Sheaf Saint

Yes, most definitely a pedant. I grew up around that area and went to school at Bitterne Park (which I assume you did too going by your username), and in all that time I never once heard the place referred to as Bitterne Park Triangle.

Yes, go and see it. You won't be disappointed.

Watched couple of films over the last two days... Mr Nice - biopic of legendary hash smuggler Howard Marks with Rhys Ifans in the lead role. Very interesting story of his life and how he came to be a big-time dealer. Worth a watch. Paul - Latest comedy from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost about two nerds who travel to the US to go to a comic book convention and end up helping an alien return home. Essentially just a parody of ET but very funny in parts and also worth a watch.

What? People still do the pools do they???? TBF Rochdale have been on a very good run of late so it's not unfair that they would award it as a HW.

Because most Americans are gullible enough to believe anything Fox News tells them, sadly.

It doesn't I guess. But then the oil was only part of the prize. Look how many squillions of dollars Haliburton made out of the re-building contracts. The thing is though Andy, we now know that the whole WMD thing was a smoksecreen. We know that the people responsible for planning and carrying out this 'intervention' (as they like to dress it up as) were fully aware that they didn't exist. So there was obviously another more important motivation. So if it wasn't WMD, and it wasn't about gaining control of the world's second largest oil reserve, then what was it really about? Revenge for taunting Daddy and threatening to kill him during Desert Storm? Possible I suppose. Maybe Bush jnr saw his father's failure to remove him as a mistake and felt it his duty to rectify it. Liberating the Iraqi people from a ruthless dictator? Don't even try and convince me of that one. What did Bush and Blair care about the ordinary people of Iraq? F***-all that's what. The US and UK were allies of Saddam in the eighties when he famously gassed those Kurds, and both countries are currently supporting much more despotic regimes around the world because it suits their business interests. Blair himself took British forces into action in Kosovo on the basis of 'preventing a humanitarian disaster', while at the same time turning a blind eye to the atrocities being carried out in East Timor by the Indonesian government under Suharto; using weapons and equipment supplied to them by British companies. Creating stability and democracy in the middle east? Well they couldn't have done a worse job if that was the objective. The USA doesn't even have a proper democracy itself, how the hell did they expect to implement it in a country that has for thousands of years been a tribal system like Afghanistan? They tried to fool the public into thinking that Saddam was aiding Al-Qaeda and use that as justification, but everyone knew that was complete nonsense from the start. There was never a single shred of intelligence confirming that Al-Qaeda had been operating in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Ironically, it was our very presence in Iraq that prompted thousands of jihadi fighters to cross the border and wage the holy war against the infidels, so all we achieved there was to create their presence that didn't previously exist. Brilliant job!

He wasn't playing the game the way the Americans wanted it played though. Unlike every other oil-producing nation (except Venezuala who have also felt the brunt of US foreign policy as a result), he was insisting on being paid in euros instead of dollars.

When you say 'all the intelligence', do you mean 'one guy with a grudge against Saddam'?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war As if we didn't already know, now it has been confirmed by the 'source' that he lied to the US/UK intelligence services. Now it begs the question: were the people involved so incompetent that they failed to verify the intel that he gave them, or were the authorities so determined to carry out the invasion that they didn't feel the need to bother?

It's very interesting that you don't apply that logic when defending your mates from the EDL dune.

Yeah I saw that on the news earlier. One in four trainee pilots on the verge of graduating will be laid off. Sad times indeed.

Went to see True Grit yesterday. Been looking forward to this release cos I'm a huge fan of everything the Coen brothers have done before. I was quite shocked and slightly alarmed to find out that they drafted in Steven Spielberg as exec producer, but that was unwarranted because it didn't detract from the originality of the Coens' work (despite this being a remake of a John Wayne classic). Jeff Bridges is superb as Rooster Cogburn and I wouldn't be surprised if he wins the Oscar for it. He didn't in any way try and model himself on Wayne's version and made the role completely his own. The young girl who played Maddy Ross is that rarest of things - a child actor who can actually act - and the chemistry and dialogue between these two and Matt Damon's character is as good as you would expect. This aspect is after all the very essence of what makes the Coens' work so watchable. Not their best film by any means, and I was surprised to see the inclusion of one or two movie cliches, but I assume that these were either required by the storyline of the novel or due to the Spielberg influence. It certainly didn't lessen my enjoyment of the film anyway. 8.5/10 - go see it.

