Sheaf Saint

The referee might as well have had a Man Yoo shirt on. Every time a Saints player so much as made the slightest bit of contact with one of theirs he gave them a free kick for it (one particularly stupid one lead indirectly to their first goal) and gave us absolutely nothing. There was a point in the second half when Guly was cynically shoved in the back when running through their defense and if it had been the other way he probably would have got a card out but he didn't even blow for the foul. Shocking stuff. On a positive note though, I thought we were the better team for the first 60 minutes but maybe ran out of steam a bit and when you've got a player like Giggs on the bench who can single-handedly change a game then you've always got a great chance of getting back into it. While I was hoping we might get an equaliser towards the end, I'm actually quite glad that it didn't go to a replay so overall it's probably the best result we could have hoped for. Showed a worldwide audience that we can mix it with the best team in England (although they did rest a few of their star players) and now free to concentrate on the all-important goal of promotion. Well done lads. proud of you all.

Thanks for that Buctootim. Looks like we will need to get it sorted before the MOT then. The crack is not in the drivers field of vision but it's a lot bigger than 40mm.

http://newsthump.spreadshirt.co.uk/richard-keys-charm-school-A14925789/customize/color/66 :lol:

My girlfriend's car is due for its MOT but there is a crack in the windscreen that we haven't got round to sorting out yet. Would that mean an automatic MOT failure?

It is with some remorse that I worked for one of these companies when I was a skint student looking to earn some pennies. Didn't realise they were still going to be honest. The score is this: they call you up and tell you that you've won an award (when in fact they have just picked your name out of the phone book) just to catch your attention, and you have to come along to one of their presentations to qualify for it. When you get there they will give you the hard sell on a timeshare and then tell you that you will have to pay some sort of admin fee to claim the award which, upon deeper inspection, will also have loads of catches and added extras not included in the price which will end up costing you more money. Stay well away is my advice.

What makes me laugh is when you get these mongs coming on saying they have come with a 'strategy' and they believe that it will make them rich. FFS - you're just opening boxes at random with no possible idea what they contain. There's not a strategy in the world that will help you you morons. I'd love to just go on there and open all the boxes in numerical order just to annoy Edmonds. Sadly though I have a 3-digit IQ so I wouldn't have a chance of getting picked.

I don't see why not. By all accounts Mr Cortese is a stern businessman and there is no room for sentimentality when it comes to doing what's right for your business. Plus, after the initial offer is made then I doubt that Pardew would have any involvement in the deal anyway.

Only in ice form. It's not exactly easily accessible.

Yeah that's a brilliant idea, because there's millions of acres of arable land and fresh water on Mars isn't there. Oh, hang on....

Has anybody stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, yesterday's defeat was actually the fault of the players and not the manager? Just a thought....

Why do you have to be such a drama queen Alps? Our promotion campaign isn't hanging by a thread - it's just suffered a bit of a setback. According to the BBC stats, we have had 15 attempts on goal (6 on target) to their 5 (2 on target). It's not as if we're not creating chances FFS, but the strikers are obviously having an off-day which, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, will inevitably happen at some point during any season no matter how good a team is. We never seem to get a result against tranmere - it's just one of those things. There was a time in the 90s when Man Utd for love nor money couldn't get anything at the Dell but that didn't stop them walking away with the title year after year. If everything stays as it is then we are still two points off second with a game in hand over both the teams above us and a better goal difference. Forgive me if I don't share your suicidal thoughts about that situation.

After the anti-climax of Notts County last week, we really need to pull something off and get a win here today. This is the only fixture I made it to last season for various reasons. We were coming off the back of a really good run, only to put in a really lacklustre display and lost thanks to some god-awful refereeing. Let's hope for better this afternoon.

I just had a 'coffee over the keyboard' moment reading through that... What planet are these people on?

Naaa. Gunmen of the Apocalypse for me.

