been on. His beetroot-factory-to-scoring-for-England journey is one of the best football stories for years with SFC at the heart of it. Fair play to him, he has set his family up for life and captained 'his' team, but nowadays I just pay a brief visit and leave with a small tear in my eye.

Hardly his fault. You'd have thought that somebody would have checked that they had a pair of shorts big enough before they wrote out the cheque.

Loving Big Ron's anti football-manager outfits. He always looks like an exec from a minor multi-national on a dress-down Friday, or a dentist on apres ski in Colorado, cool as fu-k our Ron. Anyone watching MOTD? Rio Ferdinand for 80k a week? No thanks.

Successive away wins! Big Ron must wonder what this PL fuss is all about.....

Glad we matched Swansea's tactics second half!

Goals from everywhere this season!

Getting going now, just need Long and Pelle to get on the same page.