I didn't go to the game nor did I follow the match thread or listen to the radio commentary, but from what I can gather from the comments on this thread, we played very badly but still ground out a win and a clean sheet. When did we ever do that before? I literally can't remember. The best teams in the world are where they are because they have the ability to do that: have an off-day yet still collect the three points. It's no coincidence that we haven't been firing on all cylinders since Lallana got injured IMO. Of course it would be great to be able to lose a player of his quality and replace him with someone just as good. But the reality is that we are in L1 so it's just not possible, and there seem to be one or two people who frequent this forum that can't quite get their heads round that. We may be loaded by L1 standards but we're not Chelsea or Barcelona and can't just go out and buy any player we like. I just hope AL is now fit enough to start and can get us back to our form prior to his injury.

Apparently Ford are concerned that the public might confuse a Formula One racing car with a pickup truck... http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/10022011/58/ford-launch-ferrari-lawsuit-f150.html Unbelievable! People will sue for just about anything these days.

Whilst doing exactly the same thing themselves behind a very thin veil of "patriotism".

So let me just make sure I'm understanding you here dune... The leader / spokesman is caught on camera stating that he '****ing hates pakis', and yet you STILL try and claim that he is not racist? I don't believe that anybody is capable of being either that stupid or that blinkered. But then, nothing really surprises me with you any more dune.

Does anyone remember that Italian lad who scared a shedload of goals in the reserves towards the end of the 90s but never got a chance in the first team? Someone Sarli I think his name was.

May you rest in peace Major Winters. The sacrifices you and your men made will never be forgotten.

But what if that factory owner decides that it would be much more beneficial to close it and move his operations overseas so that he doesn't have top pay any tax on the company's earnings from abroad? Ok, we'll still have a £1m earner paying his own income tax etc.. but all of his UK staff will be out of a job and claiming JSA.

Surprise surprise.

I think you have misunderstood the government proposals here. The idea behind the changes laid out in that article is that UK companies who have operations offshore can pay less tax on the money they earn in other countries. This is not conducive to attracting foreign companies to invest and provide jobs in the UK - quite the opposite in fact. And the fact that the new rules will only apply to large businesses and not smaller ones tells you all you need to know - that 'Call me Dave' is simply feathering the nests of his business buddies at the expense of the low-middle income majority. The whole thing stinks.

So what about the inevitable job losses when the large corporations shift their operations offshore so they can pay less tax on the revenue from these operations? Does it not concern you in the slightest that government policy isn't just being influenced by big business any more but is actually being dictated? Aren't you the slightest bit annoyed that the responsibility for economic recovery is now falling squarely on the individual and small businesses while large multinational corporations can relax safe in the knowledge they will be better off while the rest of us get shafted?

OK, I admit I don't have an in-depth knowledge of economics, but please explain how this can possibly be good for the UK economy? The idea was cooked up by committees consisting largely of the heads of large corporations - surely that's like asking criminals what changes they think should be made to the justice system. I'm not so naive as to believe that large corporations haven't been influencing government policy for years - it is an accepted part of capitalism of course. But for the new government to state "we're all in this together" only to bend over backwards to reduce the amount of tax paid by large corporations and expect the smaller companies, who are the ones most affected by recession after all, to prop up the economy while the rest of us pay the economic price is just grotesque IMO. But then I suppose that policies geared towards making the super-rich even richer while the low-middle income majority get f***ed over is only to be expected from a Conservative government.

Well thank you for your intelligent and reasoned input into the debate delldays. Out of interest, what are your thoughts on it?

All good points OldNick, but how can it possibly help the country if all of the large companies start outsourcing everything abroad so they don't have to pay any tax on their revenue? You may well be happy to pay your fair share and get on with it, but I can't go along like that in the knowledge that the super-rich elite are just taking the p*** and extracting more money from the economy. We're supposed to be all in this together, remember?