Series 1-6 - Brilliant beyond all comparison. Series 7 - pretty poor but still a lot better than most of the dross comedy on TV at the time Series 8 - Big improvement on series 7 (due to return of Rimmer) but still not a patch on earlier series. Back to Earth - Just.... why? Craig Charles has been quoted as saying "We’ve gotta recapture the highlights like series 5 series six, that kind of stuff. If we can hit that mark then brilliant. There’s no point doing it if it’s a bit so-so." But I'm still not holding my breath on it being anything like as good as it was.

Yep. All except BT who seem to be moving their entire operation to India, which is really annoying for those of us that have to deal with them on a daily basis. The training their staff get in these places is shockingly bad and we always end up having to tell them how to do their own jobs and demand to speak to their supervisors when they can't offer a decent solution (which is more often than not). Up until last week, there was one department left that we dealt with (responsible for porting numbers across from other service providers) who were UK-based and actually knew what they were talking about. We could phone them up with a problem, they would get on to the previous provider and it would all be sorted out really quickly - no hassle at all. Now they've moved it offshore and not one of the agents there actually knows what they are doing, so we end up having to tell them exactly what they need to do and they have to put us on hold for 10-15 minutes while they clarify it with their supervisors.

You've got a very valid point here. The main problem, I believe, is that most companies who are large enough to need a call centre in the first place are often large multinational companies, and this generally means that they will have strict targets that need to be met. When I worked for British Gas many years ago, all they actually cared about was how many calls I was taking in an hour and actually providing a decent service to the customer came a very poor second in their list of priorities. The pressure of hitting these targets can make life really stressful. Management is also a key point. Most call centre staff will have their quality and targets strictly monitored by someone with whom they have little or no daily interaction, and this can be pretty demoralising because it feels like you are being micro-managed by somebody who doesn't appreciate the actual effort you put in and is only scoring you based on some figures on a computer screen. For these and plenty of other reasons (bad working conditions, short breaks, dealing with angry customers) staff turnover is pretty high in these kind of jobs. It seems like every week I will walk past the training rooms and there will be a full intake of new staff. I know we are expanding a lot at the moment, but even so there must be a fair few people leaving every week as well.

This is very true dune, a lot of companies are using the UK-based call centre in their advertising these days. I know from first hand experience how annoyed people can get with off-shore call centres. I work for an ISP and we had a call centre in Durban, and we used to get loads of complaints from customers that the service they offered was awful. Best thing we ever did was close it down and move everything back to Sheffield (obviously not for the staff of the Durban office though). The amount of shoddy ticket responses and generally p1ss-poor information being given out by these people was shocking and it was always left to us in the UK to mop up their mess most of the time. I'm so glad we have closed it now - it's made my job so much easier when dealing with customers.

Yeah, it was the same night we beat Brizzle Rovers 5-1

Firstly, it looks like they have ripped off the design from the F-22. Secondly, just because they've developed a supposedly good fighter, it doesn't mean they are going to start attacking other countries left, right and centre, so I don't see what difference it really makes. It is designed for air-to-air combat, meaning its primary purpose is for defense rather than attack. If they had suddenly started building lots of stealth bombers with nuclear capability, then I would be a teeny bit more concerned. But then, the US already has that capability and has never actually used it in anger, so there is no reason to believe the chinese would either.

Isn't that the club we signed him from? Best of luck anyway Marian. Once of my favourite ever players at Saints. A joy to watch and such a shame that his injury record deprived us of even more. Will never forget that magical goal against the Skates, and getting out of his sick bed to play - and score - in the final game against Everton in the great escape season.

Interesting reading a lot of the comments on that video - mostly from dumb americans who think that it is a propaganda video. Sadly though, if the world doesn't drastically improve the efficiency of renewable energy and the global population keeps going as it is (estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050 at the current growth rate) then it is entirely possible that this way of life will be almost compulsory.

Brilliant result. Even though they fielded a weakened team it's got to be a great confidence booster for the lads. So dune, Chamberlain came on on 84 minutes. Care to retract your statement that we will never see him in a saints shirt again?

So dune, Chamberlain came on on 84 minutes. Care to retract your statement that we will never see him in a saints shirt again?

Are you???